Date: 2014-05-13
From: dispersed camping at Calvary Rock

To: Doyle's River Cabin
Miles today: 9.5
Weather: overcast clouds

Our group is not holding up too well. We started this hike with 7 hikers and two guides. One hiker left the second day due to an ankle injury. The guides arranged for a car to pick him up and hiked with him out to the road. One of our group is very ill and another has a knee injury. We are trying to figure out how to get both of them out in the morning. Sounds like we will again start the day tomorrow with a hike to the road to arrange for pickups. I will be fighting the impulse to hop into the car with them, that's for sure! So what is the cause of the drop-out rate and incessant whining on my part? Day 3 was all about limits. The trail is taking me to both physical and mental/emotional limits throughout the day and it is hard to know which kind of limit I am pushing against. It was unseasonably hot today and that made things even more strenuous. After a couple of hours of the usual up and down hiking, the climb to Black rock outcrop was excruciating. How bad could it be you ask? Let me see if I can paint a picture for you. So take your treadmill and move it into the sauna and, just for jollies, add a sun lamp. Alright, we have the weather conditions in place. Oh, you should already do 3 miles before you start this hill hump from hell. Okay, a little tired and sufficiently overheated, now put 35 pounds on your back including at least 10 pounds of a combination of tortillas, wraps, and pita, because apparently flattened, gluten-loaded products are a hikers best friend. Now make sure that pack is "balanced", which I have taken to mean that it digs with equal pain and discomfort into your shoulders and low back. If you are stooped over like an old crone, you probably have it just right. Now set the incline at around 15 degrees. You see, Blackrock is an 800 foot climb in about a mile of trail. You can back that incline down to 12 and crank it to 20, but for this exercise, we will keep it at an average of 15. Okay, you are hot, tired and burdened. Start walking. Oh wait! Have someone throw rocks at your feet. Small and slick little rocks that make you slip and slide. Round ankle turning rocks that seemed embedded into the soil but are loose and just lying in wait for you personally to step on them and set them free. Thin sharp rocks that jab into your foot. And speaking of feet, forget those awesome shoes you wear to the gym. Put on some ankle high leather hikers that weigh about 9 pounds each and enjoy the sensation of that troublesome hotspot on your heels turning into blisters as you slide back into your heels over and over on this climb.   Now do this for about a mile so you can join the group at the top for a lunch of something in a wrap. Although the wraps will not come out if your pack. I have been carrying the same food for three days and apparently it is special and meant to be eaten on our last day. Yeah. The hump was that bad. So I was pretty strung out and bloated from more gluten and tofu after Blackrock and we still had 5+ miles to go. Now the plus sign after that 5 is important. What I would think of as 5+ miles is somewhere around 5 to 5.4. For our guides, 5+ miles may mean 7, so I no longer trust their estimates. Anyway, after more time walking than I could fathom to be possible, we hit a downhill stretch, because that's what you do. You break your back and blow a lung to get up so you can go down again. And in many ways, downhill is the worst for me. Kills my bad knee, hurts the hips, and jams your toes into the end of these hiking shoes. But it gives your blistered heels a break and for that we are supposed to be thankful. The downhill went on and on forever and my quads turned to jelly. I just lost it. We came to a stream with some boulders and I threw down my pack and poles and said, "I'm done! I cannot take another step." One of the guides walked away quickly and told the group to go on ahead with him. The other stayed behind with me. I sat on my rock and explained to him about coming from flat country and how hard the ups were compared to where I had trained. I explained the heat was unexpected and I could not cool down even in the shade. I told him about the blisters on my heels that started on the big climb today and that my pack had now created bruises over my clavicles. I continues my litany of woes. He listened quietly and occasionally said encouraging things like "Today was really tough." "Your body is adjusting." "You're doing so well." Then he stood up, put his pack back on and I thought, "Surely that dude is not going to leave me here on the side of the trail!" He walked up a few steps and turned back to me with eyes full of patience and empathy and said, "I'm going to let you stay here and have a moment. When you think you are ready, the cabin is about 500 feet up this trail." I looked up and there it was. I could see the cabin from my rock of self pity. I was quite literally a miserable ankle turning stones throw away from the end if the day's hike. I'm sure there's a life lesson in this poorly timed breakdown. And maybe a better person than me might have gotten it. But I just did not have the energy to care about the lesson or to be chagrined that I lost my grip with such abandon and in such a ridiculous location.   I picked up my pack and poles and hiked in as if it was perfectly acceptable to melt down, throw a hissy fit and unburden your stuff within eyesight of your destination. Because for me, on that brutal day, at the very end of my limits, it was.