"Liza, turn your headlamp off and look up. The stars are absolutely incredible."

"Absolutely not, its taking all my willpower to not break down crying right now, and pitch darkness might be my last straw. Please turn yours back on. Are you still following the GPS?"

The universe, with its cruel sense of timing, chooses this moment for my headlamp to die. I realize I don't have enough emotional or physical energy left to panic.

We're somewhere in the Sierras, on a trail others have ominously nicknamed "death loop." There's something uniquely humbling about being stranded in the mountains at night - we're surrounded by boulders the size of cars, in the background is the grand landscape of the mountains. We sit down while I wait for my headlamp to charge, listening to water hit granite somewhere below. I'm curled up in a ball because the temperature has dropped below freezing, and I can feel the cold seeping through my jacket, settling into my body.

"My entire net worth to be out of here right now." I start laughing – almost hysterically – at how desperate I've become. The laughter fades into silence as I watch the blinking charging light on my headlamp.

Between us, we have perhaps half a liter of water and our food ran out hours ago. It's now around 11 PM, and while we should have been back at the car two hours ago, I keep telling myself that we're not in any serious danger.

We traverse the edge of a lake, picking our way through an endless field of massive rocks. Our progress has become a strange dance with my failing headlamp – twenty minutes of boulder hopping, then a stop to charge. I'm hoping and praying for a normal trail - anything but these never-ending boulder fields.

"Maybe we should stop for the night," my friend suggests for the third time. And for the third time, I refuse. I've spent a lot of time in the mountains, and have never been in a situation that has required me to do an unplanned overnight stay. We've also both run several marathons throughout our lives - we can walk another ten miles.

But the mountain seems to have other plans. My acid reflux, triggered by hours of adrenaline and lack of food, finally weakens my determination. "Fine, we'll sleep."

We find shelter under a bush, hoping it will insulate us and block some wind. I tuck my pants into my socks, layer my windbreaker over my insulated jacket, use my backpack as a pillow, and curl into myself, mentally reciting everything I know about preventing hypothermia. The shivers are normal, I remind myself – it's only when you start feeling warm and cozy that you need to worry.

"What is the probability of us dying right now?"

"The probability of us not dying is around 90%."

"That's not funny at all."

"Just try to fall asleep."

I get up to do jumping jacks every ten minutes or so, moving in circles to stay aware of my surroundings in the darkness. Just as I finally settle into this routine, my friend's finger presses against their lips. My exhaustion gives way to confusion, then understanding – there's an animal nearby, probably a bear.

Suddenly our bush feels absurdly vulnerable. The old saying loops in my head: If it's brown, lie down. If it's black, fight back. If it's white, say goodnight. Even though California's black bears are the least threatening, my exhaustion barely allows me to walk, let alone defend myself.

We walk around the bush and the bear, seeing we're ready to confront it, bolts off into the darkness. As long as it doesn't return within ten minutes, we're safe. But if it does, we're probably going to get hurt. My fear of the dark now seems quaint compared to the very real possibilities of hypothermia, bear attack, or becoming another cautionary story of hiking gone wrong. The next ten minutes stretch like hours, with our hypervigilance amplifying every sound.

An hour later, I make the decision that today is not the day we die here. There are things to be done, places to be visited, people to be loved, startups to be built😭 and so we must get up and keep walking. I think that we are very close to delusion taking over rational thought - the probability of us dying if we sleep at below freezing is actually closer to highly probable. So we walk, ten more miles. I would describe these ten miles as the most physically challenging I've ever experienced in my life - more difficult than running a marathon, even after hitting "the wall".

And so it's difficult to describe the sense of relief that I felt when I saw the car. Realizing that we did it, without getting hurt or attacked by a bear or being evacuated or, fairly importantly, without any argument, makes me feel like an absolute superhuman. And the thought that we now get to rest in warmth, eat food and drink electrolyte water brings me an incredible amount of joy.

There are many people in my life that do not resonate with the physical extremism that I sometimes partake in. I am a strong advocate for doing hard things, for anything but mediocrity, and that extends beyond the intellectual realm. Running a marathon on 1 hour of sleep, whatever this death loop adventure was, rock climbing, hiking 20 miles a day for 30 days, sleeping on a camping mattress for months - these are all experiences that helped me become incredibly physically and mentally resilient. So I look back at this experience and think that it was one of my favourites throughout this summer because I walked out a completely new person. It's been about a month since this happened, and I still feel like as long as I am not in that situation, life is honestly so good. I've even stopped cooking my vegetables because as long as I have food, it doesn't really matter how it tastes. My bar for fear, discomfort and pain is at an all-time high, and this very well translates into my personal and professional life. Barry's workouts are now fun, and running a 10k is enjoyable, and getting up at 4:30am is also pleasant because at least I have food, water and am not freezing to death.

And so because I'm a little bit crazy and enjoy pushing my limits, I felt compelled to attempt death loop once more two weeks later. Clearly we were humbled by the mountain to the extreme, and I wanted an opportunity to prove to myself and to the mountain that I am highly capable. This time instead of starting at noon, I start at 6 am, and with an adequate amount of supplies. I pass by all those now-familiar spots, which seem just as gnarly in the daylight. It's still incredibly challenging, in fact, there are several points where I sat down about to cry, wanting to be back at my car, wanting to hug someone that I love. But I finished the trail in 11.5 hours and felt absolutely incredible about it.

2 months ago my best friend and roommate was leaving our home. I was at a point in my life where I was frustrated by my own indecision over what I wanted my next step in life to be. Usually, I take the philosophy that a decision is better than no decision, and most decisions are reversible. But I really wanted the next phase of my life to last at least 2 years, which seems like a significant amount of time given the numbers of years I've been alive. Not having a strong gut feeling for what's next, coupled with our lease ending and my best friend going away, I set out to do a one month trip in my car in the Eastern Sierras. Extended to two months, I'm now just about coming to the end of this trip,

The deeper reason behind why I specifically wanted to live in my car, was that I wanted to regain my extreme energy, passion and determination that I usually bring to my work. I felt that over the last year, which involved leaving a startup that I loved to try college and academia, had sucked out a lot of my passion. The last time I felt a strong sense of direction and desire for a particular domain was after similarly, spending 2 months living in our car with my mom in the Canadian rockies.

These two months have been filled with incredible adventure - several near death experiences, spontaneously meeting someone I seriously considered entering a relationship with, being out of service for days, popping my tire 50 miles away from other humans (not knowing how to change it), having my car broken into twice, spending so much time alone, spending a lot of time driving, often only seeing humans once a week, matcha lattes with honey and protein bars being my only source of sugar.

About a week ago, I was climbing a mountain, not expecting it to be the last one I would summit in quite some time. About a mile from the top, it came to me that I actually feel an incredible amount of energy and clarity towards the next step of my life. Likely caused by some shift in the chemical cocktail of my brain, my mindset change felt like night and day. I called my mom and my two best friends, exclaiming that I finally fixed my burnout.