Date: 2004-07-22
From: Kid Gore Shelter

To: Before Stratton Mtn
Miles today: 11.4

In the middle of the night I woke up with a numb face again. It was around 11pm This was really strange and disturbing. Something was messing with my nervous system. It happened again at around 1am. Grrr. I tried massaging my neck and left shoulder and raising my left arm thinking maybe it was some kind of pinched nerve. But there was no obvious change. Everything was fine in the morning though. Well, except my jaw seemed to ache a bit. It hurt more if I tried to close it all the way with my teeth together. This was not great for eating.Just a stones throw north of Kid Gore was another shelter called Caughnawga. This was a tiny, very old shelter. It was kind of cool and only sleeps 4.Today the trail was heading up over Stratton Mountain. Stratton Mountain brought back good memories of my LT hike back in 1997 with my friend Chris. The big memory was of arriving at the summit somewhat unexpectedly. This was the first big mountain in Vermont. It's just 64 feet shy of 4000 feet. The surprise back then was that we never realized we had climbed that far. Surely we were distracted with conversation but if the climb is too tough there isn't enough breath therefore it must have been a moderate climb. According to the Handbook the trail climbs about 1600 feet in 4 miles. That's not bad at all. No sweat.The hiking was great this morning. It was a beautiful day. I took a short break at Story Spring Shelter to check the journal. Once again, on my return trip in 2005 the shelter log had been replaced. It did however, still have entries from friends who passed through afterwards. I took pictures of those pages.Ponderer was the older flipflopper Adam and I met back on May 7 at Rock Gap Shelter. Up & Down were somewhere too.Slider was one of the Amish guys that Buick & I first met back at Partnership Shelter on May 31.I'm pretty sure I met a guy named Chef on a steep climb just after passing that really big tree, the Keffer Oak way down south, on June 7.Rooney Tunes camped just before we got caught in that big rain and blow, walking around the top of a ravine on June 11. We saw him again the next morning as he passed us at Matt's Creek Shelter down in the valley.Crazy Legs & Tall Tales were friends from back around my birthday in the Virginia Highlands.Impulse was a fun thru-hiker back at Pine Swamp Branch Shelter June 6.I met Swedish on May 19 on the 1/7 day at Hogback Ridge Shelter. Of course he was with someone named Shannon back then, so this may not be the same guy.Another Crash:My expectation was to have lunch part 1 on the summit around noon. Well, that didn't happen. I was doing a fine 3 miles an hour for the first 8 miles of the day right up to the beginning of that 4 mile climb up Stratton. Then the feeling of exhaustion started to creep back in. The headache came back at about 11am. As I pushed on the nauseous feeling returned. By 12:45 the fever had returned. I took breaks and sat in the trail. This was way out of character for this kid. Just keep on plodding was my typical mode. At one point I actually sat down and fell asleep right in the middle of the trail. Day hikers were passing me. This was humiliating but that thought never lingered long. Something was seriously wrong. Ibuprofen wasn't going to fix this.1pm put me only half way up. If I could just get to the top, there was a summit caretaker up there. Camping was not permitted but certainly they would make an exception or at least know where I could get help. Just keep going. The terrain here was no good for camping anyway. My recollection was that the summit had some grassy meadows under big evergreens.It was 3pm by the time I stepped over a spring on the trail. It was listed in the Handbook as being 0.6 miles from the summit. How could that be. This had to be closer. Had I missed the spring in the Handbook and this was another. This had been a wet summer. I plodded on as the trail steepened. My feet could only move one baby step at a time. Then it was time for another rest. I got about a hundred feet past the spring and couldn't go any further. It had only been an 11.4 mile day. Boo.There was a small flat widening in the trail. I broke a cardinal rule and pitched my tent in the trail. Moving as quickly as possible which was probably more like slow motion, I tried to position it so folks could walk by with out stepping outside the tread way. A corner of the tent was off the trail and on the slope. I hated doing this but had no choice. The thought had crossed my mind of going back down to the spring to look for a better spot but if I got there I might not make it back here. I leaned my pack on a tree, tossed my bag and pad into the tent, crawled inside and passed out.It was after 7pm when I stirred again. Getting up I felt great. The trip to the spring was nothing now. Returning with water, it was time for dinner. Dinner was fine and it was getting dark. There was the thought of moving on but more sleep seemed like a better idea. Besides, an attack while night hiking would be really hard to deal with.There was no question that numerous folks must have walked by my comatose body but there was no waking. What did they think? Did they tell the care taker at the summit? Should I be expecting a visit from a man with a badge? All these questions paled beside the big one. What was wrong with me? The hiker at the Kid Gore shelter this morning suggested Lyme Disease. There was that tick bite and perhaps there had been others undetected. Another idea that came to mind was diet. Finding Total Raisin Bran had been tough for a while for some reason and maybe the lack of the vitamins really did make a difference. Then there had been the moo powder and Tang that sometimes could not be found and other times just got skipped due to the conservationist in me. They both came in such large quantities that only 1/3 would make it into my pack. The rest would either get given or thrown away. Giving it away was OK though costly but to toss it out was just plain wrong. Down south there were hiker boxes that made it easy to give stuff to people who would find it later. Hiker boxes didn't seem to exist up here with only 1/5 the thru-hiker population. All this ran through my head as sleep came upon me for the second time today in my illegal and ecologically immoral camp.At around 11pm the numb face woke me again and then went away.