To read part thirteen of day four, click here.

I should’ve known. This was the guy who drank a full liter of water in twelve seconds flat. I should’ve warned him before handing him the water.

But I realized there was nothing I could do about it, so I didn’t say anything. I told a couple of my crewmates that we were out of water, and they told the others. Now we were just trying to get down the mountain as fast as we could, without hurting Ben. We needed to get to water as fast as we could.

After another half an hour of hiking, it was 6:00 and we were at the last mile marker. It said we were a half mile from the trail head, so we had about an hour left. Nobody was complaining about being thirsty yet, but I knew that people were thirsty. I couldn’t do anything about it, but it made me worried.

I knew that a bunch of us could get dehydrated, and Jen and Katie had told us that getting dehydrated in the wilderness was not fun. I was mostly worried about myself, Jordan and Bruce. I had made sure Ben was drinking, and I made sure Luke and Bobby got a bunch of the water since they were helping him. But I had only had four sips of water, and I don’t think Jordan and Bruce had drank much more than I had.

I was so thirsty. We started crossing all of these little streams that ran across the trail, and it was taking all of my self control to not start scooping water from them and drink it. The only reason I didn’t was because Jen and Katie had said that the bacteria in the water would make you feel worse than the dehydration would. We only had one hour left, and Jen had said she was coming back with water… I just hoped she would get there before my thirst got the better of me.

We stopped to take a picture of everyone about fifteen minutes after we passed the mile marker.

So close!

Right after we started walking again, we heard whistling. It was Jen! And she had water! And we were all so excited! 😀

She was carrying a baby seal and four or five water bottles. Most of the crew got ahead of Ben, but I stayed behind him. I liked being behind Ben – it meant I could keep an eye on him. I like mothering people, and as the smallest of my crew I didn’t get many chances to mother people. So I took my chance when people got injured. 🙂

When we had reached Jen, I took the last bottle she had. I didn’t care that it was someone else’s – I had already shared germs with half the crew and even if I didn’t like that idea, I was too thirsty to care.

I made sure Ben had a bottle and was drinking it before I opened my bottle, careful not to spill any. I didn’t want to spill any of the precious water!

I drank almost the entire liter. 😀 There wasn’t even an inch of water left, and I finished that by the time we got to the trailhead. I remember feeling so thankful for Jen, and so thankful for water. I had never been that thirsty before, and it was a little bit scary.

When I was done chugging all that water, I looked around. Our entire group was standing around with looks of satisfaction on their faces, which made me laugh. Jordan asked me what I was laughing at and started cracking up when I told her. The guys all looked at us like we had two heads, which just made us laugh even more….

Jen was saying that she couldn’t believe how far we had gotten! And she couldn’t believe that Ben was putting weight on his ankle – when she had left us he was still needing two people to help him.

There were about five minutes of laughing and talking before it was time to move down the trail. We had a half a mile left, and by golly, we were going to make it before dark!! (I don’t know why it looks like it was dark in the last two pictures – we could still see easily…)

We were going faster, everyone feeling better after having all the water they wanted. It’s amazing what water will do for you! We had to slow down after a while though – it looked like Ben was hurting more, so I told them all to slow down.

As we were walking Tullia kept saying “It’s not much further! I remember when we passed through here! C’mon guys, let’s pick up the pace! We’re almost there!”

It didn’t work – we kept hiking at our steady pace. It had gotten faster than when we started, but it was still pretty slow. Even though Ben could put some weight on his ankle, he was still in a lot of pain.

I was getting really tired – apparently the adrenaline from getting water had worn off. It had been 20 minutes since the water, and there was still no sign of the end of the trail. Despite Tullia saying it was right there. 🙂 We all just wanted to get off our feet and off that trail.

Finally, twenty five minutes later, we saw the light at the end of the tunnel. Well, ok, it wasn’t a tunnel. We saw the light at the edge of the forest. 😀

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.*