Our pace was incredibly quick, we ended up finishing the hike in about half of the prescribed time. However, along the way, particular on the mountain summit scramble, we ran into a family who was at the brink of despair. The man, was bleeding a bit from his eyebrow and hand; the woman, had a bruise on her leg; and the daughter, was crying. They were in way over their head, we weren't sure what happened, but they told us they had never done something like this before. Each of them were visibly uncertain in their own way.
We asked them if we could help them, and he directly asked if we could guide him and his family up the rest of the mountain. Thimm and I reflected on that later, and thought it was such a show of such strong character to ask this (#
courage). We of course immediately shifted gears and calmed them while providing some basic guiding.
It is so incredible how the presence of this third party (us), was able to calm and stabilize the seeming psychological distress within minutes by providing this feeling of safety and companionship. They were from Lithuania, and here on holiday, although the man worked often as an agronomist in Norway. The daughter, only 13 years old, excited spoke in English the rest of the way to the top.
Once we saw that route down was rather mellow, we said our goodbyes.
Eric McDermott