While out and about today, I was thinking about what I should blog about next and realized that back in September, 2019, I had an interesting adventure that I should have written about back then but did not remember I had a blog to document interesting travels. I remember now and since I wrote less than a month ago, I figured I would try to get this blogging train moving and write some more.
Back in September of 2019, before the world was placed in a hopefully temporary time out, a friend of mine, Jordan Thorpe, whom I have worked with in Scouts off and on the last three years gave me a call and asked me if I was willing to be the "Second adult" on a overnight hiking trip. I agreed because it gave me the chance to spend some quality time with Kaelen and I figured the exercise would be good for me. I didn't ask where the hike would be or where the camping would be because it was for some 12 year old scouts so how hard could it be. For those of you laughing at me right now, you have no idea.....
I let Jordan know that I had to work out of the State that week but would be back in plenty of time to go on the trip. The week of the hike, I flew up to Denver, Colorado on Monday, sat on a Board of Examiners panel for the State Department on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and then flew back to Tucson on Friday. I got home at about 1300 hours, packed, and then went to meet up with Jordan and the scouts so we could head out to this hike. Unfortunately, Kaelen hadn't had a great week and wasn't able to join me on the hike and since I found that out on Thursday or Friday, I was kind of stuck going. Again, I thought, "how bad could it be?"...
To preface the rest of the evening for you, I did not have a whole lot to eat during day because of traveling and I surely did not drink enough water, which I discovered shortly enough. I met up with Jordan and the two scouts who were going with us on this overnight hike. Jordan told me we were going to hike Madera canyon (Old Baldy trail, get to a point right below the peak of Mount Wrightson and set up camp. In the morning, we would get up at 5 am and hike to the top of Mount Wrightson (The highest peak in the Tucson region at just under 9500 ft) to see the sunrise, which overall, sounded like a great idea.
We drove the 36 miles to the parking lot at the start of the hike and started the event at around 4 pm. In addition to my pack, I had a full camel-pack of water, plus 48 ounces of water in a nalgene bottle. We hiked about 50 meters through the parking lot to the start of the trail and I knew that I was in trouble. Generally speaking, I am in decent shape. While I may at times be heavier than I should be, I am generally active, weight train, and do a bunch of cardio. The hike should not have been that bad. Unfortunately, due to a lack of sleep, lack of food, and lack of water, I realized that this was going to be difficult.
The first half of the hike, roughly 3 miles, went pretty nicely. I was holding my own and that was a good thing. As we started the second part of the hike, my left calf started cramping, followed by my right calf. Then my hamstring and quad on each leg cramped. I started walking a bit slower and trying to drink more water because the cramps were not fun at all. At one point, I would cramp every step I took. I was really slowing the group down and was severely embarrassed to be the problem. Of all my faults, being the one to slow a group down has never been one of them so this was a new and very unpleasant experience for me. We continued moving up the mountain and while Jordan thought he was helping, he kept telling us, "Oh, it is only about a half mile to go" and we would go another half mile and there was still much more to go. At one point, as I am slowly putting one foot in front of another, I experienced a full body cramp. Every muscle in my body decided to, at the same moment, experience the joy of a full on Charlie Horse. I collapsed to the ground, fighting to get the pack off as my muscles all mutinied against me. I am sure that I have hurt more than this before but for the life of me, I can not think of a time. Even in the future, when I tore my biceps muscle from the bone, I did not experience that kind of pain.
After a few moments, which of course, felt like hours, the pain subsided and I sat up, drank some water, ate some beef jerky (and had to deal with my jaw cramping). After a bit, the water and salt in the jerky seemed to help a little bit and I started the walk again, just in time to realize it was pitch black out and we could no longer see the trail. Since we were all boyscouts, we had flashlights so that was the least of our worries. As we went higher up the mountain, the temperature dropped and a cloud basically settled over us so it was now wet and cold. At about 11 pm, we finally arrived at the area Jordan had planned on camping for the night. We had climbed the equivalent 319 flights of stairs by the time we stopped for the night. The two scouts shared a tent. I had a tent I set up on a outcropping of rocks and Jordan tied a hammock between two trees. Right after I got the tent set up, I changed out of my clothes, which I think held every bit of water that had once been a part of my body. I hung the wet clothes up outside of the tent, hoping they would dry during the night but since we were literally in a cloud, I didn't think it was likely. We heated up some water to head to our freeze dried meals and had an awesome meal. It honestly probably wasn't all that good tasting but it was salty and it was exactly what I needed at the moment.
As I got ready for bed, I set up my camel-pack near by so I could drink water through the night as needed. My Nalgene bottle was gone. I think I lost it when I collapsed on the trail. I had a high tech blow up mattress pad that was supposed to support key areas of your back and provide for a good night's sleep. As soon as I laid on it, it deflated...so much for high tech. While it was super cold out, I had a good sleeping bag and my tent was 4 season so I felt pretty comfortable. Granted, every time I moved or adjusted to get comfortable (due to sleeping on rocks), I would cramp up which would wake me up. I drank water and then fell back to sleep. While I did not sleep really well, I did get some sleep, which was more than I can say for Jordan, who was rather unprotected from the elements in his hammock.
I woke up at 5 am, feeling exhausted but much better than the day before. We woke the boys up and again, in the dark, proceeded to hike up the mountain. We arrived at the highest point of the peak at about 6 am. I would love to tell you that we saw a beautiful sunrise but we were still in a cloud, which blocked out the sun.
What we did see was:
And we saw this:
After a while on not really being able to see the sun, we started heading back down the mountain to our campsite so that we could pick it up. As we hiked back down, the sun got higher and the cloud we were in got lower for a bit. The following pictures show the clouds from our perspective on the mountain. Please note, at no time did we get on an airplane. The last two pictures were taken while standing firmly on the ground. In fact, the last one has a scouts arm in the picture to prove the point.
After packing up the camp site, we ate some breakfast and headed back down the mountain. While we were all tired, going down was so much easier than going up and I think all of us were very happy to make it to the bottom of the mountain.
I feel like I need to do this hike again in the future but I will also be okay if I don't. I do know that I never want to feel the way I did on the hike up and will work as hard as I can to make sure that doesn't happen again.
Until next time.....
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