Posted August 6, 2022: Sara Klotzback Reporting. I decided to write about the great big scary impenetrable forest that I conquered the other day. This forest is rather intimidating due to the name; however, once you get inside and see what it has to offer, it is so beautiful.

The big day of climbing this mountain had arrived and man was I nervous! My grandma decided it would be best to sit out this adventure, which was a great decision, because I wouldn’t quite know how to tell my family why I was coming home alone. Although I was nervous, I was quite excited to see what this insane hike was all about. It wasn’t until my driver, Ali, stopped at this nearby community and said “alright time for you to get out, the car can’t go up any further” that I knew I was in store for a long journey ahead. We began up a long dirt road and soon I started making small talk with the rest of the crazy people who decided to do this. Even though we were going up a steep incline I was persistent about talking with the group because it kept my mind off how out of shape I am.

Once the road stopped completely and the forest began I knew I knew there were gorillas in my future. Along the way we saw trees stomped on by raging elephants and big footprints the size of an ELEPHANT (bet you didn’t see that one coming). Also, didn’t get any pictures of this because I was too focused on my breathing.

We were about four hours in at this point and finally we met up with the trackers. These trackers are quite amazing at finding the gorillas. They told us to put on our masks as we were finally about to see GORILLAS!

At last, there they were. A family was lying down after their morning snack. Two babies were wrestling and annoying their father. The father was hopelessly trying to sleep. Funny how their family is quite like mine. It was like looking into a mirror and seeing my sister and me messing with our dad saying “DAD, FATHER, STEVE, DAD, DAD.” We only had one hour to watch them, otherwise the gorillas might get grumpy and attack us. But the hour flew by, only felt like a whopping ten minutes.

After the hour passed, we proceeded back down through the Impenetrable Forest. It wasn’t until we saw the long dirt road again that we realized what we had accomplished that day… quite a reassuring thing to see. Overall, it was an incredible experience that I will cherish for the rest of my life.