To read part two of day twelve, click here.

I gulped as I remembered the numbers on our navigation plan. We were going to go up almost five thousand feet that day, and all in a relatively short distance.

“So, are you ready?”

Luke grinned at me and started hiking. I got into the middle of the pack, knowing that I would be put up in the front soon but not wanting to start out there.

Within minutes we were on one of the steepest slopes we had seen on the whole trip. It couldn’t have been more than five minutes before my legs needed to take a break, and I needed to get my breath back.

“Red light!”

I sat down on the side of the trail, breathing hard and rubbing my calves. I felt miserable. Not only was I unable to breathe and my calves were hurting, but I was delaying the crew. I was making it harder on everyone. And it was going to be like this for most of the day.

I could hear whispering from behind me and from the sound of it, it wasn’t going to be a good day. We had barely started and things were already tough. And once I started thinking about it, this wasn’t even the hardest part. There were several other parts of the navigation plan that had looked harder than this.

There was no way I was going to be able to do this. Some of the crew was already talking about me, and we hadn’t even been hiking for five minutes. Literally.

“She’s already having to take a break? We barely started!”

“Give her a break, she’s the smallest. We can’t expect her to do everything we do.”

“But we just started! What if she’s doing this all day?!?”

Click here to read the next part of Day Twelve.

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