To read part nine of day nine, click here.

When we started hiking again, we switched around a bit. Jordan and the other girls took the front, while the guys and I stayed in the back. I was fine with that – it was level ground, so I wasn’t having trouble hiking. And Jordan was hurt, so she needed to be the pace maker.

As we kept going, I got more and more tired. When Jordan needed to take a break, I sat down. Within ten seconds, I was asleep.

That happened all night long. Whenever we would take a break, I’d sit down and fall asleep. And most of the time they couldn’t wake me up by yelling at me either. Inevitably someone would have to shake me to get me to wakeup.

At midnight, Katie called a break.

“Now, I know that y’all don’t want to be doing this. A hike that goes until after midnight is no fun. I know. But because this is our first hike after midnight, I have a treat for you.”

She started digging around in her pack and I did my best to ignore the fact that she had said it was our first. The way she said it implied that we were going to have more after midnight hikes. And I did NOT want to have more.

“Ha, I found them.”

Katie stood up, a bunch of straws in her hand. She was giving us a straw? What were we supposed to do with those?

Then I saw the light, literally. She broke the straw and it started glowing.

“Oh, those are glow sticks? I thought they were just sticks.”

I was glad to hear that I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t realized what they were. Everyone took a glow stick from Katie and we helped each other fasten it around our wrists. Eventually I took mine off my wrist and attached it to my whistle and compass, so it wasn’t annoying me.

We were all tired, but I was the worst. Unfortunately, we still had over a mile left.

Click here to read the next part of Day Nine.

*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.*