Unforgettable Adventure

It was the summer of 2020, right after three long months of COVID lockdown, Hashim and two of his other friends were on a short vacation in Upstate New York to unwind after spending months at home including most of the summertime. They decided to stay in different hotels and airbnbs throughout the trip because it was easier to explore different places in the upstate. Staying in one place would be too boring and there wasn’t much to do in one place so they had to book different places for different nights. In their last two days they stayed in a one family airbnb house. It used to get dark and creepy at nightfall because there were trees filled forests around the neighborhood they stayed in. Especially because they came from the city, they were used to seeing a lot of lights in the city that never sleeps. Upstate is totally different from the city in the day time and during nightfall. There’s less people around, less stores, there are mountainous regions, waterfalls and tons of trees. It was nothing to be scared of because there was a Sheriff office right next to their bnb. Although they didn’t stay home much because they were excited to find things to do around the place. Hashim and their friends Siyam and Tanim were having a hard time finding anything to do due to everything being shut down because of Corona. Since there were mountainous regions and waterfalls Hashim asked the crew “Y’all wanna do cliff jumping?” while they were stopped for gas and food. Now, for Hashim, he had done cliff jumping a year before so he told everything exciting and exhilarating about coasteering. All it took was to convince Siyam because he’s also an adventurous person and majority votes decide where to go. After a couple of minutes they’ve decided to go coasteering some of the biggest cliffs in Lake George, NY. They drove all the way from Willmington upstate to Lake George to hike up to the cliffs called Calves Pen. 

They parked their car in the parking lot far outside of the massive waterbody with green mountainous regions surrounding it. There were tons of people in the water partying in their boats and yachts. After about 30 minutes of walking through the coasts of the lake Tanim started complaining about how he was tired and couldn’t go anymore. That didn’t stop Hashim and Siyam from still wanting to go cliff jumping so they had to push Tanim to keep on going with them as they started pointing out all whining problems and how “he should stop being so lazy and start moving his fatass more often”. They hiked, and walked the mountain for a few hours to reach the cliffs. No matter how far they went, the cliffs didn’t seem to be found. Meanwhile Tanim kept on telling them to turn back because they didn’t have much time before the sun set and they weren’t carrying any flashlights to hike back from the middle of nowhere. Siyam and Hashim didn’t want to leave without at least jumping in the water because they put in too much effort to quit now. As they kept on walking unwilling to give up and go back after hiking for over 3 hours, they figured that there was a small cliff, about 20ft deep. Tanim and Siyam can’t swim so they stopped at the Walmart beforehand to pick up some life jackets for them. As they stand on top of that small cliff, Siyam tells Hashim “I mean we could jump from here but only if you do it first and you have to wait in the water for us to jump in case these life jackets don’t work”. Hashim could swim so he went ahead and jumped in the water, and waited until Siyam jumped in, fortunately the life jackets worked just fine. Tanim was just standing on the cliff agitated and couldn’t bring himself to jump off even with the life jacket on. He has a fear of drowning so he needed some extra push from his friends. Siyam and Hashim climbed back up the cliff to convince Tanim to coasteer and experience it for himself. After a couple of dives they finally convinced Tanim to jump and they were waiting for him to do so. The trick is to jump a little farther off the cliff so you don’t hit the ground because the coast is full of rocks at the bottom. You can also fold your legs in case you jump too much near the coast. After explaining all the basic tricks they finally made Tanim jump. It was all fun and games until they saw his left pinky toe split open a little and his foot was bleeding out in the water. He made the worst mistake by diving too much near the coast and hit some rock at the bottom and cut open his left pinky toe. They helped Tanim get back up from the water and Hashim used his tank top to tie up the wound and somewhat stop the bleeding, telling him to “relax your foot, don’t strain it or put any pressure on it”. It was almost dawn and they were waiting in the middle of the forest with their injured best friend. They are unable to hike back to the car, especially a 3 hour hike with Tanim being wounded and it was almost dawn. They were exhausted, tired and scared because there wasn’t any way they could make it back in that condition. Fortunately, they had their cellphones with them and they immediately called 911. In a matter of 5-10 minutes 2 Sheriff showed up with a boat to pick them up and take care of Tanim’s injured foot. The Sheriff took them to their base on the other side of the coast, emergency nurses picked up Tanim from the boat and tended to his wound while the Sheriff wrote down all of our information. They got cleaned up and had to explain to the Sheriffs that their car was parked on the other side of the lake, so the Sheriffs, as nice as they were, dropped them off over there, the coast closer to their car. That didn’t mean they were off the hook just yet, the car was still 30 minutes away because the parking lot wasn’t by the lake it was outside the trails and the forest. It was a little dark by the time Hashim and Siyam took turns being Tanim’s crutches. After about 30 minutes of carrying around Tanim they made it to the car and were able to go to a hospital to get Tanim some stitches and medicines. With all of this going on the three friends haven’t informed their parents about the incident because they’ll worry too much and make it a big deal out of it. They laughed the whole night about the whole situation because it was incredible and it’ll always be an unforgettable experience for them. Tanim himself had a blast because of how unexpected the day was for them and they got to live through it and survive at the end of the day. There were no regrets for either of them because you can’t replace an adventure like this especially with some of your favorite people in the world. Cliff jumping or coasteering is recommended but be very careful if you don’t want to get hurt. Even though the cliff jumping didn’t exactly go as they planned, it was still an amazing adventure that they can always look back at and share a laugh together.