Lucky to be Alive

On Sunday, we headed out with the 4 wheeler and the rhino to do some riding. We park at the Hardware Ranch parking lot and then take the road that goes up to Johnson Ranch. We make the loop around and end up back where we started. It is a fun little ride that I would guess is about 40 miles or so round trip. We did this ride 2 weeks ago with Kile's brother Curtis and his nephew Nick. On this trip it was just me and Kile and the kids.
We parked the Expedition and the trailer and headed up the trail at about 2:oo. After about and hour of riding, the rhino got stuck. Actually I should say buried in the snow. While trying to get the rhino unstuck, the 4 wheeler became stuck as well. We spent the next 45 minutes trying to get them out of the snow, but to no avail. By this time we were exhausted from trying to lift the 4 wheeler out. Me, Kile, and Kiley are strong, but not that strong. Realizing that we were not going to be able to get the 4 wheeler or the rhino out of the snow, we made the decision to start walking back. We knew that we had about 4 hours of daylight left. We grabbed some water bottles and began to walk....
We estimated that we were about 15 miles from the car. It was very difficult to walk in the snow. To make it a little easier, we tried to walk in the tracks we had made on the way up. We walked and walked and walked in the deep snow and up many hills. There were times that I doubted we would ever make it back to car. Thankfully, it was still pretty warm. We knew we had to really push ourselves to get back to the car before darkness fell upon us. Walking in the snow for 15 miles is obviously too hard for a 3 year old. Kile put him on his shoulders and carried him pretty much the entire way. I was unable to help carry Destrie. I had hurt my back when we tried to lift the 4 wheeler out of the snow and I have a bad back to begin with. I am forever grateful to Kile for having the strength to carry our son to safety. I have never been so proud of Kiley and Madison. They were troopers and didn't complain. They were amazing-I would have never expected them to be so strong. We helped each other along as we continued to walk, stopping for a mere couple of minutes periodically. I am pretty sure that I was the "weakest link" during this drama. I was having a very hard time breathing and this was causing me to cough. The more I coughed, the harder it was for me to breathe. It was so very scary and I was determined not to pass out and freeze to death there in the mountains. Kile, at this point, was really struggling from carrying a 35lb. child on his shoulders in the snow and up the very steep hills. It was beginning to get dark, and we were getting increasingly more exhausted.
To make a long story short, we finally did make it back to our car. We had been walking for 5 hours and 15 minutes. The last hour of that being in the dark. It was all we could do to climb up into the car. Every inch of our bodies ached with pain. Not to mention that our feet were soaking wet and had been for the last 4 hours or so. Our faces and eyes were very sunburnt from the sun radiating off the snow packed road we walked upon that day.
This was the hardest thing I have ever had to do and I am so grateful that we had the strength to make it back to safety before it got colder and darker. We never would have survived if we had to spend the night stranded in the canyon.
Kile is currently on his way back up there right now, with Nick and some of Nick's friends to get the 4 wheeler and the rhino. The kids and I are at home, trying to recover from the exhaustion from yesterday.