Senior team captain Bridget Harding retells the team's two-day Hilltribe Mountain Trek.
Let me preface this by saying that the passage that follows describes an experience unlike any other. One that led each and every one of us to walk out grateful for opportunity to have had it, but hopeful that we would never have to endure such an experience ever again.
We were woken up around 8 o'clock yesterday morning by the smell of scrambled eggs, bacon, and banana pancakes being prepared by our gracious hosts, Cinda and Alan. We all sat and enjoyed a large breakfast, knowing full well that it may be our last meal for a while. Why, you ask? Because it was the day of Hilltribe Mountain Trek. We were about to embark on a mountainous hike to a hilltop village where we would be spending the night sleeping under the stars.
We were picked up at 9:30am sharp by our mountain guides, and immediately set off on a two-hour car ride to the base of the mountain trail. However, the thought of going more than an hour without food was too much for us Eagles to bear, so we had our guides stop at a market on our way there. Little did we know, this would be a LOCAL market, offering mainly fried fish heads and assorted bags of hot chilies. As we looked to each other in panic, Dolo took charge and loudly said "SEVEN ELEVEN?" to our guide. Luckily, he pointed to a dark alley that led us right to the door of a glorious, snack filled 7-11 where we were each able to stack up on enough food to feed a family of four. We figured it would get us through until lunch.
As we continued our drive up the mountain, we stopped at a small hillside cafe where we were served our 100th plate of Pad Thai, and we happily fueled up, expecting a long leisurely walk up the mountain. But man, were we wrong.
We drove a little bit further up the mountain and got out with our guide. Within the first few steps, we were climbing up a steep incline, backpacks on our backs and sweat running down our faces, with absolutely no end in sight. After 2 and a half hours of walking steeply up a mountain "trail", scaling cliffs and fighting branches, we made it to the hill tribe village. We were covered in a thick layer of fog, which we quickly realized was actually a cloud. Yes, that's right. We hiked so long and so high that we were literally in the clouds.
Our guide pointed to a bamboo hut, signaling that it would be our lodging for the night. We all peeked in and saw that it was about to be the sleepover of a lifetime, with 13 mats lined side by side across the floor. It was 2:45pm, we were surrounded by nothing but trees and fog, and were quickly beginning to realize that we had a lot of time to kill. Naturally, we spent the first 30 minutes burning through all of the snacks we bought, as a storm of Oreos, chips, and strange Nutella squeeze packs (Sasha) came and went in the blink of an eye. We then played cards, which lasted about 15 minutes until it was interrupted by our tour guide asking if people would like to get one hour massages for 150 baht ($5 US dollars). Nine hands shot up in the air, happy to accept a relaxing way to kill an hour. Little did they know, this massage would be nothing like the ones that had gotten so accustomed to getting. A swarm of Hilltribe women soon came out of the woodwork, hustling the nine players into our sleeping hut to begin their massages. I was not one of these nine, so I went over with a few other players to sit by the fire we saw our tour guide beginning to build, as the temperature had been continuously dropping since we arrived in the village.
As I was scaling the mountain, searching for any kindling that was dry enough to use as fire wood, I heard laughter erupting from inside the walls of the hut. Eager to see what my teammates and coaches were so enthused about, I poked my head in. There they were, lined side by side being massaged by an army of Thai women. However, at the end of the line, I saw Dolo's masseuse using a particularly interesting technique. One hand was being used to gently massage Dolo's muscles, while the other was being used to feed a bottle to the small infant swaddled against her hip. The tears of laughter I was seeing running down everyone's faces suddenly made perfect sense.
30 minutes later, the Thai women told the team that their hour was up, took their 150 baht and went on their way. That left us with two hours down, and many to go before it was time for us to go to sleep. We spent hours sitting around the fire I worked tirelessly to build, laughing and telling stories, wondering exactly what it was we had gotten ourselves into. We were fed large plates of rice and watered down curry cooked in one of the local huts, and returned to the fire to soak up the heat as long as we could. As the sun went down, we were joined by a few lone travelers spending the night in separate huts, and quickly swapped travel stories while being (poorly) serenaded by another tour guide. I joined the band as the drummer, using a small hand drum to keep the party alive and thriving, until 7:00pm hit and we all decided four hours of staring at each other was enough and we would try to fall asleep and hopefully wake up on the other side.
Well, sadly enough our adventure was just beginning. The temperature continued to drop as we all changed into the warmest clothes we had (sweatpants and a sweatshirt), grabbed the two blankets we were allotted, and created Thailand's largest spoon across the 13 sleeping mats. Huddled together for warmth, Anna nicely reminded us that typically the temperature continued to drop until 3:00am, so we were nowhere near the low point that we were doomed to experience. We all nervously laughed, huddled closer together, and closed our eyes hoping to sleep through the cold that was quickly approaching. We tossed, turned, and silently suffered, imagining warm fires and our beds at home while we fought for blankets and checked our watches with each passing hour.
I heard the first rooster at 4:00am, hoping it meant the sun was coming but managed to get myself to stay asleep until the sun really did start shining through around 6:45. We all woke up, immediately started laughing and swapping stories about the individual hell we each endured during that 12 hour attempt to slumber. We slowly started to exit the hut wrapped in blankets, only to see the mountain had been completely engulfed by a luminous fog. Every now and then, the clouds would shift and we could see the mountain peaks, which was truly an incredible sight.
Still frozen from our night in the hut, and with our tour guide nowhere in sight, we desperately searched for a way to heat ourselves up. Amy noticed that the fire from last night still had one hot ember remaining, so I quickly jumped to her assistance, put my inner pyromaniac to good use and strategically used our last roll of toilet paper as kindling to get the fire started again.
We huddled there for about an hour, still dumbfounded at the situation we had found ourselves in, until our tour guide appeared with hot water and powdered coffee. Soon after, he emerged with Thai bananas, hard boiled eggs, and enough white bread to kill a small horse, so we fueled up and began to prepare for our trek down the mountain.
As we started to walk, our guide warned that it had rained all night and the terrain was going to be steep, rocky, and slippery. And unfortunately, he was exactly right. We scaled our way down the mountain, grabbing branches and rocks and anything we could find to keep our feet on the ground. A few of us took some hard falls, but for the most part, our athleticism shined through and we made it to the bottom in just under three hours.
Cold, dirty, and exhausted, we were served a heaping plate of fried rice and suddenly found a new surge of life as we realized it was time for us to bathe and feed elephants! We were led to an elephant sanctuary where we fed them bananas and sugar cane, and then followed them into a nearby river where we gave them a nice, cold bath. Now tired, cold, AND wet, our energy and morale were beginning to fade quickly. However, we knew we had one more activity left to go- whitewater and bamboo rafting.
The thought of getting into freezing cold water was a bit much for all of us, but we all decided to suit up and do it, as we now believed that since we survived the previous night, we could survive anything. We got into our boats and splashed our way down the mountain, laughing hysterically as our boats filled with water and our clothes were soaked to the bone. Full on delusion set in, and Emma Perelman, through hysterical laughter and nervous tears, uttered the words "This is it. They have broken me."
We looked up and saw that our boat was floating over to what looked like giant branches of bamboo tied together on the edge of the shore. We each silently hoped that these weren't the "bamboo rafts" we had been promised, but of course, that is exactly what they were. We were told to quickly hop out and stand on these giant branches, and all 12 of us (Amy conveniently sat this activity out) spread across two giant rafts that were tied together. Clearly, we had been eating too much Pad Thai because our rafts IMMEDIATELY sank and our guide chose Emma to be the one to get off and lighten the load. So there was Emma, standing on the shore as our rafts quickly began to float away. We soon realized that our guide had no plan for getting her back on the raft, as he continued on in our old inflatable boat and left us all behind. We quickly yelled to Emma to run and get on the raft, so she sprinted down the shore, stepped in a pile of animal poop on her way, and made it to the raft at the last second. As we balanced on this sinking raft for the last five minutes of this adventure, we could barely breathe through all of the laughter. We made it to shore, jumped out barefoot and happy to be free of our sinking raft, and hiked our way up a hill and back to the truck that was waiting to take us home.
On our two hour drive home, we spoke in disbelief about the last 36 hours of our lives. The highs, the lows, and all of the times in between. We came out appreciating the lives we are so privileged to live, and the memories that we were able to make up on that mountain with 12 of our best friends. While many of us vowed to never do it again, we wouldn't trade the experience for the world, and are definitely walking away stronger people and stronger teammates because of it.
Be sure to continue following the team's trip on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as well as with daily journal entries on emoryathletics.com.