A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go on a camp out and a hike with a bunch of people from my neighborhood. It was pretty funny how it worked out because I didnt know about it until a day before everyone was going to leave. My buddy Zach called me up and told me about it and I gave it some thought and said WHY NOT!? The next day I realized that I had 2 hours until I had to go and I didnt have ONE thing packed. I called up Zach Jaden and Dylan and luckily they pretty much had everything for me. We finally got everything together and headed out while it was pouring rain and really windy so we were kind of skeptical about the situation. It was a long 5 hour drive to our destination. While driving there we had a blast quoting from funny movies and also getting on each others nerves! After 4 hours had passed, we all wanted to kill each other. We arrived at East Canyon at 930 pm. We got our packs out of the trailer and took a 20 min hike to our camp spot. I though we were going to by hiking to a REAL camping area but little did I know, we were just looking for a flat piece of ground. As we started to lay down our tarps and sleeping backs we came across scorpions! Kind of Scary!! We all slept right under the stars and let me tell you, I have never seen starts so bright. It gave me a lot of time to just think about what will be happening here in the next month and a half and what the future has in store for me. We woke up around 7, packed up, ate breakfast and started hiking at 930.
As we entered into the Slots, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. I dont do to well with heights and we were repelling down some steep cliffs and we had to shimmy our way down some steep slots. Most of the slots were barely wide enough to fit your shoulders through. We had 25 people with us so it took a long time to get through some of the tough situations. We came to a point where we had to make our own zip line over these two ice cold pools. It was a really neat idea. After that there was an area where you had to hold your pack above your head while you pretty much swam through this ice cold muddy water. At the end of this pool was a steep rock that you had to have help in order to climb up it. Lucky me, I was that person to help 23 people. Some of those bigger guys almost pulled me in. My left arm was DEAD when I got everyone through.
There was a situation where one of our hikers slid down this rock and got his foot stuck in a tight crack and he injured his tendon. It must of hurt really bad because it was a long fall. We all took time to have a moment of silence as we gave his a priesthood blessing. Even though I was shivering cold, I felt this warming spirit come over me and at that point I knew that things were going to be okay and that he would make it out of there. Surprisingly he made it out of that canyon.
The whole reason why we did this hike was to go to the spot where Aron Ralston had gone. Here is a video that tells his story. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h91Iptsl5CM&feature=fvw
As we started to end our hike, we noticed that we were kind of ... lost. At this point we had hiked a total of 13 1/2 miles in 12 hours so we were all dead tired. I dont know if anyone else did it but as we were hiking I had said a little prayer in my heart asking that we would get out of there and not have to camp. About 30 minutes later we saw flashing head lights off in the distance. We all started screaming and flashing our head lamps. Sure enough it was Bishop Findlay. I was so thankful for that moment!
I love the power of my faith and for the power of the priesthood. I know for a fact that if it wasnt for that blessing, our hiker would of had a really hard time making it out of that canyon.
