this is looonnnnggggg

Dear Friends,

This story is about one of the dumbest moments of my life so far, and hopefully also in my future. It is kind of long, but if you're bored or trying to avoid whatever other things you are supposed to be doing, I hope it helps you procrastinate/provides entertainment.

I spent all of last week in the states of Washington and Oregon. This story took place on Thursday, at Mount St. Helens. There's this cave in the park that was formed by some volcanic lava, and visitors can hike/climb through the cave. Keep in mind that this is not really like most national parks, in the sense that it is not as well organized. The people at the park do the minimal amount of maintenance necessary for people to be able to access it, but there aren't tons of paved trails and signs everywhere pointing out to you exactly which trail you are on and which trail you will be on should you choose to take another path.

Anyway, there are two different routes in this cave. One is labeled easy, and the other one is labeled difficult/very difficult. Here is a little detail that will be important later in the story- in the hard route you exit the cave at some point and you walk back to the starting point on a regular trail.
My dad and I plan on doing the hard trail, but before we go in my dad questions a bunch of guys that just came out of the cave and asks them how hard it really is, and if they think I can make it. They say, yeah, it's pretty challenging. You will have to do some rock climbing. There's an 8 foot wall at some point that you will have to climb. But you can do it. So, off we go.

We start walking through the cave. It basically alternates between a semi-flat surface and huge piles of rocks. At some point we reached something that I swear was an 8-foot flat wall that we had to climb, but according to my dad that was not hard, so he is convinced that we did not yet find the wall they were talking about. And this continues for a long while. And then... I see a light. The light at the end of the cave?!

Hmm. Maybe not. There is indeed a hole in the cave, but the cave continues on. I look at the hole and say, no way that this is the end. It is going to be really hard to climb out of this hole. Plus, the cave continues. My dad, however, thinks back to the hard wall we haven't found yet, assesses the situation, and says, no, it is totally possible to climb out of here. I convince him to continue on for a little bit, and we do, and we hit another one of those big piles of rocks, and my dad decides that no, we will not continue to find out that there is no other exit and then have to go all the way back. We will climb out the hole we passed. And this, my friends, is the dumbest moment of my life. The thing is, I was tired, and kind of sick of climbing over large piles of rocks already, and kind of wanted out of the cave already. But really, if I had just paused for 2 minutes to think about it rationally, there is just NO way that that was the exit. It was way too hard to climb, and, the fact that the cave continues without any sign or indication that it is the end of the trail, and the fact that it continues the exact same way it's been all along, should really have screamed at me that NO OF COURSE THIS IS NOT THE WAY OUT AND THE ONLY REASON MY DAD EVEN CONSIDERED IT IS BECAUSE OF THAT THING THOSE GUYS SAID ABOUT THERE BEING A WALL TO CLIMB!!!!!! Yet somehow, I just was not thinking. So, we start ascending up that wall.

The wall had four different levels. So basically, my dad pushed me up to the next level each time and then climbed up after me. The last level was the easiest so I just climbed out of the cave and waited outside. Oh, wait. Since this is not the end, that means that... there is no trail back. But, at that point, I am all the way out, my dad is stuck halfway out and is trying to devise a way to get himself out, and is convinced that it would be nearly impossible for us to go back down into the cave without severely injuring ourselves. As a matter of fact, at that point he is not even sure if he can get himself out of this cave at all. So he sits there for 10 minutes and looks around, until a solution comes to him and he manages to get himself out.

OK, we are out now. Now we just have to find the trail. We start walking in the general direction the cave continued. We try to find plants that were stepped on by animals or humans, assuming it would maybe lead us somewhere. I am farely confident though that humans did not walk in the area we were in. We walk for a few minutes and I start freaking out. We are lost. In the forest. We have no food or water, no way to reach anyone, no easy way for anyone to find us, and my mom was waiting for us back in the beginning/end of the trail. I don't think I've ever been so mad at my dad in my life. A few minutes later I hear this sort of growl/snort type of sound, which doesn't help the anxiety. (Later that day after questioning a ranger we would find out it was most likely a bear.) We realize we are not going to find a trail this way, so we start walking downward. There are a couple of roads relatively nearby, and if we walk in the right direction, we should be able to hit one of them at some point, and from there I guess we would just wait for a car to pass and figure out where we were and get back to where my mom was waiting. If we miss the roads, we're fucked.

We walk down for a while, and my dad stops and says, hold on, I'm going to check something out, don't lose sight of me. And then, we actually find human shoe prints. Probably not ones from the same day, but at least we know we're in an area where humans were at some point... and I start feeling a little better about the situation. We continue walking for a while, and then, like a chorus of angels descending upon us from the heavens, a trail! A real trail! Now I feel infinitely better, knowing that it's just a matter of time until we find out exactly where we are. But wait, there's more. We get to the end of the trail, and found ourselves exactly where we needed to be, back at the beginning of the cave. And it didn't even take long enough for my mom to start asking random hikers if they've seen us and if they could please get some help as soon as they get back within cell phone working range.

That is my story of being lost in the woods!

XO
Is