EDC

Sorry if this post is kind of incoherent, I just got back from a trip to the mountains with a school club. For some reason I decided to not bring my keychain out into the snow, thinking it wouldn’t be worth losing my keys and gear out there… I also didn’t bother charging my flashlight’s batteries before I left, thinking I wouldn’t be using it too often.

Anyway, while I’m waiting for a ride back to our cabin with a few of my friends at the head of a snow trail, the sun starts to set and it gets really dark, really fast. Apparently our rides back got lost and we ended up waiting for two hours, much later than scheduled, leaving us in the dark. I wasn’t planning on staying outdoors that night.

After messing around with the snow for a while, we hear a young girl calling for help off in the distance, back up the trail. Soon after, an older woman with a pretty dim incan flashlight comes up to us and asks if we hear that yelling; we confirmed. She said she saw a woman on the floor and some other figure in a beige jacket over her, so she wasn’t sure what kind of help the woman on the floor needed and asked us to accompany her up the trail (she had already called 911, etc…)

As we were going up the trail, I pulled out my light to illuminate the path. Click — and nothing. Of all times, of all places, my battery dies. My backup light on my keys was left at the cabin. I felt horrible about it — unprepared and inadequate. Luckily I turned my friends on to EDC so they had their lights… Nothing like a typical EDC light popular around here, but adequate 3xAAA aspherics and an iTP EOS A3.

We eventually found her in the snow. She twisted her knee on the trail and couldn’t walk without help, so we helped her down the path and used our flashlights to illuminate the way and identify any dangerous terrain for her. The other person with her was her niece who was calling for help, not an attacker or anything. Everything turned out okay.

I don’t claim to be a survivalist or outdoorsman of any sort, and I probably didn’t handle the situation the best I could have. But if my friends didn’t EDC lights, walking down the path would’ve been way more dangerous. I just thought things could’ve gone a little more smoothly if the woman and her niece carried a flashlight to help navigate the snow trail, and even a whistle to signal for help. We barely heard her screaming “Help!,” which I imagine is because they were quite a ways off, her voice isn’t that strong and the cold air would just make her screaming “sink” into the ground. I thought I should’ve had a backup light, battery, or at the very least thought to charge my batteries before leaving.

Not really sure if this is worth posting here, but I’m hoping my readers can understand what I was going through, at any level at least. Just wanted to share this anecdote to serve as an example of one of those ‘you never know’ situations.

Take care and carry on…