The Rescue & The Escape

Pictures
Scots Rescued: 2
Hours hiked: 5
Bones broken: 1
Ankles turned: 2
Banyas: 1
Word learned: storm

So today was a very eventful and exciting day. In the middle of the night I levitated off the ground because of the sound of thunder… the whole sky was lit up with lightning from a storm trapped inside the mountain range. Whoa. It was seriously intense. Rain, rain, rain. So by the time we got up in the morning, the river had seriously flooded over and there was actually water FLOWING across places where there was land the day before. It was like one river had become 3.

As crazy as this sounds, Kostya’s plan was to continue forward and cross the river and head back up into the mountains. So 4 of us were chosen to scout out how to cross the river. The bridge was still accessible after crossing two of the new rivers in knee deep water. So we made it to the other side. But there matters became more intense.

You see, there was another new river on the other side of the main river… and it wasn’t so little. In fact, we used a rope stretched across the little river (tied to two trees) to make it safely across because the current was so strong. Well, initially Kostya was the only one who crossed and it was our expedition to figure out how to get backpacks across the river.

But it became instantly apparent that the Scots thought that we were there to rescue them! Kostya tried to communicate with them, but eventually I got called in as reinforcement interpreter. So – we helped them to cross over the river. It took quite some time to convince them that they needed to leave their things behind and move quickly. (Funny that it took time to convince them to move quickly).

So we had a problem develop. All of these HUGE logs started coming down the river and barraging our bridge. A bridge further upstream had already collapsed and it’s parts were destroying our bridge back across the river. So we lit the hot seat and got out of there. Turns out that 2 hours later our bridge completely collapsed!

So we hiked out all day through mud and rain and it was very steep and very cold going. The amazing thing was that I was in great spirits for having helped the Scots. On the way down, Andrusha slipped in the mud and broke his ankle. Lyosha lost his sandles in mud and hiked all day in socks, which resulted in an injured foot/turned ankle. We were all cold and muddy and gross by the end where we had to cross another river.

That bridge was out too, but it was on the edge of a village and with some good old fashioned cash, he ferried us across the swamped over part of the bridge.

We paid for lodging in a local woman’s house and even had a Banya (it’s a Russian Sauna). It was great to be clean and hot after all the mud and cold.