We kept the fire going during the night and got up and left early on the 24th. Again it was a cloudy day. It drizzled off and on. But we trudged on.

We hiked up Nesuntabunt Mountain late in the day. Again, there was supposed to be a good view from the summit, which we didn’t get to see. We got an amazing view of milky water particles though.

As we started heading down the mountain the trail got very steep. Then it turned into a boulder staircase. Everything was wet. Even worse the rock on the mountain had a layer of slime on it. I did not like it at all. A fall from that place would mean serous injury or death.

As I placed my left foot on one boulder, at a particularly scary spot, I felt my foot slip forward toward the edge. In that split second my mind went into fast-forward mode. My life didn’t flash before my eyes, my kids future lives did. I had a vision of them having to live on after watching their Dad fall to his death before their eyes.

Thank God for His Wisdom! The thought hit me that if I just let my legs go loose my pack weight would pull me down into a sitting position. And that is exactly what I did. But it didn’t work out the way I had envisioned it. My left foot was still sliding. Letting my legs go loose reversed the direction of its slide. Instead of sliding out over the cliff, it slid backward under my butt when all my weight and the pack weight hit the rock. My left leg was folded at the knee under me.

Again, Thank God for His Wisdom! It was my bad knee. Because of the injury and surgery I had had on that knee in the past, it was folded in the exact way it was already injured…. I’m not saying it didn’t hurt! I was crippled with pain and couldn’t get up. But, I was alive, and only reversed  the doctor’s work from a ten year old surgery…

Gig and Off were by my side as usual. Lifting up from another fall. I stood there shaking and tested my knee. I could still walk. And I had been through this pain before. All I wanted was to get down that mountain and take a break.

Every step was painful, but I could finally see the bottom. “Break time,” I said. But when we got there I didn’t feel right. There was something wrong there. Something we needed to get away from. Then I got a nose full of something very big and very dead… “Wait,” I said, “put your stuff back on we ain’t stopping here!” Everyone just looked at me puzzled. “Smell that?” I asked. “Anyone want something thinking we are taking its food?”

With that everyone speedily got their stuff on and we high-tailed it out of there. We had to wait another half hour before we came to a place we could stop. But, we avoided what could have been a very bad situation!

We had to night hike for awhile and finally got to the Wadleigh Stream Lean-to well after dark. As I laid there that night and felt the swelling in my knee, I could not help thinking that I had suffered a trail ending injury. I would know for sure in the morning. It was a crappy and painful 8.1 mile day.