Tall Mountain Hiking

I thought I was fit until this week. A week of full-pack backpacking in the Rockies at 10,000 feet humbled me in the climbs... at some places I could only go 30 seconds before I got winded. Although even then we did 10 mile days, it showed me that I need to drop newfound pounds and peg the load on the elliptic and treadmill so I can keep up with my daughter. Hill repeats too. Anybody got a hyperbaric chamber they can loan me? Next year I'm not setting the pace... I'll be in the back instead... so we now have healthy competition brewing. I've gotten soft by hiking and bicycling with buddies my age... I completed a recent hike with them in 4 hours that took them 6. We'll see in August, my next multi-day group hike.

In any case, it was a superb week of terrific tough trails, some suicidal snowfields to transverse, and gorgeous ridge views (thanks to the pine beetle infestation and decimation of the trees).

Have you ever gotten to an impassable 45-degree steep snow and ice field hiding the trail on the end of the second day? Too far invested, I decided to grit my teeth, crouch low, use hand on high left snow, short hiking stick on right low, pray, and move it. If I had slipped, there was nothing to stop me for a few hundred feet, although I'd be rolled into a frozen Popsicle before I hit the trees in the valley below. This suicide snowpass was nature's example of beautiful treachery.

The mountains climbs were a thousand feet at a time, then descend a thousand, and then ascend a thousand again, and again. Just a little more than I'm used to, with a fraction of the oxygen I'm used to. Superb! Exhilarating! Challenging! Healing! Scary!

Tomorrow I'm back to saving the world.

- © 2008 by Willy
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