Image 11: Here I am still smiling before discovering that we were stranded. Image 12: Allan wearing his thin "Ferno" jacket. We worked our way to the front of the glacier. The face was massive and cavernous. We could see that there was in fact a lot of runoff water forming rivers and pools. As soon as we left the ice itself we were walking through mud, saturated from the melting ice. At first it was funny as we got our shoes filthy, but soon each step we took would sink us to our knees in the mud. The harder it was to move through the mud, the more frightening it became. This wasn't mud, it was quicksand, and we had to turn back before one of us was trapped. Even though we backtracked to where we thought we had originally entered the glacier, it wasn't the right spot. This time, we got off the ice and started marching over the mounds of dirt and rock. The mounds were 15 feet high though and kept shifting under the weight of our steps. We got to the top of one mound and saw what looked like endless piles of rocks around us with no sight of our original point of entry. Again we went back to the glacier. Each time we returned to the glacier, we were more disoriented. It was getting difficult to see and we were getting desperate. We tried to leave the glacier from every direction we could, but every time we ran into an obstacle -- either a muddy river too wide to cross or piles of dirt or bushes to thick to push through. Soon we couldn't see where we were stepping. There was no way I was going to go back through the mud where either one of us could slip completely down into an air pocket beneath the surface. This place of surreal beauty had transformed into one of terrifying reality. I had a cold sweat all over me. We returned to the ice, where the brightness of the surface reflected enough moonlight to see our steps. Through the dark we could barely make out the huge crevices in the ice. That's when I made an unsettling decision. I said to Allan, "We have to spend the night and wait for morning light." Allan didn't even want to think about that option and kept moving on. We were both pretty upset at this point -- for getting into this mess, for not paying more attention to our surroundings, for being helpless. For another agonizing half hour we did everything we could think of, but nothing worked. We were still thinking, but were panicky too. Then Allan stepped into a small pool of melted ice, completely saturating his feet with freezing water. A minute later I did the same thing. I knew we were in serious trouble. I pleaded, "We're going to get killed. We've got to stop. At least we're still alive." Allan did not want to stop -- it was like being defeated -- but he finally agreed with me. We found a small patch of dirt on the glacier's surface, about 10 feet in diameter. There was a big boulder in the middle so we decided to sit on it back to back to try to stay warm. Within a minute we were both shaking so badly we couldn't stand it. Allan immediately concluded that the only we would keep from freezing was going to be to march in a circle all night long to burn calories. As we circled each other, I made a few comments about our predicament. He kept quiet. I asked him some question just to illicit a response of some sort. When we answered me, his speech was so slurred from the cold that I couldn't understand him. Even though Allan's tolerance to cold had always been much greater than mine, he had a much lighter jacket than I did. For seven excruciating hours we marched. Several times during the night I stopped to sit on the boulder for a while. My leg and back muscles felt like they were ripping apart. The combination of strain and freezing cold made our bodies ache. At one point Allan stopped in front of me to talk for a minute. When we decided to start marching again, he tried moving his feet but they had frozen to the ground! A minute of struggling freed him. I couldn't feel my own feet. They were completely numb. During the night, we could hear the thunderous cracking of the ice through the blackness. It was intimidating. We felt very small. At six in the morning, we just barely had enough light to depart. We made a plan. No matter what obstacle we hit, we would struggle through in a more-or-less single direction. We covered each of the terrains that had turned us back, but the light made all the difference in the world. It took the fear away. We went over gravel, through the slush, streams and thick brush. We finally arrived at an old growth forest. It was nearly impossible to pass through, but we were making progress and that's all that mattered. In the middle of the woods, we encountered more incredible sights: deer skulls, hundreds of animal tracks and moss so thick that when we stepped through it, our feet sank down a foot deep. Finally we entered a clearing in the woods and saw the road that carried us to our ill-fated expedition. It was finally over. We didn't cheer though. We felt miserably. Every step hurt as we followed the road that led to our car. Inside the car we found some orange juice left over from our road trip. When we drank it, our throats seared with pain from being swollen by the cold. We wanted to know if we could see where we had walked so we crossed over some bushes along the parking area to the edge of the hill. Looking down we could see just where we had spend the night. We never knew how close we actually were. We slept for 12 hours when we returned. The next day we weighed ourselves and found that we'd each lost six pounds. That was the price of survival.