To read part twelve of day four, click here.

I was really glad that Tullia was hyper. Because she was hyper, she looked at me and decided that I was too tired to carry my pack. She insisted on taking my pack, and I didn’t argue! I took it off and felt much better. 😀 I pulled the two water bottles off the chest strap and handed Bruce his empty one.

Tullia put my pack on – at least, she tried too. She got her first arm in and tried to swing it onto her back. The other shoulder strap wasn’t anywhere near her shoulder. She put it back down on the ground, exclaiming “Brett, you are really tiny!”. She loosened all of the straps and tried again. I helped her swing it up onto her back and held it while she tightened the straps till it was comfortable.

While I was helping Tullia put my pack on, they decided to test if Ben could put any weight on his ankle yet. He could! So when we moved on, he went down to one person helping him. That one person was usually Bobby, but sometimes it was someone else.

Only one person helping Ben!

I was just carrying Jordan’s water bottle and the trekking pole. Taking my weight really helped with my ankle and how tired I was, so the only thing that was really bothering me was how thirsty I was. I took one more sip of the water, knowing that I was not going to get anymore water until we had gotten more. We had to save the rest of the water for Ben.

Bobby took a break, letting Kayce help Ben. A bunch of the crew started walking in front of Ben, getting so far ahead that we could barely hear them. I was just walking behind Ben, watching where I put my foot and where Ben was going, when all of sudden I realized I couldn’t really hear the rest of the crew. Katie put a stop to that, calling them all back. She said that we were going to stick together, and for a while they stayed together. Then some of them started drifting ahead again. They didn’t go too far though, so Katie let them.

With only one person helping him, Ben would start lose his balance sometimes. That was when I was glad I was right behind him, because I was able to keep him from losing his balance completely. When he started leaning too far to one side, I was able to push him back up.

The fact that he was able to put some weight on his ankle was amazing. We had all thought he wasn’t even going to make a half mile, back at that first mile marker. Over a mile (and two hours) later, he was starting to put a bit of weight on his ankle and he wasn’t deathly pale anymore. He still looked exhausted though, and I didn’t know how much further he was going to go. We still had almost a mile to do, and we were almost out of water. So he was going to have to do it without water…

I gave everyone a drink, telling everyone except Ben that the water in the bottle was the last of it. Everyone just had a sip, all of us leaving it for Ben. We still didn’t tell him how far we had to go, and the fact that we were almost out of water. He was doing better, but he was still a mess. 😀

He kept thanking me, which made me feel kinda weird. I didn’t think I was doing anything, but looking back I realize I was doing more than I thought. I didn’t think that monitoring the water and walking right behind Ben and watching him was helping that much. But what didn’t seem like enough to me was helping others. I didn’t play a major part in getting Ben down the mountain, but I helped. And that’s what is important.

It was probably about 5:30 when we took our next break. I don’t remember exactly when it was, but I remember the break perfectly. We were down to a quarter of a bottle of water. Ben was starting to get pale again and was walking differently then he had been, so I wanted him to stop for a bit and drink. I called a break when we got to a good spot and handed Ben the water bottle. I was opening my mouth to warn him that he shouldn’t drink too much… when he drank the entire thing.

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.*