Hiking Horror Stories | They Were Miles From Help When It Started

There's a particular kind of quiet you only get miles from the nearest road. No traffic, no phones, just wind in the trees in your own footsteps. Most of the time, that quiet is exactly why people go out there. And every so often, someone else is out there too, and they're not there for the view. These are terrifying hiking horror stories. Subscribe for new scary stories every week, and if you like listening on the go or for sleep, check out just creepy on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's settle in, turn the lights down, and let's begin. This happened in the fall of 2019, when my husband Ben and I were both in our mid-30s. We lived outside Knoxville at the time, close enough to the great Smoky Mountains that we could make a day trip whenever we wanted, but far enough away that we still had to plan for it. We had been married for almost 7 years, and hiking was one of the few hobbies we had managed to keep through job changes, moving twice, and all the ordinary things that begin filling up your weekends once you're no longer in your 20s. We weren't experts, I want to make that clear. We owned decent gear, knew how to read a paper map, and had enough experience to understand that 5 miles in the mountains could be harder than 10 miles somewhere flat. We also knew not to depend on our phones. Ben's inside the park was unreliable, especially away from the main roads. Before any overnight trip, I gave my sister our route, the number of our backcountry permit, where we had parked, and the times she should expect to hear from us. Ben sometimes teased me for writing down more information than he thought anyone needed. He stopped teasing me after this. Our plan that weekend was simple. We were going to start near the Cosby campground on the Tennessee side of the park, follow the Gabe's mountain trail past Henwolo Falls, and spend Saturday night at the Sugarcove Backcountry site farther in. We had hiked the first part of the trail before, but neither of us had continued all the way to the campsite. It was a little under 5 miles each way. We expected to reach camp in the early afternoon, have a quiet evening near the creek, and walk out Sunday morning. It was the middle of October, which can be busy in the smokies because of the fall color. Cosby is quieter than the areas closer to Gatlinburg though, and that was why we chose it. We arrived shortly after 8 on Saturday morning. There were several vehicles in the hiker parking area, but it wasn't packed. A family was getting ready for a short walk, and two older men were unloading fishing gear from a truck. Getting about the place suggested an emergency was underway. The weather was cool and dry. Rain was supposed to move in late that afternoon, but the forecast called for less than half an inch, and we had jackets, pack covers, and a good tent. The area had already received rain earlier that week, so the creeks were running a little higher than normal. We checked our permit, tightened our straps, and started up the trail. The first couple of miles were exactly what we had wanted. The trail climbed at a steady grade through hardwood forest, and the leaves were beginning to turn. Ben carried the tent and most of our food. I carried the stove, first aid kit, water filter, and our sleeping pads. We stopped at hen wallow falls for about 20 minutes, and ate an early lunch. There were six or seven other people there, including a young couple with a baby strapped to the father's chest. After we returned to the main trail and continued toward sugarcove, the number of people dropped off quickly. We had gone maybe another mile when we met the two men. They were standing just beyond a creek crossing, where the trail widened enough for three or four people to stand together. The older one looked to be in his early 40s. He had a brown canvas jacket, work pants, and a black day pack. The other was probably around 30, and wore a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off. The clothes were muddy below the knees. Neither looked injured, but they seemed tired and worried. The older man raised one hand before we reached them and asked if we had seen a woman hiking alone. He described her as being about 28, with dark hair tied in a braid. She was supposed to be wearing a red rain jacket, black pants, and gray boots. He said her name was Amanda, and that she was his younger sister. She had gone missing the previous evening after walking away from their campsite. According to him, she had suffered a seizure a few years earlier, and sometimes became confused when she was exhausted. Her medication was still in their vehicle. Ben and I said we hadn't seen her. The man introduced himself as Keith, and the younger one is Travis. Ben and I gave them our first names. Keith told us they had already spoken to a park employee, and that people were checking the nearby trails. He asked where we were headed. When we told him sugar-cove, he said that was good, because Amanda might have followed the creek in that direction. I remember feeling bad for him. He wasn't crying or making a big show of his fear. He spoke in a flat, controlled way that made it seem as if he had already been awake all night, and was trying to hold himself together. Travis barely talked at all. He kept looking past us up the trail while Keith gave us the description again. Keith asked if we would keep an eye out, and call Amanda's name from time to time. Of course we said yes. Then he asked if we would mind helping them check a short section of old road below the trail. He said it ran toward the creek and rejoined the main path closer to the campsite. It wouldn't add more than 20 or 30 minutes to our hike. Ben looked at me before answering. We had a rule that either one of us could say no to changing a route, and the other person wouldn't argue. I didn't see a reason to use it. A woman was supposedly alone in the woods without her medication. The rain was coming, and we were already going in the same direction. 20 minutes seemed like nothing. We agreed to help. For the first half mile we all stayed on the main trail. Keith walked beside Ben and gave us more information. He said Amanda had recently separated from her husband, and had been having a difficult year. The weekend was supposed to help her clear her head. They had arrived Friday morning and planned to stay until Sunday. He also asked whether we had parked in the hiker lot near the campground, or closer to the picnic area. Ben told him the hiker lot. When Keith asked whether anyone would know if we stayed out an extra night, I said my sister had our route and expected to hear from us on Sunday. At the time, I thought he was trying to determine when someone might report us missing, too. I asked where they had camped. Keith pointed generally uphill and said it was a backcountry side off another trail. I assumed I had missed the name because of the water nearby. A few minutes later, Ben asked the same question. This time Keith said they had made camp near an old road outside the park boundary. That was the first thing that didn't fit, but it wasn't enough to frighten me. People explain locations badly all the time, especially when they're stressed. I thought he might have meant that they had entered from outside the park and then hiked to a designated site. I also didn't know the area well enough to challenge him. Travis walked behind us. Whenever we slowed, he slowed. Whenever I glanced back, he was looking down at the trail or into the trees. I tried making conversation with him once by asking whether he and Keith were brothers. He said they were cousins. About ten minutes later, Keith referred to Travis as his brother-in-law. Again, there were harmless explanations. Amanda could have been married to Travis's brother. Keith could have used brother-in-law in a loose way. I noticed it, but I didn't say anything. The old road appeared on the downhill side of the trail as two shallow grooves covered in leaves. I would have walked right past it if Keith hadn't stopped. There was no sign and no mark on our map. A fallen tree blocked the entrance, and we had to climb over it. Ben asked how Keith knew where the road went. Keith said a ranger had shown it to him that morning. I looked at his hands as he climbed over the trunk. There was dried mud on his palms and a narrow scratch across one knuckle. He had clearly been using that road before any ranger supposedly showed it to him. That was when I began to feel that something was wrong. Although I still couldn't have told you exactly what. The road descended through thick growth for several hundred yards. It was not a shortcut to sugarcove. It curved away from the direction of the marked trail and became harder to follow. In some places, young trees had grown directly between the old tire grooves. Keith kept moving without checking a map. Ben stopped and said we needed to turn around. He kept his tone friendly, explaining that we had a permit for a specific site and wanted to reach it before the rain. Keith didn't argue. He said that was fine, but asked us to give him five more minutes because there was a drainage [BLANK_AUDIO] to head where Amanda might have gone for water. I was ready to leave. Ben must have seen it on my face because he said five minutes, no more. The drainage was a narrow channel running down toward Greenbrier Creek. It held only a few inches of water, but the ground around it was soft. Keith told us the four of us could cover more area if we spread out. He suggested that Ben go upstream with Travis while I went downstream with him. Ben answered before I could. He said we stayed together when we left marked trails. Keith gave a quick nod and said he understood. There was nothing openly hostile in his reaction, but Travis looked irritated. It lasted only a second, and then his expression went blank again. We agreed that Ben and I would check downstream while the two of them went uphill. Keith said we should meet back at the old road in 15 minutes. He called Amanda's name twice, then he and Travis moved away through the trees. Ben waited until they were out of view before asking what I thought. I told him I wanted to go back to the trail. He agreed. We didn't run because running would have made our fear obvious, but we turned toward the old road immediately. We had taken fewer than ten steps when we heard something moving through the brush below us. At first I thought it was a deer, then I saw a part of a human arm between two low branches. Someone was lying in a shallow space under the exposed roots of a fallen tree. A hand lifted slightly and motioned for us to come closer. Ben moved in front of me. He asked who was there. A woman answered in a voice so low that we had to move nearer to understand her. She told us not to say Amanda's name again. And she crawled far enough out for us to see her face. She matched Keith's description almost perfectly. She looked to be in her late 20s. Her dark hair had mostly come loose from a braid. She wore black hiking pants and a gray long-sleeved shirt. A red rain jacket had been tied around her waist, but one sleeve was torn almost completely off. There was dried blood under her nose and a long one side of her mouth. She had one gray boot. Her other foot was wrapped in a muddy sock. For one confused second, I thought we had found the missing sister and that the situation was over. Then she showed us her wrists. Both were bruised and cut. A broken white plastic tie was still hooked loosely around the left one. The band had split just below the locking head, leaving her hands free. She looked directly at me and said, "My name isn't Amanda. Those men took me." I felt everything in my body tightened at once. Ben crouched beside her and asked where she had been taken from. Her real name was Jenna Walsh. On Friday afternoon, she had parked at a quiet trail access point east of Gatlinburg for what was supposed to be a two-hour hike. She had just finished lacing her boots beside her car when a white cargo van pulled in. One of the men asked if she had jumper cables. When she leaned into her trunk to get them, the younger man grabbed her from behind. Jenna told us they forced her into the van, bound her wrists, and drove for what felt like 40 minutes. They took her to a rough camp near an old road and kept her under a plastic shelter through the night. She never saw a house. She believed they were close to the park because she could hear water and had seen a boundary marker after she escaped. Shortly before sunrise, the older man left the camp. The younger one sat near her while drinking from a bottle. He eventually fell asleep. Jenna worked the tie around her wrists against the sharp edge of a metal food can until the band split. A short broken section stayed hooked around her left wrist, but her hands were free. She ran without her pack, phone, or coat. She managed to grab the red jacket from near the shelter. The younger man woke as she ran and caught one sleeve. But the material tore before he could hold her. That was how she got away. She had been moving and hiding for hours. She lost her boot while crossing the creek and cut the bottom of that foot on a rock. Twice she heard the men nearby. The second time, she also heard them talking to us. Jenna said the names they had given us weren't real. She had heard the older one call the younger man Darren. She didn't know the older man's name. Then asked whether they had guns. Jenna hadn't seen one. The younger man had a long knife in a sheath and there had been a tire iron inside the van. She didn't know if they had brought either one while following her. The entire conversation took less than two minutes. We heard Keith calling from somewhere uphill before Jenna had finished. He called Amanda first, then he called my name. I had told him my name back on the trail without thinking anything of it. Getting it then made me understand how completely the situation had changed. Ben helped Jenna stand. She was able to put some weight on her socked foot, but not much. I carried lightweight camp shoes in an outside pocket of my pack. They were thin and a little too large for her, but better than a wet sock. We rinsed the cut with water, covered it with a pad from the first aid kit, wrapped the foot and put the camp shoe over it. I wanted to do more, but we had to move. Our safest option should have been returning to the marked trail. The problem was that Keith and Travis were between us and the old road. If we climbed straight uphill, they would see or hear us. Ben unfolded our map and used his compass to get a rough bearing. The main trail ran above us. Greenbrier Creek and lower ground were downhill. If we followed the drainage far enough, we should eventually reach the creek. And from there we could work back in the general direction of the campground. It would be slower and much harder than using the trail. It also gave us a chance to avoid the men. We started downhill. Jenna leaned on my shoulder, while Ben moved a few yards ahead and chose the clearest path. We stayed close to the drainage because it gave us a direction to follow, but we avoided walking in the water. The banks were crowded with rhododendron and fallen limbs. Every minute or two we had to stop so Jenna could climb over something or slide down a short drop. Keith continued calling for us. His voice moved from our left to somewhere behind us. He no longer sounded worried about his missing sister. He sounded annoyed. Then he stopped using Amanda's name. He told us Jenna was sick. He said she had heard herself and had attacked a member of their family. He asked us not to believe anything she said. Ben promised that nobody was angry and that we could all walk back to the trail together. Ben didn't answer. Neither did I. Jenna began crying without making much noise. She kept apologizing, saying we shouldn't have to be involved. I told her to save her breath and keep moving. I wasn't angry with her. I was angry with myself. Each contradiction I had excused now seemed obvious. There had been no park vehicles at Cosby, no organized searchers, and no reason a real rescue effort would send random hikers down an unmarked road, with two men who weren't carrying even basic medical supplies. We had wanted to help, and they had known exactly how to use that. The drainage became steeper. Rain began hitting the leaves above us, light at first, then steady. Ben and I stopped long enough to put on our rain jackets and pack covers. Jenna pulled on what was left of her red jacket. It covered her shoulders in one arm, which was better than nothing. The wet leaves made the slope dangerous. We moved sideways when we could and used young trees for balance. After about 20 minutes, Ben raised one hand and pointed uphill. Travis was standing about 40 yards away. He had reached the edge of the old road above us and was looking down the slope. For a moment, I don't think he saw us. Ben Jenna shifted her weight, a branch moved, and his head turned directly toward us. He yelled for Keith and started down. There was no more reason to be quiet. Ben told us to move, and we went as fast as Jenna could manage. Travis didn't have a pack anymore. He used both hands to push through the brush and gained ground quickly. The drainage dropped over a bank about six feet high. Ben went first, lowering himself by a route and landing in the shallow water below. I sat on the edge and helped Jenna turn around. Before she could lower herself, Travis came through the brush above us. He grabbed the back of her torn jacket. Jenna screamed and dropped her weight. The fabric pulled tight across her neck. I held her around the waist while Ben climbed back up from below. Ben pulled with both hands and shouted that we didn't understand what we were doing. Ben struck his forearm with one of our trekking poles. Travis's grip loosened. The damaged jacket tore the rest of the way, and it came off in his hands. She and I fell together into the drainage. I landed on my side in the water, and Jenna landed partly on my legs. Ben swung the pole again as Travis came over the edge. The lower section bent when it hit the bank, but it knocked him off balance. And jumped down after us, and the three of us moved. Travis followed. He was less than 20 yards behind when the drainage emptied into Greenbrier Creek. Farther upstream, the marked trail crossed Greenbrier Creek. where hikers could normally step across on exposed rocks. This section was wider and faster. The rain had not raised it much yet, but the water reached above my knees near the center. Ben loosened the straps on his pack, took Jenna's hand, and went in. I stayed behind her and held the back of her waistband so the current couldn't turn her. The cold water hurt my legs. Jenna's injured foot gave out twice. Ben and I kept her upright. And reached the opposite bank, just as Travis arrived at the creek. He stepped into the water, then stopped. He looked upstream and downstream instead of crossing. I understood why a few seconds later. He knew the area better than we did. He was looking for an easier place to get ahead of us. Ben pushed us into the trees on the far side. We continued downstream, moving parallel to the creek. The ground was rough, but there were fragments of old road in places. We could make better time there. Jenna's camp shoe was still on, but the bandage beneath it was soaked. Her face had gone pale. We had to slow down, even though every part of me wanted to run. After another half hour, we found the remains of an old home site. There was no building left, only a low stone foundation, and a rusted piece of sheet metal half buried in the ground. The trees inside the foundation were smaller than the ones around it. Ben led us behind the stones, where we could rest without being visible from the old road. We drank water and forced down some food. Jenna had not eaten since the previous afternoon. She took two bites of an energy bar too quickly, became sick, and had to stop. I gave her small sips of water while Ben checked the cut on my side from the fall. It was shallow. His right hand was bleeding where a branch had torn the skin across his palm. Neither injury kept us from moving. While we were crouched there, we saw both men pass on the old road. Travis went first. He had mud up to his waist and carried something dark in one hand. When he moved between two open patches, I recognized the long sheath Jenna had described. The knife was out of it. Keith followed several minutes later. He didn't call to us. He walked slowly and watched the ground. They were moving downstream. If they found another trail from there, they could get around us and block the route back to Cosby. That left us with two bad choices. We could stay hidden and give them time to reach the campground or our car, or we could leave the creek and climb back toward the marked trail. The trail would be faster, but it would also be the first place they expected us to go. Ben wanted to wait 10 minutes and climb. Jenna said she could do it. I looked at her foot and didn't believe her, but waiting would only give the men more control over the route ahead. We climbed. The first 100 yards took almost 20 minutes. The slope was steeper than it had looked from below. Ben cut a straight branch for Jenna to use as a staff, and I stayed behind her in case she slipped. Rainwater ran down the inside of my collar. My hands were cold enough that I had trouble closing the buckles on my pack. About halfway up, we crossed another old grade. Ben checked the compass and said it curved back toward the main trail. We turned on to it because it was easier for Jenna than continuing straight up. For a while, I thought we had made the right decision. The grade remained clear enough to follow, and we covered more ground in 15 minutes than we had in the previous hour. Then we found one of our trekking poles lying across it. It was the bent pole Ben had used on Travis. We had left it at the drainage bank near the creek. Someone had carried it ahead of us. The old road below had to connect with the upper grades somewhere beyond us. While we hid at the home side and struggled up the slope, one of the men had used that connection to loop around. Ben told us not to touch it. We turned around, but before we had gone 10 yards, Keith stepped on to the grade behind us. He was alone. His jacket was open, and he held the tire iron Jenna had seen in the van. He told Ben to move away from her. Ben asked which woman he meant. It was a small thing, but it made Keith pause. Jenna was behind us, and I was beside Ben. Keith had to decide whether to keep pretending I wasn't also in danger. He said Jenna had stolen money from them and had tried to kill Travis. He claimed the marks on her wrists were self-inflicted. If we gave her back, he would forget the entire thing. Ben told him we were walking to a ranger. Keith moved the tire iron from his right hand to his left and back again. He said there were no rangers anywhere close. Then he asked whether my sister still expected us to call on Sunday. I had mentioned my sister while we were hiking with them. I had wanted the men to know someone had our plans. At the time, it had felt smart. Hearing Keith repeat it showed me that he had been collecting every useful detail we gave him. He took one step toward us. I carried a small canister of pepper spray in my hip belt pocket. I used it when I ran alone near home and had brought it on the trip out of habit. I put my hand around it without removing it. Ben told Keith to stay back. Keith kept coming. I pulled the canister and sprayed him across the face from about six feet away. Some of it blew back in the rain and hit my cheek, but most reached him. Keith covered his eyes and bent forward. Ben drove his shoulder into him before he could swing the tire iron. They went down together on the wet road. Jenna and I tried to get around them. Keith caught the lower strap of my pack and pulled me backward. The strap tore loose. I turned and sprayed again until the canister sputtered empty. Ben grabbed the tire iron with both hands. Keith held the other end. They fought over it for several seconds before Ben kicked him in the knee and wrenched it free. Then Travis came through the trees behind Jenna. He had circled us while Keith talked. Jenna saw him first. She swung the branch she had been using for support. It hit his shoulder, but he caught it and pulled it from her hands. I moved between them. Travis slashed the knife toward me with one short movement aimed at my stomach. I jumped back. The blade cut through the loose front pocket of my pack instead of me. Our filter bag and one water bottle dropped onto the road. Ben let go of Keith and came at Travis with the tire iron. Travis backed away and that gave us an opening. Ben yelled at us to go. Jenna and I ran along the grade in the only open direction while he followed behind us. Keith was still on the ground coughing. Travis could have chased us, but he went to help him. That bought us several minutes. It also left our only water filter lying in the mud beside them. We ran until Jenna couldn't continue. It wasn't very far. She made it perhaps 200 yards before the injured foot folded under her and she dropped to one knee. Ben and I pulled her behind a thick patch of brush while we listened for the men. My face burned where the spray had blown back. My right eye watered constantly, but I could still see. Ben had the tire iron tucked under one arm. His palm had opened again and blood ran over his fingers. I wrapped his hand with gauze while Jenna checked the cut in the front of my pack. The knife had gone through two layers of fabric and stopped less than an inch from my stomach. We took stock of our water. One bottle had fallen with the filter. Ben still had a full bottle in his pack and I had a little under half of one. We could reach the campground with that if we found a direct route. We could not spend the night hiding in the woods and safely drink untreated creek water. The old grade continued away from the fight. It wasn't the route we had intended to take, but turning around would send us back toward the men. We decided to stay on it until it ended or met a maintained trail. He carried the tire iron in his left hand and kept his wrapped right hand near his chest. Jenna walked between us, leaning more heavily on me with every minute. Her thin camp shoe had begun to split along one side. I used duct tape from the repair kit to hold it together, wrapping it around the shoe and her ankle. It looked crude, but it stayed on. The rain eased after about 20 minutes. The light was already changing. It was sometime after four and sunset came early behind the ridges. If we were still off trail when it became dark, our speed would drop to almost nothing. We hadn't heard Keith or Travis since the fight. I couldn't decide whether that was good. Keith had taken a full burst of pepper spray at close range, but the rain would help wash it away. Even if he couldn't see well enough to follow, Travis could. The old grade narrowed and climbed around the side of the ridge. We passed two washed out sections where only enough ground remained for one person at a time. Ben went first, then I crossed and turned around to help Jenna. The drop below wasn't vertical, but a fall would have sent her through 30 or 40 feet of brush and loose rock. At the second wash out, Jenna stopped halfway across. Her breathing became fast and shallow. She said she couldn't make her legs move. I reached for her hand, but she told me not to come closer because the edge was breaking under her good foot. Ben lay down on the stable side and extended the bent end of the tire iron. Jenna grabbed it with both hands. He pulled while I held the back of his pack. A section of dirt slid away under her, and for a second most of her weight hung from the iron. Then she found the edge with one knee, and we dragged her onto solid ground. She lay there crying and saying she was sorry. Ben told her there was nothing to apologize for. He asked her to look at him, and said she only needed to make it to the next safe place. We would worry about everything after that. I had heard him use the same tone with frightened patients. Ben worked as a respiratory therapist, mostly in critical care. He could sound calm, even when he wasn't. I knew him well enough to see how scared he was, by the way he kept flexing the fingers of his injured hand. The grade ended at a maintained path about 10 minutes later. There was no sign at the junction, but the new path was wide enough for horses and showed recent use. Ben unfolded the map. A horse route on the map connected with the lower trails around Cosby, and based on the surrounding ridges and the creek below us, we believed we had reached one of its outer sections. One direction should eventually take us toward the campground. It was the first genuinely good thing that had happened since we met the men. We followed the direction Ben believed led toward the campground, and moved as quickly as we could. The path descended at an easier grade. Jenna could take short steps, without lifting her injured foot over logs or rocks. I began to believe we might reach the campground before dark. Then we came to a muddy place where several prints were clear. Two sets came from the opposite direction. One had a rectangular tread that matched Keith's workboots. The other had the deep heel and smooth center I remembered seeing on Travis's boots when he climbed over the fallen tree. They had already been on that trail. The prints passed the junction and continued deeper along the trail. Ben thought the men had missed us, and were searching farther uphill. I wanted to believe that, but several yards ahead, one set turned around and headed back toward the campground. Then the second did the same. We weren't sure whether the tracks had been made before or after the fight. The rain had softened their edges, but it had been raining for hours. All we knew was that the men had used the same route, and might be ahead of us again. We kept going because leaving the trail with Jenna in that condition was no longer realistic. Ben told me that if we saw either man, I was to take Jenna downhill and continue toward the creek. He would hold them back. I told him no. He said it wasn't a discussion. I said, it still wasn't happening. Jenna interrupted us. She said the younger man had talked during the drive after they took her. He had told the older man that nobody used the old camp this late in the season, and that they had plenty of time. She thought this might not have been the first time they had brought someone there. She also remembered a small tattoo on the younger man's right forearm, a dark outline of a bird, or an arrow. If we got out, she wanted us to remember it. The way she said if scared me. Until then, Ben and I had assumed we would reach safety if we kept moving. Jenna had spent the night with those men. She understood their intentions better than we did. I made her say when, instead. When we got out, we would remember the tattoo. The trail curved around a low ridge and passed through an area where the trees were spaced farther apart. Ben suddenly stepped off the path and pulled us with him. We crouched behind the root mass of a fallen tree. About 60 yards ahead, someone had stretched a length of dark cord across the trail at ankle height. It wasn't part of any trail closure. There was no sign, and the cord was nearly invisible among the wet leaves. Each end was tied to a tree and pulled tight across the path. We watched it for almost a minute. Nothing moved. Ben said quietly that it had probably been placed to make one of us fall and slow the others down. There wasn't enough open ground to go around without being seen. We backed away and left the trail on the downhill side. For the next several hundred yards, we moved through the trees while keeping the path in sight. We rejoined it after we were well beyond the cord. That detour cost time and strength. Jenna began stumbling even on level ground. I gave her the last of the water in my bottle. Ben kept his untouched and said we would share it later. The forest darkened quickly after five. We put our headlamps around our necks but did not switch them on. The trail was still visible, and we didn't want the men to see where we were. We reached another junction near dusk. This one had a wooden sign. One direction led back toward the mountain trails. The other pointed to Cosby campground. I can't describe the relief I felt seeing those words. I put both hands against the sign for a moment because I needed something solid. The campground was still several miles away, but we were on a marked route and going in the right direction. Ben checked the ground around the junction. There were plenty of old prints and horse marks, but he couldn't identify the men's tracks. We headed toward Cosby. For the next hour nothing happened. That should have made me feel better. Instead, each quiet stretch made me more certain the men had gone ahead to wait near the campground. They knew where we had parked. They knew we had planned to spend the night and that nobody would become concerned until Sunday. If we had not found Jenna, Ben and I would have been asleep at Sugar Cove while they continued searching for her. Once we helped her, our parked car became the easiest place to find us again. We talked through what to do when we reached the developed area. We would not go to our car. We would find an occupied campsite, get inside someone else's vehicle or trailer, and ask them to drive us down the entrance road until a phone had service. If the campground office or a host was available, we would go there first. Jenna asked what happened if the men had a second vehicle near Cosby. None of us had an answer. Full darkness arrived before we reached the lower trail. We had no choice but to use our headlamps. Ben walked in front with his light on its lowest setting. I kept mine off unless Jenna needed help with the ground. The rain had stopped, but water continued dropping from the trees. My shoulders and hips hurt from the pack. Jenna could barely lift her injured foot. Ben's wrapped hand had bled through the gauze and his fingers were swelling. We had shared half of his remaining bottle. I began thinking about every stream we passed, even though I knew drinking from them without treatment could make us sick later. Somewhere behind us, a white light appeared on the trail. It was visible for only a few seconds through the trees, then disappeared around a curve. It returned closer several minutes later. One of the men had a headlamp. Ben switched off his. We continued in darkness, using our hands to feel the edge of the trail. The light behind us vanished again. Whoever carried it had either turned it off or left the path. We couldn't move fast enough without our lamps. Jenna caught her taped shoe on a root and fell hard. When I helped her up, she was shaking too badly to stand on her own. Ben said we needed to use the lights and accept that the man already knew where we were. He switched his lamp back on. I did the same. Then we linked arms with Jenna and increased our pace. The trail descended toward Cosby Creek. We could hear the water well before we saw it. The rain had raised it since morning. When we reached the Ford, the creek covered most of the rocks that normally marked the crossing. There was no bridge. On the far side, the trail continued toward the campground. We were close enough that I thought I could see a weak yellow light through the trees farther down, although I couldn't tell whether it came from a campsite or the road. Ben tested the water with the tire iron. Near the bank it was below his knees. In the center, it rose above them and moved hard enough to push the iron downstream. Under normal conditions, we would have turned around and waited for the creek to fall. We couldn't do that with someone following us. We loosened our pack belts and planned the crossing. Ben would go upstream, Jenna in the middle, and I would take the downstream side. If one of us fell, the other two would help keep that person from being carried away. We left our headlamps on so we could see our footing. We had taken only two steps into the creek when a man spoke from the trail behind us. Travis told us to stop. He stood about 30 feet away, breathing hard. His gray sweatshirt was gone. He wore a dark shirt, and the tattoo Jenna had described was visible on his right forearm. He had the knife in that hand. Ben turned and raised the tire iron. He told Jenna and me to cross. Travis said he only wanted Jenna. He promised again that we could leave. There was no reason to believe him, but the fact that he was still trying to bargain told me he was worried about how close we were to other people. I shouted toward the campground. I yelled that we needed help, and that a man had a knife. Travis came forward. Ben met him at the edge of the creek. Travis slashed at the hand holding the tire iron. Ben pulled back, then swung low, and struck Travis across the shin. Travis stumbled into the water but stayed upright. He grabbed one of Ben's shoulder straps with his free hand, pulled him closer, and drove the knife toward his right shoulder. The blade went through Ben's jacket and cut his upper arm. I saw the fabric open and blood spread beneath it. I left Jenna in knee-deep water and went back. I still had our second trekking pole strap to my pack. I pulled it free and drove the metal tip into Travis's forearm. He released the knife. It hit a rock at the edge of the creek. Jenna moved faster than I had seen her move all day. She stepped toward it and kicked it into the water with her good foot. The current took it out of our lights before Travis could reach down. He hit me across the side of the head with his open hand. I fell against the bank. Ben swung the tire iron again, but Travis grabbed it with both hands. They struggled over it and went into the creek together. Jenna came back for me. She hooked one hand under my arm and pulled until I could get my feet beneath me. My left ear rang, but I was conscious and able to stand. Keith appeared on the trail above us. His eyes were swollen almost shut from the pepper spray. He held one hand against the trees to guide himself and had no weapon that I could see. He yelled at Travis to leave. Travis ignored him. He struck Ben in the face, took the tire iron, and raised it over his shoulder. Jenna grabbed a loose strap on the back of his pants and pulled with all her weight. It didn't bring him down, but it turned him enough that the tire iron missed Ben and hit the water. Ben drove both hands into Travis's chest. Travis fell backward into the deeper part of the creek. The current rolled him onto his side. He tried to stand, slipped, and was carried several yards downstream. He caught a branch extending from the bank and held on with one arm. The tire iron was gone. Keith went after him instead of us. That was our chance. Ben, Jenna and I linked arms and crossed. The water reached the bottom of my jacket near the center. Twice my boot slid on rocks, but Ben and Jenna kept me upright. We reached the far bank and climbed without stopping. I looked back once. Keith was kneeling at the creek, trying to pull Travis in by the back of his shirt. Travis still had hold of the branch. Neither one followed us. The yellow light I had seen belonged to an occupied campsite. A travel trailer and a pickup were parked there, and an older couple sat beneath the trailer's awning, while rainwater drained from it. I must have looked frightening when I came out of the trees because the man stood and reached for something inside the trailer. I raised my hands and told him we needed the police. The couple's names were Paul and Denise. They took one look at Jenna's wrists and Ben's arm and brought us inside. Paul locked the door while Denise got towels in a medical kit. They had no phone service at the campsite. After we explained that the men might be coming from the trail, Paul started his truck and moved it beside the trailer door so we could get in without crossing the open campsite. Denise drove. Paul sat in front with her. The three of us stayed in the back seat. They took us down Cosby entrance road toward the highway. After a few minutes, Denise's phone found enough service to call 911. We met the first deputy near Route 32. Two park rangers arrived shortly after him, followed by an ambulance. Ben needed stitches in his upper arm, but the cut had missed the muscle and major blood vessels. My head was sore, and the skin near my eye was irritated from the spray. Jenna was dehydrated, mildly hypothermic, and unable to put weight on her foot. The cut was deep and dirty, but there was no fracture. One of the rangers asked where we had encountered the search party. When Ben explained, the rangers stopped him and asked what search party he meant. There was no missing hiker named Amanda. No woman matching the description had been reported missing in that part of the park. No ranger had asked Keith and Travis to search an old road, and visitors had not been recruited to help with any operation. The rangers closed the immediate trail access and sent people toward the Ford. County deputies watched the entrance road and nearby parking areas. I don't know how many officers searched that night. By then we were on our way to the hospital in Severeville. Before the ambulance left, Jenna gave the police her full name. Her sister had reported her missing earlier that evening, after Jenna missed a family dinner, and nobody had heard from her since Friday. Officers found her car at the trail access point she described. The driver's door was unlocked, her trunk was open, and her trekking poles were still on the ground beside it. Ben received 11 stitches. I had a mild concussion. Jenna stayed in the hospital for two nights. In addition to her foot injury, she had deep bruising around both wrists, bruised ribs, and signs that she had been struck more than once before escaping. Keith was arrested before midnight. A ranger found him walking alone along the campground road, soaked, and almost unable to see. He first claimed he had been separated from a friend while hiking. Then he said he was looking for his sister. When the ranger asked his sister's name, he gave a different name from Amanda. He tried to run and made it less than 50 yards. Keith was not his real name. He was a 39-year-old man from Eastern Kentucky, with an outstanding warrant related to an assault. Once the police identified him, they also identified Travis. His real first name was Darren, just as Jenna had heard at the camp. The two men were not related. Darren got away from the creek that night. Searchers found blood on the branch he had held and one of his boots farther downstream, but they did not find him in the park. The white van was located the following afternoon on an old road outside the boundary. It had been stolen in Knoxville several days earlier. Inside it, investigators found Jenna's pack, phone, car keys, and wallet. They also found roles of plastic ties and duct tape. The rough camp Jenna described was less than a mile away. Police found the remains of the plastic shelter, food, liquor bottles, and the metal can she had used to damage the tie around her wrist. I was never told whether they found evidence of another victim. One detective said there was nothing he could discuss with us beyond Jenna's case. That answer was not comforting. Darren remained free for almost three weeks. A deputy in Kentucky stopped a car for an expired registration. The driver gave Darren's real name, which returned a warrant connected to Jenna's case. The tattoo on his forearm matched her description. He also had cuts on his legs that were still healing and an infection in one foot. Jenna later identified him. I won't go through the court proceedings. The important part is that both men were charged and neither was able to explain why a kidnapped woman, her belongings and materials used to restrain her, were connected to their camp and van. Ben and I provided statements and turned over our damaged gear and clothing. The knife and tire iron were recovered from the creek during a later search. Jenna came to our house the following spring. By then her foot had healed, although she still walked carefully on uneven ground. She brought dinner and a new water filter to replace the one we lost. We tried to keep the evening normal. We talked about work, our families, and the things we had been doing since October. None of us mentioned the hike until the end. Before she left, Jenna asked why we had believed her so quickly. I told her it was because of the broken plastic tie hanging from her wrist. That was true, but it wasn't the whole truth. I believed her because of the way Keith and Darren had behaved before we found her. They had been testing us from the moment we met. They asked where we were going, where we had parked, who expected us home, and whether we would separate. Each answer told them how much control they had. When Ben refused to split up, they sent us off together and circled around. They never wanted four people searching efficiently. They wanted us away from the marked trail and close enough to watch. The part that still bothers me most is that the description they gave was accurate. They told us about Jenna's hair, clothing and age, then invented a medical problem that made finding her seem urgent. If we had seen her from a distance, we would have called Amanda's name and brought those men directly to her. That was the reason for the fake search. They didn't need to find her themselves. They only needed decent people to do it for them. Ben and I still hike. For almost a year, we stayed on crowded trails and never spent a night in the backcountry. Eventually we returned to longer routes, but our rules changed. We don't follow strangers off marked trails. We don't tell people where our vehicle is, or whether anyone expects us home. If someone reports an emergency, one of us goes to get official help while the other stays in a public place. We do not allow the person asking for help to divide us or choose where we go. I sometimes feel guilty saying that. Most people asking for help are telling the truth. Somewhere in the mountains, a lost or injured person, may depend on another hiker stopping. I don't want what happened to make me the kind of person who walks past someone in trouble. But I also know how little it took for two men to redirect our entire day. They didn't threaten us at the trail. They didn't show a weapon. They gave us a woman's name, described a medical problem, and let us decide that helping was the right thing to do. They understood that we would be more willing to enter the woods for a frightened sister than for two strange men. They were right. This would have been the second week of September, 12 or 13 years ago now. Then my friend Curtis and I decided to do a four-day loop through the backcountry up in the Colorado Rockies. It had been the better part of a decade since the two of us had done any real hiking together, and I don't think either of us had realized how much we missed it until we were actually standing at the trailhead with our packs on. The reason it had been so long was Curtis's dad. About eight years before this, his father had a stroke that left him needing pretty much round the clock care, and since Curtis was the only one of the kids who still lived in the state, that job felt to him. He never complained about it, not once, at least not to me. He'd moved back into his childhood home, took a job he could do from the house, and just quietly put his own life on hold. Every time I'd bring up a trip, he'd say something like, "Maybe next summer, if I can find somebody to sit with him for a few days." And then next summer would come and go, and there'd be some new complication, and it would get pushed again. His dad passed that spring. Curtis handled the funeral, sold the house, dealt with the will and the two siblings who suddenly had a lot of opinions about everything, now that the hard part was over. And then, about a month after all of that was done, he called me up out of the blue and said, "You still got that big pack of yours." I told him I did, he said, "Good, I need to go somewhere where nobody can call me." So that's how we ended up up there. I picked a route I'd done once before with my brother, a lollipop loop that started at a little trailhead off a forest road, climbed up through the timber to a chain of lakes, crossed over a pass, and came back down the Lost Creek drainage. There's a second trailhead on the north side of that pass, that ties into the same lake chain from the other direction, but it's a long drive around to get to it, and we had no plans to go anywhere near it. Roughly 32 miles all told, and we were going to take it slow. Four days, three nights, no rush. The whole point was to give Curtis some room to breathe. The first day was about as good as it gets. It was cool in the mornings and warm by noon. The aspens were just starting to turn, and the trail was quiet. We passed one couple coming down in the first hour, and after that we didn't see another soul for most of the day. Curtis was in better spirits than I'd seen him in years. He was cracking jokes, pointing out birds, complaining about his knees in the way that people do when they're actually enjoying themselves. I made sure to steer well clear of anything to do with his dad or his family, and just kept things light. Football, old stories from when we were kids, arguments about which of us was the worst cook. That kind of thing. We got to the first lake around four in the afternoon and found a good flat spot in the trees, maybe 50 yards back from the water. We had the place to ourselves, or so we thought. We'd been set up maybe half an hour, and I was pumping water down at the shore when I heard Curtis say, "Hey, we got company." I looked up, and there was a guy walking down the trail toward our camp with a big pack on. He waved when he saw me, real friendly, and called out something like, "Mind if I come through?" I said, "Sure, come on." And he did. I wanted to describe this guy carefully, because I've thought about him a lot in the years since. He was somewhere in his forties, I'd guess. Fit, lean, a little sunburned across the nose. He had a good beard, not scruffy, but the kind that's been that way for a long time. His gear was excellent, and I mean top of the line. Everything matching, nothing worn out. He had one of those wide brimmed sunhats and trekking poles that probably cost more than my whole tent. There was a long, narrow rifle case, strapped along one side of his pack. That's not unusual in Colorado in September, and I barely registered it. He said his name was Wade. He had a big, easy smile and a way of talking that made you feel like he'd known you for years. If you told me he was a youth pastor or a high school teacher, I'd have believed you. He asked if we minded if he set up on the other side of the lake, said he didn't want to crowd us. I remember thinking that was considerate of him. We told him it was a big lake, and he was welcome to it. He thanked us and started to head off, and then he stopped and turned back and asked where we were headed. I told him. I told him the whole route, honestly, because why wouldn't I? He nodded along and said he was going the other direction, that he'd come over the past that morning and was heading down. Not to our trailhead, he said. He'd parked at the old spur trailhead a few miles farther down the drainage, off a different forest road, and there was a side trail that pealed off below the first lake and dropped down to it. He said he liked it because nobody used it. He said the pass was in good shape, no snow, and that we'd love the upper lakes. Then he said, kind of offhand. You guys have anybody expecting you out on a certain day. Some of these forest roads, you break down and nobody comes by for a week. I laughed and said my wife had our itinerary, and if I wasn't home by Thursday night she'd have the whole county outlooking. He laughed too and said, smart woman. And then he went off around the lake and set up on the far side, and that was that. Curtis and I ate dinner and sat up talking until it got dark. Across the water we could see the glow of a little stove where Wade was, and at one point I heard him whistling. Just a tune. Nothing I recognized. Curtis said something like, nice guy, and I agreed. It didn't even register as anything. The second day is where it started, although I didn't recognize it as starting at the time. We packed up early and hit the trail by seven. It was a big climbing day, up past two more lakes and then over the pass. Wade's camp was already gone when we walked by. His tent, everything. There wasn't so much as a flattened patch of grass. I remember thinking he must have left before first light, and I remember being a little impressed by that. On mid-morning we stopped to rest at the second lake, and I noticed something that bothered me a little, but not enough to say anything. On a flat rock right beside the trail, there was a little can, three stones stacked up. That's not unusual. People build them everywhere. But this one had a fresh cigarette butt tucked into the gap between the second and third stones, and it hadn't been out there long. It hadn't rained on it. It was still white. Over of us smoked, and there was nobody else around. I remember looking at it, and then looking up the trail, and then just moving on. It's a strange thing to fixate on, and I didn't want to be the guy who was jumpy over litter. We made the pass by early afternoon and had lunch up there. Curtis was moving well, and the view was unbelievable. And I remember thinking this was exactly what he'd needed. He said as much himself. He said, "I forgot the world could be like this." And I didn't know what to say to that, so I just handed him some jerky. It was on the way down the other side that I saw the guy. We dropped maybe a thousand feet off the pass into a big open basin, all rock and low scrub before the trees started again. And I happened to look back up toward the pass. There was a figure up there, standing right at the top, where we'd been eating maybe an hour before, just standing, not moving, too far to see a face, but I could see the wide hat and the poles. I said, "Huh, look at that." And Curtis looked back and said, "That's Wade." I said it couldn't be, Wade was going the other way, he'd said so. Curtis shrugged and said, "Maybe he changed his mind. Maybe he forgot something." I said, "Maybe." And I looked again the guy had turned and was walking back the way he'd come, away from us, over the pass and out of sight. I want to be honest here and say I didn't think much of it in the moment. People change plans. But it sat in the back of my head all the way down into the trees, and by the time we got to the third lake and started looking for a spot to camp. I'd made up my mind to mention it to Curtis, not to scare him, just to say something. We found a spot down below the lake where the outlet stream came through, tucked into a stand of spruce. We got the tent up, got water, and I was just about to bring it up when I turned around and there was Wade, walking down the trail into our camp. I know I stared at him. I couldn't help it. He waved and grinned and said, "Well, you." look who it is. He said he'd gotten down to that spur trailhead that morning and found a forest service notice stuck under his wiper. A section of the road below his lot had washed out overnight and nothing was getting through, and anybody stranded above it was being told to hike out the north trailhead where they were running a shuttle. So he'd locked up the truck, turned around, and come right back up and over the pass. I remember asking if our road was okay, and he said as far as he knew it was, that it was a completely different access road, and the notice hadn't said a word about ours. Said he was sorry to keep turning up like a bad penny, and then he laughed. I remember Curtis laughed with him. Curtis was in a good mood. He said no problem, plenty of room, and I didn't want to be rude, so I said the same. Wade said he'd go set up on the far side of the meadow so he wasn't on top of us, and he did. And I want to say right now that his story made sense, it was completely plausible. I'd been on a trip once where a bridge went out, and they'd routed everybody the long way. That's what got me. Every single thing he did had a perfectly good reason attached to it. That night was different though. I couldn't relax. I kept looking over toward his tent. He had a little headlamp on, and I could see it moving around, and then it would go off for a while, and then it would come on again in a slightly different place. Around nine, Curtis went into the tent to sleep, and I sat up alone by the little stove for a while, and I heard the whistling again. Same tune. It went on for a long time. Then it stopped, and about a minute later I heard a stick break somewhere off in the dark behind our tent, in the opposite direction from Wade's camp. I told myself it was a deer. It probably was a deer. But I sat there with my back to the tent, and my flashlight in my hand, until almost midnight before I finally crawled in. I didn't sleep well. I kept waking up. Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up absolutely certain that somebody was standing outside the tent. I don't know how to describe it other than that. There was no sound. Nothing touched the tent. But I lay there for what felt like ten minutes not breathing, and eventually I heard footsteps, slow, moving away through the pine needles. Curtis snored through the whole thing. In the morning I got up before him and went outside and looked around. Wade's tent was gone again, just like the first morning. And I found something I still don't like thinking about. Our bear canister, which I'd stashed maybe 70 feet from the 10th the night before, was sitting about 10 feet from the door. Right side up, closed, nothing missing, and set down dead center in front of the door like somebody had lined it up. I walked back to where I'd left it. The pine needles there were flat where it had been sitting and undisturbed everywhere else. No drag marks, no scuffs between there and the tent, nothing knocked over. A bear doesn't roll a canister 70 feet through spruce and leave the ground looking like that. Somebody had picked it up and carried it over and set it down there. I stood there looking at that thing for a long time. When Curtis got up I told him everything. The can, the guy on the pass, the footsteps, the canister. I laid it all out and I could hear myself sounding a little crazy. Curtis listened. And to his credit, he didn't wave it off. He said, "Okay, what do you want to do?" I said, "I thought we should get out. Not finish the loop. Just go." The way we'd planned it, day three was a short mellow day to one more lake, and then day four was the walk out to the truck. I said we skipped the lake and just push all the way to the truck today. It'd be a long day, sixteen or seventeen miles. But we could do it. Curtis said fine. He didn't argue at all. I think that's when I knew he'd been feeling it too, and hadn't wanted to say so. We packed fast and got moving. I remember we didn't talk much that morning. We were both listening. Every time we came around a bend, I was half expecting to see that wide hat waiting for us. And for the first couple of hours there was nothing. No sign of him. I started to feel a little foolish. I even said so around mid-morning. I said, "Maybe he really did just flip the loop." Curtis said, "Maybe, and that was all." We came out of the trees a little before noon onto a long open traverse. The trail cut across a big south-facing slope, all grass and scattered rock and no cover to speak of, with the timber a hundred yards or so below us, and a rocky ridge line running along above. It was hot and bright and we were moving fast. Curtis a few steps ahead of me. I saw Curtis jerk and go down. A moment later the report rolled down off the ridge. I'm not going to pretend I understood what happened right away. My first thought, and I remember this very clearly, was that he'd rolled his ankle, and then that a rock had let go somewhere up the slope. Two separate things. My brain tried to make it into two separate accidents. And then Curtis started screaming and grabbed his leg with both hands, and I saw the blood between his fingers, and the second shot hit the trail about a foot from my boot, and threw dirt up over both of us. And then I understood. I dropped. I don't remember deciding to. I was just on the ground, and Curtis was maybe six feet ahead of me still yelling, and there was a third shot, and I heard it go past. I heard it. It's a sound you can't hear, kind of a hard snap right over your head. I crawled up to Curtis and got a hand on his pack and started dragging, and he understood and started pushing with his good leg, and there was a big chunk of granite maybe 15 feet down slope from the trail, and that's where we went. Another shot hit that rock while we were getting behind it. I felt chips of it hit my face. Then it got quiet. Curtis had been hit through the outside of his left thigh, a few inches above the knee. Both sides, in and out. There was a lot of blood, but it wasn't pumping, and I remember thinking, "That's good. That's not the big artery." And being surprised, I remembered that. He was gray in the face and shaking, and he kept saying, "He shot me. He shot me." Over and over like he was trying to convince himself. I told him to shut up. Not in a mean way. I just needed him to stop because I needed to think, and I needed to listen. I got the little first aid kit out of the top of my pack, and packed gauze against both holes, and wrapped his thigh as tight as I could with the roll bandage, tight enough that he yelled. And the whole time I was doing this, I was trying to figure out where the shooter was. He was above us. That much was obvious from where the rounds had been hitting, somewhere on that ridge line. And I could tell from how long it had taken the sound to arrive, after Curtis went down that he was a good ways off, four or five hundred yards maybe. Which meant he had a scope. Which meant it was weighed, because I'd looked right at that long narrow case on the side of his pack that first night, and thought absolutely nothing of it. He fired again, nodded us, at the rock, just to let us know he was still there. And then, a while later, again, he was patient. There was no hurry in it. That's the part that made my stomach turn, because I understood that this wasn't somebody who'd panicked or made a mistake. This was somebody who'd been thinking about this since he first walked into our camp two days before. The questions about who was expecting us, the note on his truck, standing on the pass, watching us walk into that basin. He'd been picking his spot the whole time. And this slope, this wide open sunny slope with no cover, was the spot. I looked down at the trees. A hundred yards give or take, over open ground, at a downhill angle. And maybe halfway there, forty or fifty yards below us, the slope rolled over hard, where the ground dropped into a little side drainage. From where he was sitting, that roll would put a steep bank between us and him. If we could get to that, he'd lose us. On my own, I could have made that. Not fast, but I could have made it. With Curtis, I didn't know. And I'll be honest with you, there was a second there where I thought about it. Just for a second. And then Curtis said, "Just go. Just go. Get help." And I said, "No." And I said it before I'd even thought about it. And after that, it wasn't a question anymore. I told him we were going to move on the next shot. The way I figured it, the instant he fired was the best chance we were going to get. He'd have to come down off the recoil, work the bolt, find us again through the scope, and judge two bodies moving downhill. I didn't know how long that would take him. It might be a couple of seconds. It might be less. It was a gamble. And I knew it was a gamble. And I also knew that sitting behind that rock until dark was a worse one. I told Curtis to get his good foot under him, and to lean on me and to just go, "Don't stop. Don't look back." And if he fell, I'd pick him up. The next shot hit the rock, and we went. I've never moved like that in my life. Curtis had one arm around my neck, and I had my arm around his waist, and he was hopping and dragging. and I was half carrying him, and we were going straight down that slope, not toward the trail, just straight down at that roll in the ground. The next round came a lot sooner than I wanted it to. It hit the dirt off to our left, close, and I actually set out loud, keep going, keep going, and we did. Curtis fell. He went down hard on his bad leg and screamed, and I got him up by the pack straps, and there was another shot while I was doing it, and I felt that one. I swear I felt it go by, and then the ground fell away under us, and we half ran and half slid down into that drainage, and dropped in against the uphill bank, and it was six or seven feet of dirt and rock between us and the ridge, and it was enough. He couldn't see us. We were below his line. We crawled the last of it, down that drainage, staying tight to the high side, into the trees, and I did not let us stop until we were 50 yards into the timber, and there was thick spruce between us and that ridge in every direction. Then Curtis fell over and I sat down and I think I threw up. I'm not sure. Some of that part is gone. Then came the worst part, which was that we still had to get out. I knew that as long as we stayed in thick timber, he couldn't get a shot at us. But I also knew he'd have to assume we'd try for the trailhead, and the trail down through the trees was the obvious way to get there, and he had two good legs, and I had a man who could barely stand. If he came down off that ridge and got ahead of us on the trail, he'd only have to wait. And there was another thought that I couldn't shake, which was that all the violence had been from a distance. He'd walked right into our camp and shaken our hands and talked to us like an old friend. Sure. But when he came near the tent, he waited until we were asleep. And when he finally did something, he did it from 500 yards. And I started to think maybe that meant something. Maybe he was somebody who could look a man in the eye and lie to him all day long, but couldn't stand close enough to watch him die. I didn't know if that was true, but it was the best I had. So I made a decision. We would not go down the trail. I got the map out, and I could see that if we dropped down to Lost Creek itself and followed it, it stayed in Timber almost the whole way, and came out at the forest road about two miles below the trailhead. It was rougher, no path, dead fall and brush, and it was going to be brutal on Curtis. But it was in the trees the whole way, and it wasn't where he'd expect us to be. Curtis looked at me when I told him and said, "Okay, just okay. It took us the rest of that day and into the dark. I want to describe how bad it was, and I'm not sure I can. Curtis couldn't put any real weight on the leg, so we went with him leaning on me, and using a dead branch as a crutch on the other side. And every step was on uneven ground. Over logs, through brush, along a creek bank that kept dropping away under our feet. Every so often I'd stop and check the rap, and when the blood started seeping through I'd pack more gauze on top of it, and cinch the outer bandage down tighter without touching what was underneath, because I'd read somewhere that pulling a dressing-off just starts it bleeding all over again. Every 20 minutes or so we'd stop and I'd listen. I don't know what I was listening for. Footsteps, a stick breaking, that whistling. There was nothing. Water, and wind, and Curtis breathing. He wanted to quit. I'd say around the middle of the afternoon he started telling me to leave him. He was very calm about it, which scared me worse than if he'd been panicking. He said, "I'm slowing you down. Get to the road. Get somebody. Come back for me." He said it three or four times, and every time I told him no. The last time he said it, I stopped, and I got down in his face, and I said, "I have known you since we were nine years old, and I am not walking out of these woods without you, so you can either shut up and keep walking, or I can carry you, but you are coming." He didn't bring it up again after that. Around dusk he started to fade. He'd been talking less and less, and then he wasn't talking at all, and I noticed his head kept dropping. I got some water in him and made him eat something, and it helped a little. I don't know how much blood he'd lost, enough that I was scared. We kept going in the dark with my headlamp on the lowest setting, and my hand over most of the beam, and it was slower than ever, and I remember thinking that if he passed out, I could not carry him, not through that, and I'd have to leave him after all, and I remember deciding I'd rather sit down beside him and wait for whatever came than do that. We hit the road a little before 10 at night. I heard it before I saw it, a truck going by somewhere ahead of us, and I about started crying. When we came out onto the gravel, there was nobody. We sat down right in the middle of the road because I figured that was the surest way to get somebody to stop, and I remember Curtis laughing a little at that. This exhausted, drunk sounding laugh, and saying, "If he drives by, he's going to have a real easy time." I hadn't thought of that, but we couldn't walk anymore. So we sat there. It was maybe half an hour before headlights came up the road. I stood up and waved my arms, and the truck stopped a good way back, and sat there with the lights on us for a long time before the door opened, and I understood that. Two filthy guys sitting in a road at 10.30 at night, one of them covered in blood. I would have sat there a while, too. It was a man about my age and his teenage son, coming back from a fishing trip. When he saw the leg, he didn't ask any questions. They got Curtis into the back seat, and I climbed in with him and the man drove faster than that road was ever meant to be driven, and his son called ahead on his cell phone the second we got a signal, and there was an ambulance waiting where the forest road met the highway. Curtis went into surgery that night. The bullet had gone clean through and missed the bone and missed the artery, and the doctors said another couple of inches inward, and it would have taken the femoral artery, and a slightly different angle would have shattered the femur, and either way we would not have gotten him out of those woods. He'd lost a lot of blood. He was in the hospital about a week and on crutches for a couple of months after that, and there was a lot of physical therapy, but he kept the leg and he walks fine now. He's got two scars on that thigh, one going in, and one coming out, and every once in a while when it's cold, he says it aches. I sat with him for a while before they took him back, and he was pretty out of it, but he grabbed my hand and said thank you. I told him not to worry about it. I told him I knew he'd have done the same, and he said I don't know if I could have, and I said yeah, you could, and I meant it. Deputies and forest service officers began securing the forest roads and all three trail heads through the night, and at first light they sent an armed team up the trail. Search and rescue went in behind them once the area was cleared. They found the spot on the traverse. They found blood on the trail and on that rock, and they found where a couple of the rounds had hit. Up on the ridge, right where I'd figured, they found a place behind some boulders where somebody had lain in the grass for a while and pressed it flat, and they found a scrap of foil from a candy bar and one cigarette butt. That was all. No brass. He'd picked up every one of his casings. I told them about the other cigarette butt, the one in the can by the second lake, and they went and got that one too. Both butts came back with the same DNA profile. It didn't match anything in any database they could check, but it proved the same man had been at the second lake, and later behind those boulders on the ridge. Nobody named Wade had signed any of the trail head registers that week. There was no truck at our trail head, the spur or the north side that didn't belong to somebody they could account for. There had been no wash out on that spur road, no closure, no notice, no shuttle. Whoever he was, he'd walked in and walked out, and nobody else ever reported seeing him. And as far as I know, nobody ever has since. The detective who handled it, told me, off the record, that he'd talked to a couple of other counties and there'd been a hunter shot at from a distance in the same national forest two years earlier. No suspect, and a woman who'd reported a man following her on a trail the summer before that, no suspect. He said he couldn't prove any of it was the same person. He said he had a feeling about it. So do I. Curtis and I still hike. Not there. We went back to the backcountry the following summer, different state, and I'll admit I spent the whole first day looking over my shoulder. But we went, because Curtis said if we didn't go, then we never would, and he was right. He's married now, believe it or not. Met her in physical therapy. And every year on the anniversary, he calls me up and says, you still got that big pack of yours. And I say I do. And he says, good. That's the whole conversation. That's all it needs to be. People ask me sometimes what I learned from it, like there has to be a lesson. And I don't know. Be careful who you tell your root to, I guess. Trust that feeling in your gut, when a stranger's a little too friendly and shows up one time too many. Those are true, and I'd tell anybody that. But the thing I actually took out of those woods. is simpler than that. It's just that when it came down to it, when he was telling me to leave him and I had every reason to, it wasn't even a decision. There was never a version of that day where I walked out alone, and I think that's worth more to me than the lesson. [BLANK_AUDIO]