Dehydration
When I was roughly 15 years old, seven other people from my boy scout troop, my brother, my dad and I began our supposedly 5 mile hike through Pinnacles national park.
However, not even halfway into the first mile of an already long and arduous trek, one of the younger kids in our group had to go back to the car with his dad because he had too much gear in his backpack.
So while the rest of our group waited about 30 minutes for the kid and his dad to come back, we ended up drinking half of the amount of water that we prepared for the hike.
What was even worse about the water situation was that as soon as we drank all of our water about halfway into the hike. We found out that the kid and his dad didn’t return with any water to share with the rest of the group, only enough for the kid and his dad.
What truly sucked about Pinnacles was that the hike didn’t have any water refill stations other than the one at the beginning of the hike, coupled with the weather being oppressively hot without the aid of any shade resulted in everyone in our group becoming dehydrated.
With my energy beginning to dwindle, I just accepted that I would not be able to leave Pinnacles and I would just be too much of a hassle for my group to allow them to continue.
However, they pushed me on and we persevered until we arrived at the water refill station at the end of the hike, which for some of us, looked nearly unreal and felt like a blessing.
After we set-up our hammocks on a few oak trees and our sleeping bags in our vehicles, we had dinner which mainly consisted of a watery, vegetable stew meal.
When I was finally able to rest after such a tiresome hike, it was one of the best sleeping experiences I have ever had.
From that moment on, I always made sure to pack more water than what may seem necessary whenever I go to a campout or to another hike out of fear of repeating the same situation that occurred at Pinnacles.
No comments:
Post a Comment