The Hike

• Andrea Ong, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2019

On the most perfect day, you and your family decide to hike to Mount Woodsnow with your friends. Your family gets prepared; they pack food and warm water for the journey ahead. You all dress up appropriately for the cold mountain trip and start to hike there, after checking your map. Your friends soon catch up with you and start to walk with you through the streets. It is early in the morning, and you are fresh and excited as you walk past the shops.
Not long after, it is time for lunch. You stop at a fish and chips store, and stuff yourselves until you are all full. After resting for a while, you start to continue your hike. Although you get extremely tired while hiking there, swatting flies and stumbling over thorny bushes, you arrive there.
Quickly, you and your friends take out your toboggans and run to the top of the biggest slope. You take a breath before sliding down the massive hill. Everyone dashes down the slope. It goes so fast, it feels as if you were flying. You are having the time of your life! You do a bunch of other snow things, like having snowball fights and building snowmen, making snow angels and feeling frozen.

Time, as usual, flies, and it is time for you to head back home to get ready for dinner. You and your friends leave Mount Woodsnow, and start leaving the area, exhausted but satisfied. You all walk casually on the same path you came from, well, at least you think it is. As the sun sets, it gets darker and darker. Eventually, it gets too dark to read your map. The happy feeling drops to worry when one of your friends shout out,
“This is the wrong way!” Everyone starts to panic, excluding you. First, you look behind you; Mount Woodsnow is nowhere to be seen. Then you look ahead of you; there is nothing but darkness ahead of you. Now you start to panic. Everyone turns on their LED camping light, but you know very well that it will eventually run out of battery. Everyone stays close to their own families and walks slowly, trying to save their energy.
Surely, it must’ve been 4 hours, but we’re getting nowhere! Everyone is hungry but the food for everyone is scarce. Exhausted, you and your friends lie down and try to get some sleep. The moment your head touches the cold, icy ground, you fall asleep.

You wake up to find someone vigorously shaking you. You slowly open your eyes and blink as you try to adjust your eyes to the sudden brightness of the sun’s rays from the darkness of the night. Weak and hungry, you struggle to get up. Squinting through the brightness, you see some friends talking to a random group of campers. You hear them say something about helping you and everyone else get back home. Thankfully, you do. You are relieved and thank them tremendously.