**STRESS CAMP DAY #2**

As the night wore on, i became more acutely aware that it was raining, mostly due to the fact that there was a large sheet of plastic mere inches from my face that reverberated soundly with every raindrop. i had my watch alarm set to just after sunrise (actually, i had it set to about 5:45am, which was, conincidentally, just after sunrise). the kids got up pretty happily, and with only minimal grumpiness , got to work on packing up their stuff. i set about making pancakes.

Pancakes, for all you non-hiker/camper types out there, are a really bad idea. at least, says me. i like to get up, hike for a few hours, have some granola, and keep hiking. pancakes require, among other things, a fire; also vast amounts of patience, which was in short supply. last year i personally carried the pancake mix, as well as the 2 frying pans for the pancakes, all over the world, so this year, i decided we were going to make those pancakes as soon as possible, and that meant morning 1. it wasn't too difficult for me to get a fire going, even though it was raining, seeing as how i managed to wrap a bunch of the unused wood from the night before in a garbage bag. planning! so, we ate pancakes.

It was fairly cold and windy for the next bunch of hours, and we pretty much just hiked. we did find what was to be the only wildlife on our trip, and one of the girls tried to eat it, much to our amusement. as lunchtime drew near, the trail we were on got worse and worse, to the point where "they" had laid down almost a kilometer of sandbags to keep the trail from getting so washed out it was completely unusable. it was my plan to have lunch on the top of this trail, but some of the girls in the back were having a really hard time (feeling like they were going to throw up, shaking uncontrollably), so we chilled for lunch mid-way. as we were eating the sun came out for what was to be it's only appearance all of stress camp (and actually, it hasn't been sunny yet since then either). we stripped down to our shorts and t shirts, and enjoyed the brief respite from the fog, but after about an hour, the sun went away, and we had to take a pit-stop for everyone to get their raingear on again.

So far, so good. it's about 4:30pm, we've been hiking for a good solid 8 or 9 hours, and we've averaged about a kilometer an hour. the thing is, i know that there's a hut ahead of us a ways, and it'd be awfully nice to get there and be able to stay out of the rain, which, at this point, has returned with a vengeance. i consult a little with my assistant leader, and she doesn't think we should go for it. i think we should. we agree that we should tell the kids what's going on, and let them decide for themselves. the facts i gave them were that there was a hut that we could make it to, but we would really have to work hard, and it was still a long, long ways off. they (somewhat predictably) chose to push on as long as it would take to reach the hut. the fateful decision had been made.

Usually the leaders allow the kids to lead the group, while keeping track on their own set of maps where the group is, but i decided that i would lead the group at this point, just so we wouldn't get lost in the dead of night. i tried to set a fairly high pace, hoping that the incentive of the hut would speed up some of the slower members. it really didn't work, even for a little bit. night fell like a brick, which it does in the mountains, and we soon found ourselves in a world that existed only within the confines of our flashlight beams. with the dark and the fog, it makes it difficult to see more than a few feet in any direction. the danger of that, of course, is that i would miss a signpost and walk us down the wrong side of the mountain, but Jesus was looking after things and, thankfully, that never happened.

A few hours after dark we had our first (and only) really bad fall. we were coming down the side of the mountain on a hard-packed-clay trail, which in rain turns into a really dirty slip-'n-slide, and he tripped or slipped or something, and tumbled head-over-heels down the hillside. he probably only did about 4 or 5 somersaults over a distance of maybe 5 or 6 meters. i was in the back when it happened, and all i really saw was his flashlight doing crazy things, then one of the girls screamed. he wasn't moving. i booked it over to him, honestly not thinking he had been paralyzed or anything, but not sure if he was conscious or not. turns out he was just stunned. he hit his head pretty hard on something (maybe his own pack), but he was ok. he actually stopped on the very edge of a very sharp drop-off place. it wasn't a cliff or anything, but everything got a lot steeper about 2 feet beyond where he was. proof that God looks after us.

"The Fall" happened before we were even at the half-way point for the hut, and at that point i mad the executive decision that we were not going to make it to the hut that night. Corey's fall could have happened to any one of the kids- they were getting too exhausted to hike smart. the next big landmark on the map was a dirt road, and i figured if we hadn't found a good spot by then, we'd sleep there. turns out neither of those things happened. the trail just kept going, and it was kind of a crappy trail- tons of little bushy bamboo everywhere, and we were always either going up or going down. and where was that stupid road anyways!? we hiked for what seemed like an eternity, and it was getting to the point where kids were leaning up against trees for support and falling asleep standing up, or stepping over a log on the trail, then sitting on it and falling asleep. i called a break, and took one guy with me to scout ahead to see where the road was. in the meantime, the group circled up, shared some ritz crackers, and fell asleep on eachother's shoulders.

Me and yuta, the fellow scouter, hiked at a pretty good clip for the next 15 or 20 minutes without finding that blasted road. eventually i had to set a limit to how far we would go, so i said that if the trail went up one more time, we would call it quits and sleep on the trail. it was a hard call to make- part of me was convinced that it was right next to us, but we couldn't see it due to the dark and the rain. but, the trail started going up again, so we turned back. on the way back to the team i kept my eyes open for a good spot for sleeping, but never really found one. there just wasn't a section of trail that was flat long enough to sleep 10 people.

My solution was to have the kids pair up (guy/guy and gal/gal, of course) and share a rainfly, using the other one to cover their packs and stuff. we didn't have supper, and the kids didn't even ask for it. as soon as they had their stuff out and their fly's up, they crawled in and passed out. they didn't know it, but it was all of 8:30 in the PM. it was a little awkward for me, since i had to share with the assistant leader, who is a married woman of 42, and whose son was in my group last year. i have a mummy bag, which means it is exactly big enough for sleeping, not for other things like changing out of my nasty hiking clothes and into nice dry sleeping clothes. we sat next to eachother, facing opposite directions, and both said "don't look, ok?" it was a matter of survival! but it was still weird to be sitting partially naked next to someone's mom, talking about how far we had to hike the next day. we fought in our sleep all night- there wasn't actually enough room under the fly for us both to stay dry simultaneously, so one would wake up getting rained on and roll back to the center, displacing the other person out into the rain, who would wake up and roll back to the center, displacing...you get the idea. all night.


The sun set, and the rain fell, thus ending the second day. All told, they had travelled roughly 12 kilometers in about 13 hours of hiking. But what would the next day bring? And why hadn't they found the road yet? Were they lost, or just stupid? Stay tuned...