LPT: If your gut says “don’t risk it,” listen

I learned this the hard way on a hike that was supposed to be a simple 3-mile, 2-hour trail. A friend suggested taking a less obvious path. About 1.5 hours in, we still hadn’t reached the peak, and my gut said we should turn back, but we were young and fit so we thought we could do it.

What should’ve been a short hike turned into an 8-hour ordeal. We had no food, only one bottle of water each, no flashlight, dying phones, and ended up near cliffs where people were literally yelling at us not to go further because we would die.