They danced and sang all night.

That had not been the plan, of course. The plan was to have dinner after a full day of cycling, hiking and hot tubing, and to be cozy and warm in their bed at the Orcas Hotel listening to the wind and rain whip around outside as they fell asleep.

But on Saturday night, after one last hike, really an easy stroll, Kosta Demoore, a computer programmer, and his wife Elia, a student, from Redmond, ended up lost by Mountain Lake in Moran State Park.

So, they spent the night dancing and jogging in place to keep warm as the wind raged around them, chilling them to their bones, and singing in the rain to keep their spirits up as they waited for dawn.

They say they are experienced hikers, but they set off around Mountain Lake with no cell phone, watch, flashlight, food or water.

“It seemed like the easy walk we had been told it was,” Elia said. “The ground was flat. It really wasn’t much of a hike for us. We were not sure of the distance but we saw a sign that said it was a three-mile loop and we figured a loop would bring us back to the car.”

They took their time. Kosta was stopping frequently to take pictures. After a day of rain, it was sunny and warm in the late afternoon and early evening. They passed another hiker as it began to get a little darker but there was still a “reasonable amount of light.” They thought it could not be much further once they saw the other hiker.

“It got very dark, very quickly, and we started walking very fast,” Kosta said. “We came to a trail sign that offered us a choice between Twin Lakes and something else and we were unsure of what to do. We had no idea how far Twin Lakes was, and we were disorientated about where things were. ‘Should we go on or retrace our steps?’

Elia said they tried to go back and followed the trail for a while but soon realized they had lost it.

“We kept running into trees,” Elia said. “We were stomping and tripping on logs and twigs. We couldn’t see in front of us, only what was in the distance. We knew we needed to get back to the lake so we could follow it.

“I was in front and I kept falling down the bank,” she said. “I couldn’t see the edge. I was scared at that point. We did find the trail and we kept going back and forth along it but it would veer off into the woods and then we would feel forced to got back to the wider area of the trail where we could see.”

Kosta said that they finally decided there was no way, there were going to get back that night and it was dangerous to keep falling. He felt that they were going to be there until light so they needed to find a place to rest.

They settled down at a point on the trail where the moonlight provided the most light and tried to sleep. It was quiet. But, it was then they realized how cold it was. How cold the ground was.

They were wearing layers of clothes and had on hats, coats and gloves. Kosta was wearing boots but Elia only had on tennis shoes.

“We were really okay until the rain started, the wind came up and it got really dark,” Kosta said. “So dark we could not see the stars. The wind made this eerie whooshing sound through the trees.”

They quickly became soaked and even colder. Elia was worried about hypothermia. They decided they needed to keep moving to keep warm and that sleeping would be a bad idea. That’s when the dancing, jogging in place, aerobics and singing started.

“We did a lot of things to stay warm and to get through the long hours,” Kosta said. “We had no concept of time at all. Had several hours past or several minutes?”

Elia’s feet became wet quickly. She was worried her toes would fall asleep and that was where the hypothermia would start.

“It was so dark and stormy. The rain and wind were violent. It was so cold and the rain was freezing,” she said. “We were soaked from head to toe.”

When the rain stopped it became a lighter dark, but by that point, they were exhausted. They worried that if they moved forward there tiredness might cause them to miss the edge of the trail, fall into the lake or down a bank, and seriously hurt themselves.

“We still couldn’t see anything and did not know how far anything was,” Elia said. “Several times we thought it was getting lighter and then would realize it wasn’t. It was the longest night in history. After so many hours it was hard to pick up your feet.”

Finally, with the dawn they were able to see well enough to make their way back the more than two miles to the car, which they reached at 7 a.m. They had been lost for more than 12 hours.

They were tired and sore but their zeal for hiking and Orcas is undiminished. After hot showers, water, food and sleep they could look on the experience as an adventure.

“We made a lot of mistakes in hindsight,” Kosta said. “But, we really did not have a lot of choice once we were in the situation. We just had to stay focused and get through it.”