quite thirsty since our last drink on the summit several hours aqo. We Could have used some food, hut again, that was not a great concern.

We decided that we did not have enough light to try and find the right canyon to our car. Since we did not have a map, we could not tell which canyon to pick anyway. Therefore, our objective was to find a canyon with water in it and go there. Couple of the canyons that we checked all the shrubs were brown, finally we found one with bright green trees on the bottom. This was it, and we headed for the trees. We were in luck, there was water in the stream bed. We drank our fill, and filled each of our canteens, and continued to walk. At a great distance we could see couple of liqhts, which we were sure to be farmhouses. However, we new that we could not get there tonight. We came upon a dirt road and decided to follow it in the direction we believed the cars to be. The walk was very pleasant, bats and great owls were flying close to us as if trying to check us out. We stumbled till midnight, and then we decided to try to get some sleep. While It was fairly warm, at night it can get pretty cool. Fortunately Donn found one of those emergency space "blankets" (like tinfoil) in his pack, so both of us were all night fighting over it.

Next morninq we hiked out to the farmhouse, which was on an Indian Reservation, and asked the man for a ride back to the cars.

This was my first bivouac, since then, I have done it three more times, but none of them were as pleasant as this. I guess the lessons to be learned are obvious, but just in case:
CARRY A MAP AND USE IT
BE SURE YOU HAVE MORE THAN ENOUGH WATER
ALWAYS BRING EXTRA CLOTHING
IF LOST, GO TO THE LAST RECOGNIZABLE LANDMARK


Maris Valkass
Maris
 
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