Riddle: 100 people died in a cabin on the side of a mountain all facing the same direction. What happened?

On the first day of backpacking on the Ouachita National Scenic Trail in Arkansas during Spring Break, it took me about an hour to solve this.

And it wasn’t until five nights into the trip that I figured out that the bear jokes the ORAC folks had been making weren’t without motive. Apparently, the 500-pound creatures were fresh out of hibernation and were a huge factor in our decision to put our food in trees at night.

But back to the riddle: maybe the people died in an avalanche?

“No,” Ellen, our riddler, said. “They didn’t.” But after a 24-hour steady rain and a night of ice on the trail, precipitation certainly became my enemy. Sure, giant cascades of snow were never a threat to our 11-person crew, but since I was a backpacking virgin, the few clothes I chose to bring with me got wet, stayed wet and then froze. Cotton, apparently, was about as eager to dry out as an alcoholic.

Maybe that was it; booze was the culprit. In a drunken haze, maybe the people decided to look the same direction and kill themselves?

“Nope,” the riddler said. And we marched on.

We hiked about 30 miles in the five days we were on the trail, climbing a few of the forest’s low mountains each day. It was a simple life, with no cell phones, iPods, showers, TVs, refrigerators or toilets. We woke up with the sun, hiked alongside trees and birds and slept under the stars and clouds. We chatted while we walked or moved in silence, stopping to take pictures of the misty terrain every once in a while. Eating was never a rushed process, and with our little stove and can of white gas, our cooking group managed to make burritos, spaghetti, pizzadillas and chicken and rice.

Perhaps they starved? It seemed logical that 100 people in a cabin would be stuck and would starve lying on their backs. That way, they’d all be facing the same direction, see?

Negative. A hint: they were probably all sitting.

Which is something we didn’t often do during the day but about the only thing we did at night. When you’ve got 30-40 extra pounds on your back, you see, the last thing you want to do is plop down unless you’re serious about it. This being said, we did take our time moving along the trail, slowing down for questions, breaks, lunch or blisters.

Did the people in the cabin die in a fire, all of them stuck trying to exit the one door to the outside?

There may have been a fire, she said. But still not the answer.

One of the guys made a fire the second night on trail, but after the rain and ice the next night – when we needed one the most – all the wood was too wet. Luckily there was a shelter for us to sleep in to keep us from getting drenched, but it still got cold.

Aha! The people in the cabin froze to death!

“Nope,” a fellow hiker hinted. “Think about the cabin.”

I hit myself on the forehead.

“Their airplane crashed, didn’t it?”