The day broke clear and wonderful. As the other group that stayed at the first hotel arrived at Casa de Campo, we compared notes from the few hours since we last saw each other. The night for those who stayed at the other hotel was as we thought it would be. Blaring, thumping music until 4 am in the morning, followed by a 6:30 am start. Our night was restless but peaceful as we all eagerly awaited our 7:00 am departure. The trail head was one and a half hours of bumpy and curvy driving away from us, as we started our trip. The first stop was the ranger station where we found our jungle survival-trained ranger would not be going with us. At least that trip to the station allowed us to see the only three-toed sloth of the trip thus far. Another 40 minutes and we came to a hill that was so steep and muddy that we could not make it any further. That was the end of the road, so to speak.
The plan had been to drive another hour up the road and park at the trailhead. This little change meant another two hours of walking. At this point, this mattered little, as we had convinced ourselves that what we were told would be a six and a half hour hike we could do in two to four hours. Boy, were we wrong! Two hours into the hike we stopped on hill and took a photo for the Zoo’s blog site. We are holding our Zoo banner. It was at this point we began to change the hiking style from a causal pace to something that began to resemble “worry.” We were not even at the trailhead yet, so hiking in the dark seven hours from now became a pretty big concern.
I can hardly even begin to describe the difficulty of this hike. Imagine starting out on what you think is a four hour hike and eight hours later, nearing the end. I make this journal/blog entry sitting on a big muddy hill, a five minute slosh above a camp I have yet to see.
Dr. Mark Kombert trying to navigate down muddy trail, already five hours into the hike. Bob Chastain is shooting and narrating.
Everyone is “hitting the wall” and I am here awaiting the arrival of the last two members. I have found on this trip that sometimes leading a trip means not being in the front. Leading sometimes means being where you are needed. In this case, it is in the back. Even though this is the height of the rainy season in Panama, it hasn’t rained all day. And we have been following a ridge for eight hours and there has been no water. I stopped sweating three hours ago, as I had to ration the one quart of water that I had brought thinking there would be stream crossings. We literally followed a ridge for hours and hours with not a single stream crossing. I passed water at a house in the middle of nowhere because I thought we were almost there. That was four hours ago. You can see that house in a valley on the blog site, as well. I ran out of water shortly thereafter.
I have been keeping a close eye on one of our members. He hit his wall five or six hours ago and has been cramping badly for the last two hours with every hill, and there are a lot of hills. Things began to get so desperate that I left them and told them if camp is more than twenty minutes away, I would get water and send it back. 15 minutes later, I sit here just about at camp, waiting to give them the news camp is just below us. I ran into Kevin and Jamie here at the top and Kevin went below with a radio in search of the camp. That is how we know we are almost there. I asked him first, “Is there clean water?” When he answered, “yes, there is clean water just below camp,” my heart lifted.I was to the point that I looked at every dirty mud hole and wondered if I could filter that water to a safe point.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment