Pancakes, and more Pancakes (Death as a Pastime, part 2)

6am - Blech

Never choose an ex-marine as a hiking buddy.

I really detest people that can snap awake in the morning. Early morning. On an insufficient amount of sleep. Mark is up at 6am sharp. I'm up, but I feel like hell. I haven't slept well. My comfortable sleeping bag has been disposed of in a recent move, and all I have is my zero-degree rated mummy bag. Mark likes to keep his apartment cold, but not that cold. All night, I keep waking up, alternating between being too hot and unzipping the bag to vent, and waking up chilled and needing to zip the bag up for warmth.

Not that I would have gotten enough sleep, at any rate. Mark was enjoying the internet and television too much to vacate his living room - my sleeping quarters - before midnight. Six hours isn't enough. I need a full eight hours of good rest in order to function properly. I might have gotten two.

The only bright side is that Mark is eager for a good blogging effort on my part. So he's planned to take frequent breaks so I can take good notes. This means I won't be pushed too hard, too fast. I'll have plenty of opportunity to catch my breath. Despite the fatigue, I am looking forward to being back outdoors.


7:30 am - The trailhead

Mark is a liar.

So much for an easy pace and frequent breaks. I've been off the trail for 8 months. Mark has climbed almost every mountain peak in southern Nevada in that same time period, and hasn't missed a weekly hike/climb. Right away, he's off to his normal break-neck pace. It's uphill from the very first step away from where we've parked the truck. It's just the asphalt paved national park service entry area, and it's work. Mark and his trail dog are just crusing along. I'm winded before we even hit the trailhead. My boots haven't seen dirt and already I need a nap.

As far as being able to keep good notes, so far, my notes consist of a total of two words. "Up", and "trailhead". We haven't paused, and we are moving too fast for me to write on the fly. Luckily, I still have enough brainpower in my pre-elderly self to retain enough from one-word notations and a time-stamp to flesh out the blog article*.

* In total, other than the time notations, the entire day's trip notes consisted of a mere 16 words. Normally, the blog articles are pretty much written during the trip, with some editing and filling after the fact.


7:45am -The wrong turn

At least it wasn't my fault. 15 minutes into our climb to 11,000 feet, and we're on our way back down.

It was an awful 15 minutes. I am sucking wind. I've really lagged behind Mark. I'm feeling the early effects of altitude sickness creeping up. I'm so out of shape it's pathetic. There was no break, and no time to write, but at least now we're moving downhill, instead of climbing.

Mark chose the wrong trail.

At least he figured it out before we had made the climb all the way up. The trail we were on leads up Cathedral Rock. Insignificant compared to Mount Charleston, but still a healthy climb in it's own right. If we had climbed to the top before figuring out we were going the wrong way, there's no way we could have made it back down, then all the way up to our target ridgeline on Mount Charleston to cache the bottles of water for the big climb Mark was leading the following week.

On our way down, I start cataloging all of the reasons this was a stupid idea. I'm 8 months out of shape. I'm going to the highest point I've ever been in my mountaineering career. I'm trying to keep pace with a product of military training. But maybe the most significant factor, one I hadn't even considered before the trip was the altitude. Before every other climb we've been on, my body starts from the floor of the Las Vegas valley, around 2,400 feet. For the last 8 months, I've been living near the beach in California, practically at sea level. Not only am I trying to attain heights I've not previously achieved, I'm starting my body from a greater deficit.


7:55am - An actual break!

Hooray! We've stopped. Mark is panting. I'm heaving, panting, sweating, on the edge of tears, fatigued, pained...pretty much on begging for a swift death. We have hit the correct trail, and have moved up it with force. It's not difficult footing, but it's fairly steep. More steep than my elderly self cares to tackle. I can still feel the tickle of altitude sickness hovering around my brain. It's probably more fatigue-induced paranoia than reality. Whether or not it's real, I've convinced myself it is real, and there's no way I'm going to make it to 11,000 feet. Not this tired. Not with the symptoms of altitude sickness threatening to take over my heart and pop it like an overstretched balloon.

Luckily, Mark doesn't argue. He's not feeling much up to the challenge, himself, and says he isn't going to want to do it without someone helping to push him along. But there's a Geocache up the trail he's never logged, and it's only another half mile from where we've stopped for our break. I'm overjoyed. I haven't ruined the day, Mark can still bag a geocache, and we have still moved a lot of water a decent way up the trail, so Mark won't have to haul the whole load the entire distance next week.

The break is actually a long one. Mark has needed to fix his fatigue and shortness of breath with a couple of cigarettes. We don't get moving again for a full 25 minutes. I am feeling much better. Stronger. I am starting to flirt with the idea of continuing up the trail, past the geocache, trekking along at half mile intervals, breaking, going after another milestone, and so on, until I just can't go anymore. Eventually, I would end up at the summit, having tricked myself by achieving shorter, more realistic goals.


8:30am - Up the trail

You can trick the mind, but not the body.

This sucks. It really, really sucks. My feet feel like 80 pound bags of concrete. Mark seems ok with me dragging, but his dog looks impatient. She keeps looking back at me, wondering why I'm moving so damned slow, keeping her from enjoying a sprint up the mountainside. It's not the altitude, now. I don't feel sick. I'm just weak. Horribly weak. And hungry. All three bags of beef jerky are bad. There's something terribly funky about the taste. Bad batch. So all three are trashed. And I'm starving.

Pancakes.

I start having a craving for pancakes. And an omelet. IHOP. It starts out as a simple 'I would like pancakes' craving, and the more we climb, the more it evolves into a 'without pancakes, I will die' craving.

9:10 am - Chasing the geocache

Mark is an even bigger liar. He told me it was half a mile. But it's half a mile, if you have wings. For those of us rooted to earthly travel, it's twists and turns around this hill, then that one. It's 4 miles to hike half a mile. Never steep, but always up. Up up up. And I'm dying. My legs have never been more resistant to activity in my whole life. What have I done to myself in 8 months?!? I have lost any notion of continuing in small increments toward the ridgeline. I'm glad I never mentioned the idea to Mark. I saved myself another losing-face ordeal. Losing face is not allowed more than once per day. That's because you cannot commit hari-kari more than once. In modern society, we do not disembowel ourselves for shame. But limits must still be maintained, lest we regress to complete cavemen.


9:20 am - 50 feet from the geocache.

I am not moving. While Mark and Hobie traipse around among the pines looking for the cache, I am sitting on the path. Sucking down water and thinking about taking another shot at the rancid beef jerky. I'm really hungry. Mark bags his geocache, waters the dog and re-energizes with another cigarette, and then we turn back down. I'm in no mood to argue for a longer break. We'll be going downhill, and I want to get the hell off the mountain, eat the motherloade of pancakes and pass out in my hotel room.

On the trail down, I ask Mark if he's interested in stoping at IHOP. He declines. I hate him.


9:50 am - Down

Normally after our hikes, I don't want to get into the truck. I don't want to head back to the city. I don't want to leave the quiet, the smell of the pines, the crisp mountain air untainted by casinos and cars. Today, I want to get the hell off the mountain. I want pancakes!!! We don't waste any time. Into the truck, and gone.

The whole drive back, we're 50 yards behind a police car. I keep working to sell Mark on the idea that the cop is following us from in front. The cop is driving exactly at speed limit, and if Mark catches up, the cop will know we were speeding. Mark likes to drive fast. But not today. Driving speed limit, the cop was pulling away.


10:30 am - My redemption

Mark drives off the main road onto a poorly maintained service road. Another geocache he can get before we head back. He parks. I stay in the truck. He and his dog wander around, looking totally lost. How can you get totally lost when you have military satellites guiding your way? He finds the cache. It's hidden beneath a yucca plant. He bends down to get to it. He leans in too close. There's a yelp of pain. When he gets back to the truck, there's a small hole and a whisper of blood on his nose where the needle got him. He says he wonders if anyone has ever lost an eye to a yucca plant. His face hurts. He feels stupid. I cannot help but smile.

It wasn't such a bad day, afterall.