Aint No Mountain High Enough

I'm not sure how to classify this next story. It was definitely scary and a little unnerving while it was happening but in retrospect, it's not particularly humorous. That doesn't mean you can stop reading this now though, it's still a rather good story. I give no guarantees though.

It all begins with a little vacation a friend and I took to Spain. For one of our activities we had planned to hike up to the top of the mountain just outside of the city we were staying in. After talking to a few people they had recommended planning for it to take at least 8 hours to complete. Obviously they had no idea of what kind of peak physical condition my friend and I were in so I convinced myself that it would only take about 6 hours.

Well, the morning of the big hike finally came and my friend was feeling absolutely horrid. I decided to take a stroll around the city center and check back with my friend in an hour to see if he was feeling any better. An hour came and went and he was still in no shape to climb a mountain that day so I set out by my lonesome towards the foot of the mountain.

After walking to the base of the mountain outside of town, which alone took nearly an hour, I was still disillusioned in thinking that it would take six hours tops before I found myself back at that spot. Off I went, making good time, staying hydrated, marching along until...I reached a fork in the path. Seeing how I don't speak Spanish the sign was useless. After picking a path and sticking with it for nearly 1.5 hours now I was feeling fairly confident. That confidence was crushed when my winding path slowly disappeared and I was face to face with a sheer vertical wall of rock. It left me with no other option but to back track the 1.5 hours back to the original fork. There goes three wasted hours. Back on track now I began ascending the mountain once again. A couple of hours later I reached into my bag and pulled out my water only to find that I had less than a quarter of my nalgene left. It seems that my confidence in my progress down the wrong path led me to overzealously drink my water supply.

The summit is now coming into view and probably only an hour away, but the sun is beginning to set at this point. I remembered back to some people warning me to make sure that I don't get stuck on the mountain once the sun goes down. The top of the mountain is steep, topped with loose stones and worse yet extremely windy. After a moment of deliberation I decided to continue what I set out to do and reach the summit.

The rest of the climb up was uneventful and once I reached the top I only took a few minutes rest before I began to race the sun down. On the decent I was sliding down a loose gravel path when I saw something colorful behind a jagged boulder. I wandered over cautiously while more of it came into view. I peaked over top the rock and was shocked by what I saw on the other side. It was a skeleton wrapped in some rough clothing or blanket. I was frantic for moment. What do I do! If I don't hurry up down the mountain that could be me! But if I hurry too much I could make a careless step and find myself tumbling down and hitting my head on a rock. I snapped a few quick pictures with my camera I had packed and hurried as fast as I could while trying to control my sliding on the gravely, windy, rocky mountain.

A couple hours later I met up with my friend who had finally found his way out of the hostel and up the side of the mountain. Together we finished the track back to our room in the dark. I of coursed shared my story of finding the body on the top of the mountain with my friend. Once we reached our room I took my camera out to help corroborate my story before we went to report to the authorities. While reviewing the photo something in it caught my eye which I hadn't noticed in person. I zoomed in, again, and again. Those weren't regular teeth; they were too long and sharp. And that wasn't hair, it was too course and patchy. This wasn't the body of a human but instead I had stumbled across that of a dog. A strange sense of relief passed through me. I was glad that I hadn't stumbled upon human remains but it somehow seemed to invalidate my fear that I had felt while descending the mountain. In the end you have to let sleeping dogs lie.