As many of you saw in my holiday itinerary post, Hannah, Bret, and I were planning on hiking the challenging Fish River Canyon over holiday. This hike is a grueling, 85-kilometer "trail" through the second largest canyon in the world that usually takes 5 days to complete. For many reasons, I decided at the last minute not to do the trail, but Hannah and Bret went ahead to conquer it.
By Day 6 in the canyon, I started to worry when I hadn't heard from them.
By Day 7, the front page headline of the main newspaper, The Namibian, read "Hikers Trapped in Canyon." The "two American citizens" mentioned in the article were Hannah and Bret - anonymously famous! Unfortunately, as news reporting sometimes goes, the article is not wholly accurate and they were not in fact rescued by any Namibian ministry. They, along with 12 other hikers, became stranded in the canyon when Namibia decided to release the Hardap Dam without caring to alert the hikers already in the canyon. The sudden onslaught of water trapped the hikers, causing them to be unable to cross any of the river crossings and stranding them without food to last past day 5 or 6. TIA like whoa.
Hannah just posted a fantastic account of her story on her blog. They are okay now, but what an adventure it was!
What a harrowing story from Hannah! Once again you made the right decision.
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