Post Navigation Fun

One of the things that our commanders try to instill in us during training is the need to be ready for the unexpected. During a mission you may receive orders that require you to adapt your plans. The preferred way to train for this (at least among our commanders) is when you are the most tired. Therefore, usually once a week we have something that is what they call an "unplanned act." Meaning that at the end of the week, after you have finished whatever your training may be for the week you are asked to do one more thing when you are at the height of exhaustion.
However, at this point in our training the "unplanned acts" are rather predictable. All you have to do is look around, pick the tallest mountain in the area and know that at the end of the week you will be climbing that mountain while carrying one or two stretchers.
After finishing our week of navigation we were asked to climb Mount Tavor. We spent the entire week navigating all night and barely sleeping. When we got on the bus Thursday morning we all new that we would be getting off rather quickly. As expected, we got off the bus 10 minutes later and were told to open up a stretcher.
We then spent the next hour and a half walking vertically up the mountain. In the pictures above you can see what we did. The first picture is of Mount Tavor taken from the end of our navigation (I had a feeling we might be getting a closer look at it).
I was pretty surprised out how well the team did. Aside from being exhausted from lack of sleep, this was our first navigation carrying added weight, so everyone's shoulders and backs were pretty sore as well. It turns out though that our team was able to scale the mountain the quickest. Our commander later explained that by the time we had reached the top and walked back down the mountain the other teams were only just arriving to the top.
I know that these "unplanned acts" are pretty annoying at the time, but they definitely give you the confidence that is crucial if you were suddenly asked to carry an injured soldier miles up and down mountains. I feel certain that if a situation ever arrived where we were asked to do that very thing we would be just fine.