To read part eighteen of day twelve, click here.

A couple of minutes after we started hiking, I was glad I’d put on my windbreaker. It started raining, and we couldn’t see five minutes after that. We took a quick break so everyone could grab their headlamps and then we kept going.

It was probably the fastest hiking we had done the entire trip, and it was going down these “steps” made of huge rocks. Not only was I getting worn out, I was freaking out the entire time, sure I was going to slip or twist my ankle again.

…God, please don’t let me hurt myself, please don’t let me hurt myself. Please God?…

I guess God heard my prayers, because I didn’t get hurt the rest of the night!

A half an hour I asked Katie how much longer we had until we hit camp.

“Oh, maybe a quarter mile?”

Ten minutes after that, I asked again.

“Um… quarter mile?”

I groaned and kept hiking.

Twenty minutes after that, we started walking through clearings. There was one that looked like a fire pit area, and several that looked like good campsites. Unfortunately, none of them were our campsites.

As we were hiking Jen explained what was going to happen.

“Okay everyone, listen. We’re going to come to our bear box in a minute. Everything that has anything to do with food must go into the bin, as well as things like toothbrushes and toothpaste. If you had hot chocolate, the mug that had hot chocolate in it needs to be put in there too.”

I started a mental list of all the things I needed to get in there. My toiletries, my food sack, my bowl and spoon. I couldn’t think of anything else that was in my pack.

Ahead of us were a couple of rectangular shapes that I could barely make out.

“Katie? Are those the bear boxes? Does that mean we’re close to camp?” I was so tired I was going to fall asleep on my feet if we didn’t get to camp quickly.

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.*