To read part ten of day four, click here.

Jordan slowed down to walk with us, and we told her about the sign. I’m sure the look of shock on her face matched the one on mine. She said that Ben wasn’t going to make it, and no one said anything. There was nothing to say.

I started trying to compare the distance we had walked with how far it is around a track, but I can’t do it. 😀 My mind just won’t compare it anywhere near accurately, so I gave up. We stopped to take a break again, and Bruce and Bobby switched places. Ben drank some more of his water, and I found myself comparing how much he had drank to how far we still had to go. If I was doing it right, he was going to run out of water in the next half hour or so.

Jordan, Luke and I told Bruce about the distance we still had to go, making sure we were far enough away that Ben couldn’t hear us. He was so tired, in so much pain, and we all decided that we were not going to tell him how far we had to go. We also didn’t tell him about the water – we all knew that he needed it the most.

We started taking small breaks more often. Ben was getting really tired and needing more water. He was taking two or three sips at almost every break now, and we were stopping every five minutes. He didn’t sit down or lie down on all of them – he would stand holding onto a tree. And the breaks were only for about a minute, before Josh would say that it was time to go on again.

A half an hour after we had seen the sign, we stopped for a longer break. Ben sat down and Bobby flopped to the ground next to him. I tossed Ben’s water bottle to Bobby, who handed it to Ben. He finished his water, and I tossed my bottle to Bobby so he could pour some into Ben’s. He opened it and drank a bunch of it, and at that point I didn’t even care. He poured the rest of it into Ben’s water bottle and tossed my empty bottle back to me. I asked Jordan to help me get it back in my pack, since it was almost impossible to put your own water bottle away.

We started off again. We were all starting to get tired, not to mention Ben. I don’t know how we were still going…

I think it was right about there they decided that we needed to pick up the pace. You know how you do the “1, 2, 3!” thing with kids? Where you pick them up and swing them? Bobby and Luke started doing that with Ben.

From the back it looked a lot like this again

It looked really awkward, this run then jump thing they were doing, but we were going faster. The only problem was, they were swinging him really far, with not a lot of time for him to get his balance in between swings. I let them go for about five minutes before I made them stop. Ben had asked for a break, so they sat him down and I handed him his water. Then I pulled Bobby to the side and told him that he had to stop it. He didn’t want to stop, because we were going so much faster. But I told him that they were hurting Ben, and they needed to stop.

He grudgingly told me that he would stop. Then he asked me why Luke and I had been looking so worried earlier. I told him about the water situation – I guess we had forgotten to tell him about it until then.

We hiked for another 20 minutes, continuing to take small breaks. Right before we took our next long break, we passed another mile marker.

Do you know what it said? One and half miles.

It had taken us an hour to walk a half mile. I nudged Jordan and pointed to the sign. She looked at me and started laughing – a very nervous laugh. She shook her head at me, looking desperate. “No. That is not possible, we’ve walked more than… No.”

We took a break right after the sign disappeared. I told Luke and Bruce about the sign and told them that we only had about three hours to go. They just gave me a blank look, which almost made me laugh. There was nothing comical about another three hours of walking though, so I didn’t actually laugh.

I asked Bruce for his water bottles. He handed them over, and I dumped one of them into the other. I handed the empty one back to him and took a sip from the one that had water in it. I passed it around to all the guys, making sure they each had some and I told Jordan to drink some of hers. Ben finished what was left in his bottle, so I stuck that one back in my pack. We still had Jordan’s water, and about a half a bottle left of Bruce’s. Less than one and a half bottles of water, one and a half miles to go.

I looked over at Ben. He was sitting on the ground, his back against a tree. Bobby was sitting next to him, doing everything he could to help Ben. I looked around at the rest of my crewmates that were with me, and I realized that we were a team. We now had a common bond, a common goal. We had to get Ben down the mountain, and we were going to do it! We were going to do everything in our power to get him down the mountain.

Click here to read the next part of Day Four.

*Everything here is from my own memory and may not be correct. Outward Bound is not responsible for anything I post here. Thanks to NCOBS for letting me use their photos.*