Levi, Fonzy, and I all decided to spend an entire weekend hiking and camping in the Three Ridges Wilderness. It took us 2 days of hiking 26.3 miles, with over 7,000 feet of elevation gain to realize we bit off more than we could chew. The final miles of the trek was quite possibly the hardest my body has ever worked. We left Friday evening and hiked for 3 hours, to reach the summit of Three Ridges where we set up camp under the stars, no tent, just us and the sky. Keep in mind it was in the 20s that night. I can still see Fonzy making his bed in the center of a pile of leaves…Levi made a campfire and we ended up eating two packages worth of brats, all the calories we’d need for the next day. We awoke the next morning to glorious sunrise, ate breakfast, and proceeded to break camp to get an early start. Saturday was mostly comprised of hiking, where we ran into a maximum of 7 people on the trail. By the time we got to the shelter on the Priest we were exhausted, dehydrated, and hungry. We thought we were dead when we realized the spring we were counting on our water supply, was dried up almost completely. After praying that God would have mercy on us and grant us water, Levi stumbled across another spring (not on the map) that was 200 south of our campsite. Praise God for keeping us alive! We ate a hasty meal then crawled into our sleeping bags for an 11 hour slumber. Awaking the next morning, we made the long grueling trek back to where we had started, half the time in the rain, but nonetheless perfect crisp, cool weather for the fall. We all agreed on the way back in the car that, our next outing would be a 2 mile hike, camping, then hiking back, not to exceed 4 miles!
