On that day, getting from point A, where we were standing, to point B, which we could plainly see below us, proved to me the most difficult part of the entire expedition. Trees grow anywhere in Central Patagonia. Because it rains 363 days a year, trees can afford to take a little leeway in picking real-estate on which to set up shop. And they suddenly became our friends. After fighting them for days we clung on to each one with a newfound reverence. A misstep would mean sliding a thorough 1,500 feet to a most calamitous result. "Why, oh why, Stephen Linaweaver, didn't you use ropes to secure yourselves?" my Mom would ask later, when I mistakenly recounted the situation to her. "You ever try to use ropes in a jungle six times denser than the Amazon Mom?" Yeah, that's what I thought.

Heaved over with sopping wet loads, we dangled and prayed and lowered ourselves like pack monkeys in Nature's Bizarre Circus. It was right foot on the root, then grab the branch that had held Dave a minute before so it SNAP well, I'll just lean right hear then and roll down for a while. It was redonkulous. You could stand in mud in a sea of trees, look down off of the tips of your toes, and see the whitewater thousands of feet below. That never happened in any of the geography books I read growing up. Instructions came through the mist like a manual to put together Swedish furniture. "Hey Stephen, this one up here's a bit tricky", Mike would call back from the lead. "Cram your left toe in the root, then wedge your pack against the stump. Lower yourself with your right hand on the vines and then frontpoint it like its vertical ice." If only it was vertical ice. We actually began to give grades to each move, "That one is probably a Slick Moss 4, Sketchy Branch 5." These are grown men we are talking about here. At one point, with Mark directly below me, I slid down one tree, put both feet on a stout bundle of taut vines, and then swung, like a lazy-Susan at a Chines restaurant, to another tree ten feet to my right before touching down. Mark looked at me in total awe, "Sick vine move boss." Hey, there was method to this jungle-lowering madness. There was pride here.

When we finally got to the river bank with all of our gear it was time to rejoice. Gatorade-powder drinks round the house! Break out the extra-serving of mashed potatoes. We were sleeping next to the Rio Blanco, and the Rio Blanco would take us to the ocean. In boats. No back-tracking, no jungle climbing or jungle falling, just a one-shot deal. Never mind that it had been raining for weeks and that the river was in flood. It was Day 17 and we were outta there.

The next morning Dave and I were up early rigging the boats. We were the river guys and we were completely in our element. It was our moment to shine. Each pack was strapped tight onto the boats with two or three backups- if any boat turned over we couldn't afford to lose anything. We got the rest of the boys fired up to do some paddling and shoved off into the river. The freedom of river travel was once again upon us. The water was about the temperature of a Michigan lake in December. It was not conducive to swimming, and yet Dave and Chris were doing just that when Mark and I rounded the first bend. A rogue wave had caught them and sent them over, but they managed to get back to the boat and over to shore. The drysuits had worked- they were dry but cold. Dave was smiling. Chris wasn't. We kept paddling ahead. We were ocean bound!

Around the next bend we all pulled over and Dave and I walked downriver to scout the rapids. The river was high, and there were not many places for the excess run-off to go. The jungle rose high on either side and boxed in the river, dwarfing the bus-sized boulders which nature had strewn mid-stream. As far as we could see it was all whitewater, steep and gnarly, with sections of river that disappeared entirely in rock gardens and then roared out on the other side. Dave and I looked at each section and studied it. We threw branches into the river to read the current and see where it would take a boat. We made quick calculations of the water speed and rock placements. We were the river guys and it was our job to get us out of here. We put together years of guiding in the nether regions of the Earth, a cumulative experience of flips and rescues and near misses, and did what any self-respecting river guide would do. We walked. All of us. For four days.

"Better to go with the devil you know, than the devil you don't know. ", my Mom always says. So it was back into the jungle, just as how we remembered it. The back and forth and the bamboo snags and the root moves all became routine. On Day 19, well behind the group, I stopped to fix my pack. I looked around. My jaw physically dropped. It was the same jungle I had been fighting for weeks, and yet it stood before me with such grandeur and magnificence that I was speechless. Pablo once told me that a Danish woman, who was visiting Ayacara for the first time, wept uncontrollably when she entered the forest, because she suddenly felt so connected to something or someone that had been hidden from her all of her life. I believe her.

When I caught up with the rest of the group the maps were out the boys were at it, pointing in all directions. Our food supplies had essentially run out- no Clif Bars, no lunch, half a serving of oatmeal for breakfast and measly dinners. Chris was arguing his point in a methodical manner, as engineers do, ("Trust me, we are here.") and Pablo was slowly and softly telling him he was wrong, as Chileans do ("I see, so that is where you think we are. Interesting"). Mike was filming all of this, Dave was laughing, and Mark was dreaming of hijacking a Hostess delivery truck on I - 25 outside of Boulder. I was inclined to believe Chris in this most recent argument, but I was forced to disagree with the guy on the basis that I thought he was hiding a candy bar. I had been harboring this suspicion for days but was unable to amass any hard evidence so I kept my thoughts to myself. But I was sure that lump in the back of his pack was a wet Snickers bar, and I was not going to let him get away with it.

As Mike put his camera down, I caught a glimpse of him and saw how gaunt he looked. He had done everything we had just done, all the while carrying a 25 pound camera and the stress of having to return from this trip with good footage for a major cable network. His eyes had sunken back into his head and his wrists were frail, like the skinny guy who restocks the toilet paper shelves at Safeway. As I looked at him, I realized that Mike had said very little to me in the last few days. In my calorie-deprived state, I came to the conclusion that he was just being professional. He was cutting off his friendship with me before he was forced to eat me. We were all going crazy.