I had an interesting conversation with a young mom from Tamaqua, who ventured to hike Glen Onoko with her middle-school-aged daughter last week.

Like many others, they wanted to hike the trail one more time before it closed.

The mom took steps to ensure their safety, with perhaps the most important step being, she took her daughter’s cellphone.

She didn’t want her daughter distracted by trying to take pictures or by hearing the tones signaling a text message. They wore good footgear and carried snacks and water.

According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, the third most common source of injury in the outdoors is hiking, second only to snowboarding and sledding. What’s revealing is the reasons for the injuries, which are attributed to three main things: lack of knowledge, lack of experience and poor judgment.

I was one of those “poor judgment” hikers one spring. I was trekking through New Hampshire’s White Mountains, and stubbornly trying to continue although the trail was covered in snow and ice.

But I’d made it from a starting point near Dartmouth to Pinkham Notch, where I’d attempt to hike through the Presidential Mountains, starting with Mount Washington.

I had to abandon my first attempt, as dense fog made progress impossible. I found the weather station on the summit and bailed out by walking down the auto road, back to the main road.

The next day – I’m a slow learner – I tried it again. Hikers have to check in at a ranger station, and winds were predicted to stay below 50 miles per hour above tree line as I started.

After several hours, conditions worsened, and I made a critical and dumb decision. With gusts literally knocking me down, I decided it was just as far to go back as it was to go forward to my planned destination, Lake of the Clouds lodge. The lodge wouldn’t be open, but its basement was always left open for hikers.

And it got bad, to the point where I’d come to my senses and realize I was lying in the snow and didn’t know how long I’d been lying in the snow. I was freezing and exhausted, and it was getting dark.

When I made it to the lodge and found the basement door, there were two hikers already inside. One of them leapt from his warm sleeping bag and stuffed me into it.

As I began to thaw, and they made me soup and tea, I felt so happy and incredibly lucky. But then about an hour after dark, a park ranger opened the basement door.

He was a young man, wearing a headlamp, his face a mixture of concern and resignation. He’d been sent to look for me, to make sure I was safe for the night.

Because of me, this devoted young man had braved horrible weather conditions. I found out later that winds had gusted to 100 miles per hour. My feeling of relief turned to dejection, shame, regret.

The great majority of people who hiked the Glen Onoko trail did so without incident and enjoyed the trail’s beauty. Most often those who had to be rescued – or died – either weren’t prepared for the trail’s difficulty, used poor judgment, weren’t wearing the proper gear, or allowed themselves to be distracted, and fell.

On another trail, in another state, I once was one of those people unprepared for a trail’s difficulty. Through my bad decisions I put someone’s life in danger. That’s the thing that had to stop happening at Glen Onoko. There had to be a way to stop putting Emergency Responders at risk.

Until there’s another way, closing the trail is the only answer. Hopefully, officials can come up with a way to reopen the trail sometime in the future.