Written by instructor, Emma Taylor
As Outward Bound instructors, we provide our students with challenges to help them grow resilience and strength to overcome adversity. We teach them compassion and how to find fun in hard times. As we facilitate these experiences, we train our students but often find ourselves being trained as well.
DAY ONE: THE DAY HELENE HIT
On Friday, Sept 27th, Hurricane Helene hit while we were at NCOBS’s Table Rock Base Camp. There were four student crews at base: three crews from Girard College’s 9th grade class who were on their final days of course, and a semester crew on just their second day. I woke up around 4:00 AM from falling trees. We live in the forest, so a tree coming down once in a while isn’t anything crazy, but I knew something was up when it kept happening.
By the time I left my cabin for our morning meeting, the winds were howling, the power shut off, and our program director made the call that Girard wasn’t going to leave that morning; we would wait until the wind and rain was forecasted to die down at 3:00 PM. A large group of 53 staff members, Girard instructors, and students sheltered in place in our main lodge building. The semester crew sheltered in another building at base camp.
Around 9:30 AM is when things started to get real, and OUR Outward Bound course began. We watched as Rose’s creek, normally a small trickle, turned into two raging rivers. Water rose to cover part of our driveway and trees were coming down like crazy. In uncertainty, we made a plan to wait until the wind died down before sending a team of staff to scout the conditions of the road. It wasn’t until around 1:30 PM when that time came around, and the news wasn’t good. There were twelve trees down between the lodge and our gate, ¼ mile in distance. We started coming to terms that these students were not going to be leaving basecamp, and we got to work.
The students’ course director, Lark, delivered the news to the students, served with ice cream that was now on its way to a liquid state. We readjusted our plan- just like you do so many times on an Outward Bound course. While stressful, it was going to be fine. We’ve done hard things before and we will do hard things again. Our Program Director managed the different roles for us as she managed communication with the outside world. After getting on the phone with our safety director in Asheville, we learned that things in the outside world were bad. We were on our own to try and get out.
DAY TWO: SATURDAY
A friend and I woke up at 6:00 AM to hike as far as we could on our “upper road”, one of three dirt roads out of base camp. We couldn’t have been prepared for the scene of how destroyed our forest and home was. After determining that there were too many downed trees and destruction on the upper road for us to clear, we went down to the middle road. With lower angle banks, there were less trees down here, and it seemed more hopeful. We sent two chainsaw teams and a pair of runners out to report on the conditions of the middle road and got to work on getting the Girard students out. While this was going on, our students were going through different stations with different staff members. When I wasn’t out scouting, I took on the kitchen manager role providing and preparing meals for all 53 of us, sans power and water. #goingoutwardbound
In the afternoon, I got a call out to my mom about what was happening, and she gave me an update from the outside world. Thousands of people unaccounted for, entire towns underwater, and Western NC was universally out of power and water. The news was overwhelming: the communities around us were destroyed, people were dying, and we were trapped in the woods, feeling helpless.
When the chainsaw team got back, it wasn’t good news. There was a drainage that got clogged, and the river rerouted and cut a hole through the road leaving less than a foot of dirt above it, making it unsafe to drive across. The scouting team came back just before dark with news of the 25-30 sets of ten or more trees bundled and blocking the middle road. It would take us at least a week to be able to clear this with our two chainsaws and limited supply of fuel. Oh boy.
Obstacles kept popping up, including a major mudslide ⅓ mile from base. By the end of the day, we came to the reality that we weren’t going to be able to get out of here alone, and got a saving grace that we wouldn’t have to. We were able to get in contact with Outward Bound staff that were able to get out of Asheville and come together in Charlotte. They became our support team on the outside.
On an Outward Bound course, we teach that in the bad times you have two options: you can be miserable, or you can choose to keep moving forward and climb back up. By just changing our mentality, we can have fun through the bad. I knew this to be true, but I’ve never struggled more with choosing it. When we woke up yesterday, we were tossed into our own Outward Bound course where we were once again living as students, and every day was full of surprises and hurdles to overcome that we had never seen before. It was harder than anything else our already challenging season threw at us, and we only had each other to get through it.
DAY THREE: SUNDAY
After the late-night news that the middle road wasn’t going to work, we went out early the next morning to scout our last option: the lower road. We got 4.5 miles down the road to a washout that was impassable. You can only imagine the reaction. We walked back, feeling defeated. We had started receiving news of the destruction the storm had caused in other parts of Western North Carolina and the news was sinking in. Our walk back was the first time there had been silence, and our brains could begin to process what had happened. The support we had was within one another.
When we got back to basecamp, we were hit with incredible news: we had power and running water back! A wave of relief and a shower had never felt so good. We got news that the forest service was officially sending a team in to help with tree removal to help get us out. Okay, things were turning around! Our Girard students all got a shower and a clean outfit washed in laundry.
DAY FOUR: MONDAY
On day four, our students switched between playing games, doing service on base roads, and karaoke. It was their spirits that helped to keep ours up through the evacuation effort. The forest service would clear the four miles to a washout that was impassable by car, and Team Table Rock would clear a path for the students through all the trees from base to that washout. Both teams got to work and by late afternoon we learned the roads had OFFICIALLY been cleared! We prepared gear and lunches, and when we delivered the news to the students, the group erupted into screams of joy, hugs, and tears… us included. We hardly slept that night with excitement at what was going to happen. We were going to get our students home!
DAY FIVE: TUESDAY HIKE OUT
At 8:00 AM, our students dawned with daypacks and staff with heavy backpacks full of their belongings to set forth to finally leave base camp. While we were handling our side of this, the amazing Cedar Rock base team was mobilizing to help with our evacuation of students. They drove over four hours the previous night with four 4×4 trucks and two 15 passenger vans to meet us on the other side of the washout. We left that morning and hiked two miles through, over, and under downed trees. For most, it was the first time they were able to see the scale of the damage. Entire hillsides of trees flattened, chunks of road disappeared, and previously hidden skies opened up. When we came around the corner and saw our friends waiting to receive our students, it was a relief like no other. Everyone was going to be okay.
For most it was an indescribable experience. As most Outward Bound graduates know, there’s only so much that you can tell someone who wasn’t there and hasn’t seen what happened on course. They didn’t meet the people, they weren’t there for those late nights, they weren’t with you when you got the bad and good news. You can and will talk for days, months, and for future years of your life about it. Yet somehow there are no words to describe it at all, as much as you sure try. And that’s kind of like this essay, I sure can try but there’s no full way to capture it. The five days post Helene were the craziest, hardest Outward Bound days of most of our careers and lives, yet as I’m writing this, I find little parts of myself grateful.
Grateful for my community and the ways we showed up,
Grateful to remember how inspiration our students are,
Grateful for the Outward Bound community for their unwavering support,
Grateful for the forest service for being essential in us being able to leave basecamp,
Grateful that WNC showed up in such a powerful way after such an awful tragic thing,
Grateful to learn that I could, and I can.
Hurricane Helene has done more damage than anyone can begin to comprehend, and Western North Carolina desperately STILL needs your help! There are many different ways to support this area including volunteering and donations. Anything helps!
