A Death Defying Hike: The Full Account

On a cold but sunny afternoon this week, Mary and I took a hike up the side of the mountain behind her house.  We started up a trail at first, but she had warned me that we would be spending a lot of time off the path.  We climbed up and up until we were just outside what we thought was Vicky's house on the bluff.  From there we went south a ways and came to the place we had been looking for... a stream coming down off the slope.  Mary wanted us to follow the creek all the way back down the mountain.

We could see the creek, but we were above high above it and the slope going down to the creek was too steep to attempt to go down.  We followed along this ridge for a while until we came to a place where we thought we could climb down.  The slope looked like it had a sort of flat path across the middle of it, and so after some discussion we decided to give it a try.

I lost my footing on my first move and started to slide down the slope, but I easily put my foot on a small tree.  Now I was several feet below Mary, and I wasn't sure I could get back up.  Mary came down beside me and started to cut across the slope.  The ledge we thought we might be able to put our feet on ended up just being leaves piled up, so there was really nothing to put our feet on.  We had to sit  down and dig footholds in with our heels.  Fortunately, we had brought some walking poles and I had to use mine to dig in and have something to put my feet against.

I was saying, "O, Lord... O, Lord,"  praying that I was going to make it through this.  Most of the time I was just looking at my feet or the pole in the ground.  Once I looked beyond to how far down I could fall, and I quickly knew I couldn't do that again.  More than once I said to Mary, "I don't think I can do this."  But there was nothing else to do but keep going.

Both of us felt our legs and feet get really fatigued.  Mary made it across first.  I would not have made it if she had not been there to help me get to the end.  She was able to pull herself up to a safer spot, but she had to get hold of my arm and pull me out of this terrible situation.

We were both really shaken when we got to a more level place.  Mary said, "If we had slid down the hill, I don't think we would have died." I had to agree, but we would have been beaten up pretty badly.

It was an adventure, but not one either of us want to repeat it.  And I can't think of anyone I'd rather have with me for such an adventure than Mary Reid.