When Sarah had told her friends and family that she was planning on taking a solo trip out into the wilderness in order to focus on training for cross country and to “clear her head”, they all told the university sophomore girl that she was crazy. Most didn’t believe she was going to go through with it. Most were shocked when she told them that she would be unavailable for a week in the middle of Summer.
Sarah didn’t tell anyone that she had booked a remote cabin in Monongahela National Forest. Sarah had just gotten out of a long relationship and as a sophomore runner on the West Virginia University’s cross-country team, she only wanted to focus on getting faster. She was the second fastest runner on the team. She wanted to be the fastest.
The nineteen-year-old’s training plan was simple. From her cabin in the middle of the forest, she would run to the different surrounding peaks, or knobs. She had ordered prep meals from a local service to be delivered the day she arrived at the cabin.