The "road" down the mountain had been completely washed out, and the path down was a series of gullies and rivulets carved into the limestone below where the road once stood. Large boulders and landslides stood in our way, and our motor bikes (not dirt bikes) had a tough time making it across, often slipping towards deadly drop-offs. One moment I crossed a narrow wooden board that had been laid across a gorge since a landslide had knocked out the road. As I did so, I hit a small rock, that caused my wheel to jump sideways several inches, narrowly missing a plummet to my death. It got dark, and as we slowly bounced our way down, breaking as hard as we could to slow our roll, my wheels kept slipping into the rivulets, forming a track that was impossibly to steer out of, causing me to fall several times. Bae's starter had quick working on his bike, meaning his headlight wouldn't turn on, and jumping it wasn't very safe on a slow roll down the mountain. So he used a simple headlamp to light the way as he rolled it down the incline in neutral. Bruised, sweaty, sore, blistered, and tired, we finally made it to Trạm Tấu in Yên Bái province. The journey was rough, but the views were worth it. The next day we headed back up into the mountains on a different route to try to find the spine, but after a day of grueling fatigue and encountering more steep inclines where our wheels started to slip, we decided to move on.

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