We were on a unique outing, my troop and I. We had decided to shake all usual constraints and plan our own High adventure trip. I was paired up with my good buddy Ryan from the get-go, and we were ready to hit the road with our packed itinerary. We were going to start with spelunking, then move on to mountain biking, canoeing, and end with a four-day backpacking trek. We were going to do it all, but my problems began on night one.

I was throwing the rainfly on the tent when Ryan rang the dinner bell. Everyone rushed over to grab some grub with their mess kits and utensils in hand. I was not with them, though. Instead, I was rummaging frantically around my bag trying to find my own plate and fork, to no avail. I, a senior leader and prolific camper, had forgotten to pack the most essential of items. I don’t remember exactly what I did to troubleshoot. I’d like to think I was resourceful enough to fashion some chopsticks out of some fallen wood and shared a plate with one of my comrades. In all likelihood, however, I simply bummed a mess kit from someone for the night. What I do remember is the next morning when I once again found myself lacking utensils for breakfast. I realized that whatever fix I had concocted was desperately unsustainable. After our cave tour, I decided to visit the gift shop to look for anything that would satisfy my need for a mess kit. As luck would have it, they had a stainless steel utensil pack, but there was no camping plate or bowl in sight, so I did what every good boy scout would do: I improvised. I bought myself a lime green frisbee and used that for my plate for the remainder of my trip.

With a major issue already solved on day two, I was feeling rather good about myself, but the following days would soon present the next sequence of problems.

On day three, we decided to take an afternoon to go mountain biking in the Appalachians, and this was to be our first major activity so we were all pretty excited. We pulled our enormous trailer up to the campsite sometime in the early afternoon, and it wasn’t long before we were on the trail. We had decided to split up into two groups. The first group consisted of the older, more in shape boys, and the second and much larger group was for those who were interested in more leisurely riding. I was by no means in shape, but I decided to risk group one so that I could be with the majority of my patrol. Group two set off almost immediately, and about six of us and two adults were left including my scoutmaster, Jerry.

Jerry was a pretty damn cool guy. He was a janitor at one of the local elementary schools, and an Eagle Scout himself who had gotten involved in my troop and decided to be the Scoutmaster just for fun. I remember that he was a big dude but very quiet with a twinkle in his eye. He was a ginger, 30 something Kris Kringle, sans-beard with a buzz cut. Needless to say, he was larger than life to all the scouts, and we thought we were pretty cool whenever we could manage to keep up with him.

My group set off no more than five minutes after group two and decided to head in the opposite direction. Immediately we went down an incline that felt more like a rollercoaster than a hiking trail. We all managed to stay upright though, and soon found ourselves about a mile in. Ryan and I were shouting to each other, trying with great difficulty to both chat and ride when we rounded a corner and abruptly stopped.

Once again, we found ourselves at the top of another embankment with what could barely be described as a path down. High off of our progress, we went down the steep incline one by one and patiently waited at the bottom so we didn’t lose anyone. Ryan and I were two of the first to head down, and we were sitting at the bottom of the hill when Jerry began his descent. He barreled down the hill toward us, expecting to reach us upright and unharmed like the rest of us. This, however, was not the case for Jerry.

About halfway down the hill, Jerry hit something. I’m not quite sure what, and I’m not quite sure why he couldn’t avoid it, but he hit it head-on. Now Jerry didn’t panic often. He was built like a tree and cleaned up after kindergarteners for a living, so it was not every day that he became genuinely concerned. That day, however, we did see a panicked Jerry because, at that moment, he looked dead at our group with the same look as Wile E Coyote. He veered to the left to avoid us and tumbled over his handlebars into the embankment.

We were stunned. It took a second to process what we had just witnessed, but we soon all rushed to help. By some miracle, he was a little scraped up, but otherwise okay. His helmet and bike were different stories. In the process of tumbling, he hit his head pretty hard, resulting in a pretty nasty crack down the center. The cause of the tumble was originated in the front tire, and we knew this because when we picked up his bike, the tire frame was bent at a 90-degree angle perpendicular to the rest of the bike.

This was the end of our biking trek. Everyone walked their bikes back the mile or so and Jerry hiked his out on his back. He was nothing if not a trooper. Our plan for the rest of the day was pretty simple: wait for the other group to get back, pack up, and head to base camp for our river trek the next day. The problem was that our other group missed the meet time, and we couldn’t get in touch with them.

In scouts, it is policy to always have at least two adults with each group of boys. Doesn’t matter if it’s in a campout or in a troop meeting, there always has to be at least two adults, so when our second group didn’t show at the appointed rendezvous time, neither of our adults could leave go look for them. The best they could do was try to reach the other adults in the missing party.

We waited for 30 minutes to give them some buffer in case they were simply slow going. 30 minutes soon turned into one hour and then two, and we started to become worried. We were running out of daylight, and still had a 45-minute drive to where we were to set up camp for the night. The hours droned on and still no sign of the other group, so Jerry told us to start prepping dinner and keep it warm for when the guys showed. 9:00 rolled around and dinner had been warming for an hour and a half already with not so much as a trace, so we pitched camp as best we could in a nearby field, and unloaded everyone’s personal gear so when the guys did come back, we could get them plenty of water, a hot meal, and into their bedrolls within 30 mins.

10:00 and they still weren’t back yet. At 10:30 we finally saw a tiny light wobbling up the path. We all ran over with water bottles and found the entire crew in tow behind the single keychain flashlight that they had among them. They had been gone over eight hours and lost for at least six of them. We made sure they scarfed down a little dinner before they went to bed and the rest of us cleaned up for our very early wake up the following morning. We calculated a rough estimate of how far they had traveled in their time as lost campers, and if I remember correctly we estimated between 12 and 15 miles.

This, however, was just the first three days of the trek. The following three days would prove to be just as challenging, and one event, in particular, would find me in a real, honest to god life or death situation. This story can be found below and is the second installment in my ongoing episodic saga detailing the events that have led to my distaste for water.

-Nickel

H2O Saga

Part 1

Part 2 (The Trek Continued)

Part 3