It was a cold winter day and you could smell the crisp air as it hit your cold skin, sending chills through your body. Nothing like a cold winter day, a day you should be spending inside sipping hot chocolate in warm cozy clothes. Instead my friend Tyler and I had planned on going up to Sumas Mountain. A day we thought would be perfect ended up being completely different than we had expected. On this day I had learned that it’s important to be calm in situations that may end up being nerve racking or scary.
This day started out terrifically, we sat in the truck driving up to the mountain with warm air blowing in our faces from the heater. The drive up the mountain seemed like it went on and on, finally we had found a spot that we wanted to checkout after we had been driving around for a while.
We stopped the truck and got out, so we could get a better view from the spot that we were at. Once we got out, rain started pouring down. So we got back in the truck and ate some lunch that we had packed with us. After we got out for the second time, Tyler wanted to shoot for a while. The wind was blowing like crazy and the cold air was bitter on our skin. So we climb up some rocks so we could take some pictures really quick. Soon we decided that it was much too cold to be outside, so we decided keep driving around just looking at the view from different places, after driving around, we started to head back down the mountain.
Once we got to the bottom of the mountain, we started driving up another trail that would take us up the other side of the mountain, we wanted to go up to see if we could find any snow. We continued to drive until we got to a rock pit. While we were at the rock pit Tyler got out and was shooting some pumpkins that were just laying on the ground. After walking around the rock pit for a while, we had noticed that it was starting to get a little dark out. We thought it'd be best if we started heading back home before it got too dark out.
We started driving away from the rock pit and back down the mountain, until we got to a road that split to ways. “Do you know what trail we came up from?” Tyler had asked. After thinking for a few seconds, I had said I actually didn’t remember at all. So Tyler took a trail that he had thought we had come up from. We proceeded to drive down the trail, after going down the trail for what seemed like a long while; I had realized that we had already driven about four miles. At this point I knew this was not the way back down the mountain, considering that when came up the mountain we only drove about two miles to the rock pit. “I don’t think this is the right trail.” I had told Tyler. So we turned around and started driving back to where we came from.
On our way back we again came to a point where there were multiple trails leading in different directions. A little worried now we kept driving down many different trails hoping that we would at least end up back at the rock pit. We had been driving around for a long time now, and I started to kind of feel as if we were lost, nothing was looking familiar at all. I looked at Tyler and had told him that we were lost. He told me that we’d be okay, that we would find our way back down.
We kept driving down a path, at this point the sky was black, and the only thing we could see was trees in front of us from the light of our headlights. We continued down this trail until I we finally found cell phone service on our phones. Tyler had stopped the truck, and called his dad, and told him that we were lost. His dad told Tyler that we needed to call 911. So Tyler then hung up the phone with his dad and started dialing 911. At this point I was really scared and upset. Knowing that we were lost in the mountains without an adult really had scared me especially since it was dark out and we had no idea where we were.
After Tyler got off the phone with the police, he told me that the cops had tracked our cell phones and they knew exactly where we were at. He said that the cops would be here in no time. So we both just sat in the truck waiting for someone to find us. We sat in the truck waiting and waiting. Hours had passed already and we were started to get a little worried. So we called 911 back and had asked them if they knew what was going on, and they had told us that they would have the officer who was finding us call us back. After waiting for about another hour we got no phone call. I didn’t know what to do so I called my mom, and she had said that the police that was looking for us wasn’t able to find us. This made my even more upset than I already was.
After sitting in the same spot for long hours, we called 911 once again. They had told us to start driving down the mountain because they couldn’t locate the trail we were on. After hanging up the phone, we started driving down a trail. We started to see lights so we were hoping that we had found our way to the bottom of the mountain that was until we reached a dead end. We had to turn around on narrow road, which wasn’t the easiest to do in the dark.
Not knowing what to do we turned around and started our way up a trail, we had no idea what to do. We just once again drove until we got service on our phones again. Once we got service we stopped, and just waited. So many things were running through my mind, like what if we were so lost that we weren’t able to be found that night, what my mom was going to say when I got home, or how long until we would actually be found. I was really scared; luckily I had Tyler there to comfort me. He assured me that everything would be okay, and that I didn’t need to worry, he was doing everything he could to make sure I was feeling comfortable.
Feeling a little better, we continued to wait. Suddenly I saw break lights on the other side of the mountain, and I told Tyler. He got out and started shining flashlights and honking the horn hoping that they would notice us, but it was hopeless. The headlights started to vanish into the dark. There was nothing else we could possibly do, but continue to wait around.
I called my mom again knowing that she would be comforting, I stayed on the phone talking to her for a while just because she was making me feel better. My mom had asked if I wanted her to come up and try to find me, but I knew that it wouldn’t be a good idea because she would just get lost trying to find us. I told my mom I would call her back in a while. As I hung up the phone I looked out the window hoping to see anything that we hadn’t seen before, and that’s when I had noticed lights on the top of a tree.
“Look, there are lights at the top of that tree.” I said in excitement. Tyler glanced out the window and saw them as well, so he started to honk the horn knowing that they must be close. The lights were getting closer and closer, and finally we had saw a truck pull up, it was the officer that had been looking for us. He pulled up next to us and told us to turn around and follow him.
So we simply did what he told us to do. We continued following him all the way down the mountain. The paths were narrow and really curvy, and we drove on and on. We drove many miles down the mountain; we started finally noticing things that looked familiar. We got to the bridge at the end of the path and knew that we were at the bottom of the mountain. I finally wasn’t worrying any more.
We got to the stop sign before the road, and we came to a stop behind the search and rescue officer. He got out of his truck and came to our window. He had told us that we were pretty lost up in the mountain, and he had called in for backup to come help him find us right before he got to us. We both thanked him for coming and finding us, and he told us it was no problem that it wasn’t the first time he has had to come find someone. He took down some of our information and sent us on our way home. Tyler and I were so thankful to finally be found!
Getting lost in the mountains definitely taught us many things. The main lesson we learned from getting lost was that it’s important to stay calm in situations that may be stressful or scary. We learned that it’s also important to be prepared for all situations.