During the night, I woke up a few times to go to the toilet or to put more wood on the fire. The temperature inside the hut slowly became pleasant, but my two companions began to cough. This was worrying as Mike started to run a fever.

On the other hand, the hut was getting cozy as the temperature rose. True, there was no light, so we had to live in semi-darkness with the flames as our only source of light, but that was not a life-threatening problem. Well, as long as you don't call the absence of any social media a life-threatening event; however, we knew it would be like this since we first came here.

Our clothes were still wet, and I wasn't sure if they were going to be completely dry by tomorrow. There was no way we could get them to dry properly; all we had were some chairs that we lined up around the fireplace.

Outside, it continued to rain with the occasional snowflakes.

Hew did not come. He was probably waiting in town for the rain to stop.

When Tom needed to go to the bathroom, I woke Mike up to help him. After that, we talked for several hours by the firelight, drinking some more whiskey. It was no longer needed 'for medical reasons,' but it suited the warm and fuzzy atmosphere well.

Mike got tired first and turned on his side to sleep because he wasn't feeling well. Tom and I continued to talk until we emptied the bottle, there wasn't much left in it anyhow, and then we went to bed, too, with the fire burning peacefully in its place.

In my slumber, I thought I needed to close the window: there was noise from the street. Before I could realize that I was not home, I was rudely awakened when the door was suddenly opened, and some dark figures rushed into the room.

I jumped to my feet in shock to hit my head on a barn, yelled in pain, and ended up looking at the intense light coming from several flashlights while rubbing my hard-earned bump on my head.

One voice spoke to me: “Oh, dear, take care!”

Another voice observed: “It looks like we did not have to panic!"

Mike moaned, trying to put a hand between his eyes and the light:

“Pa?”

Tom grumbled something and pulled the blanket over his head, unveiling his feet in the process.

It took a while for my foggy brain to finally understand: we were going to be rescued… by what appeared to be an army rescue unit.

We've been given dry clothes and blankets.

We learned that Hew had his own little adventure; he had to leave his car stranded somewhere in the woods and had to walk through the rain back to town. He eventually made it home and told the story to his parents, who called the other parents. As they were also unable to come to our rescue, Mike's father had pulled some strings, and the end result was now in the cabin with two military vehicles outside.

Oh well... parents.

It was breaking dawn when we arrived with our new transport at the base of the mountain, where the assembled families were waiting for us in a kind of improvised base camp.