To read part nine of day four, click here.

I thought for a minute, realized that I was probably not the only one who was running out of water, and pulled Ben’s bottle out of my pack. He had a half a bottle left. That was NOT going to be enough. He was using a lot of energy, and he was drinking a lot.

I sped up so I could walk next to Jordan. In a low voice, I asked her how much water she had. She did not like water, so she did not drink a lot of it. Most of the time, that was a bad thing, but it would have been a good thing here. She pulled out her bottle – she had a 3/4 of a bottle left.

Ok, we had one and three quarters of a bottle, with Bruce, Luke and Bobby’s water bottles left to inventory. I walked a bit faster to walk next to Bruce, and asked him how much water he had.

He pulled his bottles out. He had a total of 3/4 of a bottle.

I went to ask Luke… and realized that his water bottles were probably at least a  half mile down the trail at that point, along with Bobby’s.

Two and a half bottles of water.

That was it. For eight people, with a lot of distance left. We did not know how far it was, but we knew we still had quite a bit to go. When we could see into the valley below, the bottom was really far away….

We kept walking – there was nothing else we could do. At first, they were taking breaks every once in a while. They would switch around when they got tired – first Luke was helping Ben, then Bruce took over for him. The Jordan took over for Bruce. Then Jen took over for Bobby, and it just kept going.

After probably a half an hour of walking, we took a longer break. I pulled out Ben’s water bottle and handed it to him – he drank a lot of it and handed it back. I looked at the water level – down to a third. I must have looked worried, because Luke asked me what was wrong.

I pulled him away from Ben and told him that we only had two and a half bottles of water left. He told me that Jen and Josh had their own water, so we only had six people who needed the water. So we each got less then a half a bottle…. But that was more than I thought we would get!

Josh said it was time to get going again. He gave Ben a couple of tips on how to make it easier for his helpers, and we were off.

We took a couple more small breaks, and a half an hour later we took another long break. Ben drank more of his water, so he was down to a quarter of a bottle. I took one sip of my water – I needed a sip just to wet my mouth. I didn’t want to drink too much, when everyone else needed the water more then I did. They were all carrying more weight than I was, and helping Ben was a hard job.

As we set off again, it was Bruce and Jen helping Ben. Luke and Bobby had taken their packs and were walking by me. About two minutes after we started walking, we passed a mile marker. It said two miles.

Two miles. It was two miles to the bottom. The three of us looked at each other, grim looks on our faces – there was no way Ben was going to make it that far.

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.*