The next part of my story concerns our guide Tim. I didn’t really take the time to introduce him thoroughly before so I guess that I’ll do that now. Tim is a young man in this early 20’s and he is deaf. Well not completely deaf, he had hearing aids and with his lip reading skills he managed to operate quit efficiently. He could hear most everything we said except when we didn’t let him see our lips or if we talked too softly.

At Philmount each group is required to be accompanied by a guide for the first two days of their trek. Tim’s short time with us was pretty interesting because his relationship with our group went from not liking each other to being friendly in rapid progression. At first he did not appreciate our goofiness and rebellious attitudes.

One part of our rebelliousness was our desire to take short-cuts that were not approved of by our guide. Tim kept us on the right paths though and we didn’t get lost for the first two days.

So this is where the story of day three begins. Tim leaves early from Devil’s Basin and we are able to guide ourselves using a map to get to our next campsite. Unfortunately my older brother Rex was in charge of the map and he convinced us to follow a fake short-cut trail into the forest least than a mile after we left camp.

To make along story short we ended up lost for a good three hours. We had to sit around while a couple of the others hiked around to get our bearings figured out.

 This just goes to say that it ‘s not always good to take short-cuts. Remember that in life.