To read part ten of day twelve, click here.

Half an hour after we left our eating place, we hit the trail we were supposed to be taking. By then the rain had slowed to a drizzle, and a bunch of us took off the ducky suit pants as soon as we got off the road.

We kept hiking, and for a while it wasn’t too bad. It was pretty level, and there was a decent trail. But then it started to go uphill, and I was starting to need breaks again.

Lets just say I was a mess. But there was nothing I could do about any of it, except take breaks when I needed to. Which was pretty often. Thankfully it wasn’t as steep as the beginning of the day, when I was having to take breaks (literally) every five minutes. But it was almost that bad.

It was probably about an hour after we had hit the hill, and it was finally starting to level out. Twenty minutes later, we could see a small clearing with several trails.

With a sigh of relief we stumbled into the clearing, dropped our packs and sat down.

“I can’t believe how tough this is. This is definitely the toughest day we’ve had yet.”

“Oh yeah, totally. This is the kind of stuff I had nightmares about while I was prepping for the trip.”

“Yeah, same here. I never imagined that they would actually make us do this though. Like, seriously? They should let us take an easier trail or bring a van.”

“Um, I don’t think there are any easier trails. We’re going straight up a mountain.”

“There might be another trail that’s not so steep though. Maybe on the other side? It could have a lot of switchbacks. That would make it not as steep.”

Jen called me from where she was sitting 50 feet away from the group.

“Brett? Can you and Luke come over here? We’d like to talk to you.”

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.*