My first bout with altitude sickness [part two]

10:02 - The split point

We discuss the time of our meeting. Mark and Jeremy agree on 1pm. 3 hours. Plenty of time for us to hit the peak and back. I'm feeling better, now. Food and water have given me some more energy. I still have the headache, but the dizziness has passed for the most part.


10:30 - Wild snacks

I have been sucking down water the whole climb up. Every 50 steps or so I pause to suck down air. It's all up mountain-side, now. It's not overly steep, but there's no nice flat spans for us to walk. It's all altitude. The higher I get, the more I feel tight. But I keep pushing. Once we hit the animal trail on the crest, it's better. It's more of a trip around the hill, than up. We get a short distance from my beloved campsite, and Mark finds a tree full of cones suitable for teaching me how to harvest pine nuts.

I understand why they are so expensive. It's too much work for so little food. It takes forever to dig the stupid little thing out of the pine cone. Then after digging out one of the little things, I am covered in sap. And the pine nut tasted like dirty sand. "Thank God for beef jerky," I tell him. I mean it. No way I could survive on these.


10:35 - My paradise

"oooooo, yeah!"

Mark gets his first look at the campsite I've been raving about all week, and he is impressed. The perfect flat ground, the lack of needles and rocks to interupt a night of sleep, the view in all directions.

Finally a rest. I feel pretty decent, now. We drop our packs. I take a moment to test my tent raising skills. Good time to do so. It's harder when you're sick, and would rather just lie down and let Mother Nature devour you. It takes me 12 minutes to get it set up. No wind. No rain. That's too long. If it were raining, the tent would be a bag of water. I need to practice a lot more.

We dump our packs inside the tent and decide to go the rest of the route without the extra weight. That's a total relief, as far as I'm concerned. Normally, I'd be sketchy about leaving my gear behind where some wild burro might steal it, and use it for his own adventures. But the way I feel now...let 'em have it. See if I care.

The walk to the cache is fairly easy from here. I take the Skor bar I packed, the full bottle of water, and of course....my beloved machete (just in case we run into any wandering axe murderers).

Even with the candy and the constant flooding of water into the system, I can't shake the sickness. I am dizzy again, and now I have a pain pressing inside my skull, behind the ears. I am starting to have problems with my vision. I can see spots in my peripheral vision. I am afraid it's going to keep getting worse the longer we stay up here. I'm glad we aren't going up much higher. I eat the candy, and keep sucking down water.


11 am - Below the cache

I got vertigo the first time I was here, last week with Jeremy, when I was perfectly healthy. No way in hell I'm going to try to do this dizzy. I find a nice rock to sit on, while Mark wanders up on the arch searching for a stupid geocache. It's windy and the wind will probably blow him off the other side, and he'll sail down into the valley, some 800 or so feet, and splatter all over somewhere near the spring. I really don't care. I know where the tent is. It's already set up. I can take a long nap and wait for the rescue crew to come get me.

It's tough going the rest of the way up, so Mark ties the dogs to a tree by me, and climbs up the rocks to the arch above to do his treasure hunting. The dogs watch him the whole way. When he gets out of sight for a while, they start to wimper. They always do. I tell them, "he's dead. He's never coming back. Gone for good. Yep. Dead." I always tell them that. They never look at me when I talk to them.

It's really nice here. I can sit and look at the valley around Mount Potosi. It's beautiful. It stretches into forever, with no sign of mankind anywhere. It looks like you could wander the down into the valley for the rest of your life, and never reach the end. It's heaven. Sitting and deep breathing, and continuing to suck down water is helping. I love this part. Being able to just sit and really write, instead of the quick sketchy notes that I have to take when we're on the trail, and Mark is pushing the pace. This is what I look forward to on my long solo treks. Not so much the journey itself, so much as the breaks to sit and enjoy the surroundings, and write.

The wind decides it has had enough, and suddenly just stops. It's much warmer when the wind isn't moving. Something about the high desert wind...it's like a brick being thrown full force into your gut. It's not like the cutting winds off a lake in places like Chicago. It's harder. Pounding more than slicing, and it really fights the sun for control of the Earth. Now that the sun has taken over, it's pleasant up here.


11:15 - A SpongeBob sighting

Mark, a.k.a. SpongeBob suddenly appears on top of the arch. He looks like an ant from here. The arch is deceptively big. It looks like a small structure from down below. The dogs had been sitting. They have spotted him and are standing, now. The become restless and are dancing around anxiously. More wimpering. I remind them that he is supposed to be dead and will probably fall off for us to watch. They still don't look at me. I don't know why I bother.

I am looking at the area between here and the peak of Mount Potosi. It's tough going, in most directions. The first time I came up, I found a route I thought was good. Now I notice that in the middle of the ridge I had chosen, it suddenly drops off and would be a pretty much lethal fall. That might not be the best route. That's the problem with eyeballing routes like this. From the distance, everything looks smaller and more peaceful. Nature can be very unforgiving. I should have brought my topo maps and my binoculars. I want to plot some good hikes for when I come up here camping and will have lots of exploring time. I am already thinking that two days will not be enough once I'm out here. There's just too much great land to cover.


11:25 - Did I hear a splat?

Mark is still not back. The wimpering starts to escalate. I am getting my headache back, and am out of water. I don't bother to explain Mark's death to the dogs this time. I know they won't listen. I'm anxious to get back to camp for water and tylenol. I deserve this. Coming out here, after a night of sucking down pain killers and brandy, a lack of food and water,...this is all my fault. A lesson well learned.

If you are suffering an intolerable toothache...Dentist. Not Mountain.


12:14 - The meet point

He didn't die. He finished his geocaching, and wandered back down to untie the dogs. No wonder they never listen to me. I'm always wrong.

Back at the camp, I pack up the tent and find that I've forgotten about a glorious box of Cheerios that I packed. A wonderful side dish to go with my water and tylenol lunch. Moving downhill is wonderful. And when we get back to the meet point, I feel brand new. In fact, I feel like we didn't do enough. My legs aren't tired. My back isn't tired. My head is clear and sharp. Mark says he feels the same way, and knows another hike we can do afterwords. I'm up for it. I hate doing these hikes and not feeling like I've gotten a good workout.

We're very early, so Mark tries to reach Jeremy on the walkie-talkies, but he gets no answer. They probably fell into one of the mine shafts are dead. I tell Mark this. Unlike his dogs, he actually listens. And laughs. He's a much better audience for my gruesome sense of humor. We talk about water, and pasta, and other things it's good to overload on the night before a big hike. Although I am fully aware that I will have, as usual, Taco Bell the night before our next hike, I profess my commitment to a new diet of good energy food and water so I will be in prime shape.

Jeremy and Mike eventually resurface, and Mark and Jeremy start sending geeky messages back and forth on the walkie talkies. I remember when those things were nerd toys. Now, everyone is a wanna-be nerd. Everyone has computers and walkie-talkies. Tech geeks. When Mike and Jeremy arrive, we shove off, and head on down the mountain.

Mark's pace is quick and strong. Just like last time, my legs eventually tire out and become shaky. But it took longer than before. That's a good sign. I am gaining strength, even through the sickness my endurance has improved. We take no breaks on the way down, and while I didn't keep good notes (largely due to the lack of breaks and the speed we are traveling), it couldn't have been more than 15 minutes the entire way. A big difference from the forty minutes coming up.

When we are finally at the truck, I feel like hell again. Mark is tired out, as well and we agree that another climb is a bad idea. Another lesson learned. It's hard work coming down the mountain, too. You don't feel it the way you do coming up, because the climbing gets you winded quicker. Gravity helps you on the way down. But you're still using muscles. And with no breaks, like when we go up, the use is harder and longer. But you really don't feel it until you're down. As soon as the "yea! I am finally no longer at risk of falling off the mountain" relief wears off, the pain kicks you in the teeth.

I collapse into the cab of the truck. I could die, right here.

At least now, the worst is over.


1 pm (ish) - WRONG

Ok. The worst isn't over, just yet. The headache comes on like a banshee. The drive back towards civilization is over rough terrain, and the bouncing just doesn't help anything. Then, Mark decides it would be fun to try to spin out the truck on the loose gravel at the bottom of the trail. Lucky for the contents of my stomach, his anti-lock brakes foil his plans for pointless vehicular entertainment. I thought guys grew out of that once they hit 25. Something about calming of the hormones. Must be a mid-life crisis thing.

Then the phone. Mark is the sales manager for a pretty decent sized company with stores scattered around Vegas. He calls his voice mail, using the speaker phone, to get the reports from the stores' employees, who call in the sales figures for their shift. Two shifts each store. A dozen stores. 3 days (Mark is on his weekend). The same, repetitive message. "Hi. This is Barbie at the Happy Valley Mall store. Morning shift. We did such-and-such in sales of this, and so many dollars sales of that. Thank you. Have a wonderful evening."

After being forced to listen to a dozen, I want to kill every one of his salespeople.

And after each message...the horrid sickly-sweet, overly pleasant voice of the voicemail operator. "End of message. To save, push one. To delete, push two."

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP [Mark pushes two]

"To confirm delete, push nine"

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP [Mark pushes nine]

It had to be the most irritating button tone a phone manufacturer could find. I never realized how grating that sound is. I do now. There are 36 messages. By the 10th, I am thinking "Oh my God. This is never going to end!!!!"

By the 15th, I want to throw up.


Thursday Night - sometime after dark

There is a bed in the spare room at Mark's house. I am in it. I am asleep. Wake me, and I will slice you into little pieces with my machete. Mark has a date. It's a good thing. Being away from home probably saved his life.


Friday Night - sometime after dark

There is a bed in the spare room at Mark's house. I am still in it. I am still asleep. Wake me now, and I won't slice you into little pieces, but I might scar you a bit. I don't know what Mark did. I was unconcious.


Saturday afternoon [and beyond] - Visiting dad in California

It wasn't until Monday that the emergency appointment to the dentist (and subsequently the oral surgeon) was needed. My face swelled up on one side from under my chin, to my eyebrow. Swelled up so badly my eye was closed. According to both of the dental professionals I had emergency visits with that day, the high altitude helped the infection up near the root of the tooth grow faster and wildly.

Lesson learned: now enforced. When suffering an intolerable toothache....

Dentist. Not Mountain.