Day 77: Mile 883.6 - 903.0

It's amazing how fast you can go if you don't stop to look at anything.

I woke this morning and wasn't as stiff as I expected to be: I had expected my right arm and side to be locked up and they weren't. Things could move, which was good--it likely means nothing is broken.

Just everything hurts when it does move.

Getting up from a laying position to a sitting position in the tent was difficult--doing so requires engaging the stomach muscles, and that incurs tremendous pain and an inability to breathe. It took several tries, of different strategies, but in the end the solution was just to take the pain and do it. For me, taking the pain was actually the easier part (though by no means easy in and of itself): the harder part is that if a muscle but twitches, suddenly the lungs seize up and I can't breathe. And then that brief panic sets in, but in that panic the muscles tense, and the asphyxiation continues, and then the panic lengthens--you get the picture. I couldn't breathe while sitting up, and when I did finally get into a sitting position, couldn't breathe either--was it just the exertion taking my breath away?, or was the position of my back such that I actually couldn't breathe?, do I need to move?, so there was some small shifting, through pain, looking for a sweet spot. In the end I did find a sitting position where I could breathe--I'm writing this, after all--but it took a lot of time and a lot of effort.

Brian came by around 6:30am. He and his grandson were planning on making it over the pass and all the way to Red's Meadow (to exit to Mammoth) today, and I could join them. But that was 25 miles and I hadn't done that in the Sierras when I was healthy, let alone all bruised up. So I thanked him for the offer, but said I was going to take 2 days to get to Red's. He quizzed me quickly on my plans, then concluded, I think you can make good decisions, said blessings a couple times, and headed out. (I would later find out that there may have been a concern that I had hit my head in the fall--I suspect this was the source of Brian's cognitive testing and remark on my ability to make good decisions.)

And so, with a lot of additional effort and trial and error, I got out of my tent and looked at a morning of sunshine and blue skies, albeit with white clouds looming just over the near mountains. Everything in my tent was wet (except my sleeping clothes, my sleeping bag, and sleeping pad, thankfully), and so I set about laying things out to dry on the nearby rocks. It was a slow morning. Lots of learning about what I could do and what would cause pain and possibly asphyxiation. Leaning over didn't work, so for everything I needed to actively suppress that grab-it instinct and instead bend my knees and keep my back straight instead. Getting stuff in and out of the tent was tricky, but doable if I moved slowly and carefully and constantly readjusted when pain would ping. Eventually I emptied the tent, moved it over there in better sunlight to dry, had my clothes spread on the rocks in the opposite direction over there, had my rain fly draped across the bushes over here, had my electronics on a log over there.

With everything set up to dry, I stopped to think for a bit. I could walk, so I could get out. That out would be at Red's Meadow, where I would catch the shuttle to Mammoth Lakes and the hospital. But that would take two days, so I would need to be able to take care of myself. So while Brian had offered to help pack my bag, I wanted to make sure I could do that myself. That was one thing on the list: break camp on my own. Also: get dressed on my own. Also: get bag on my back and hike on my own. Finally: go poop on my own. Only way to check these things?: do them. So I set to work slowly putting my bag together. I delayed getting dressed until the very end, hoping my clothes would dry: they didn't, so I pulled on wet clothes (the socks were the worst part), although I did so gingerly (it turns out pulling your pants up requires stomach and side muscles--who knew--so that just hurts). Oh and I did check to make sure I could dig and use a cathole (the latter of which also uses stomach muscles, obviously).

And then I started hiking. And remember very little of it. It hurt to breathe and often hurt to step, especially on the uneven terrain of the trail. A slightly tilted step and the body would tense to stay upright and that would hurt; a step down of more than a few inches and the impact would reverberate up to the ribs and that would hurt; a step up and the leg muscles would activate and that activation would travel up into the torso and that would hurt. I eventually figured out right leg only for up-steps, left leg only for down-steps, and that helped a bit, but still, everything hurt. And at times something jarring would happen, and I'd want to cry out for the pain, only I couldn't because I couldn't get enough breath to voice it, so usually they just came out as whimpers, sometimes brief, sometimes longer.

And breathing: I rely on breathing, especially nasal breathing, to keep up my pace on trail. But now, breaths were shallow. If I tried to breathe more deeply, it just hurt. And anything that requires larger breath: sneezing, coughing, blowing your nose, doesn't work. The worst is when I'd swallow a bit funny, get a little moisture in my windpipe, and couldn't cough to clear it, but would have to live with that slight drowning feeling until it eventually went away.

But I was moving, and not seeing a thing. I reached Silver Pass and maybe saw something--talked to a couple people (Tress and Mike) up there--then continued moving. Passed some lakes, I think, a raging river, I think (there was a bridge, thankfully), climbed some switchbacks over a meadowed valley? I probably grabbed some shots, but otherwise all I really remember is that, at the top of Silver Pass, I laid out my stuff to dry (including my shoes and socks--the rest of my clothes had dried as I hiked, but not those), and had seen the white clouds again threatening, their bottoms hinting gray. And I just didn't want to be wet again, I didn't want to be hiking in the rain. I wanted to set up camp before the rains hit, but I also needed to make enough miles to get into Red's Meadow in two days. So the rest of the day became a race between me and the storm--which grew increasingly gray as the day went on, and started rumbling with thunder and, when I would look back, I could see the sheen beneath that was rain. But somehow I always managed to stay ahead: I would enter a valley, get to the bottom, and the clouds would start coming over behind me, then I'd climb and clear over into the next valley just as the storm claimed that one. It was exhausting--pushing the hiking, seeing only the 10 feet in front of me, wincing every few steps from this or that pain--but somehow, maybe the adrenaline, maybe the lack of an alternative, somehow I kept moving forward.

But you can't outrun the storm forever, and by mid-afternoon I noticed that another front was starting to come in from the east ahead of me. There was a series of lakes ahead of me--Lake Virginia, then Purple Lake, then Duck Lake--the trail would hit a lake, then climb up over a rocky pass, then descend into the next lake, and so on. My plan was to reach Duck Lake--there was a campsite there, and water, and it put me within 10 miles of Red's Meadow.

But as I came up to Purple Lake, I hear some voices ahead of me, and as I can round the bend, there was Dylan (in his distinctive blue getup) and Uno, along with AC/DC and Outlast, and Lux and Kahleesi. And they were happy and joyous and clapped me in as I approached, but--as AC/DC said--I've never seen anyone with less expression on their face as they got clapped in. Because I reached them, then I turned to Dylan, and I said, man, I did a really stupid thing. I fell in a river, bruised some ribs, wrenched my shoulder. And gave the abbreviated version of the story. They had actually been passed by McQueen who had told them him version, wait, the guy who fell in the river, that was you?, they said. Yeah, I admitted.

As so for the rest of the day I joined up with them. And this was good: it changed up the dynamics of the day entirely. Instead of being absorbed into my own world, which was just the 10 feet in front of me and trying to breath and pain, I got to see their world, which was still fun-loving and fairly carefree. I started out still paranoid about the storm, so charged ahead and got to Duck Lake before everyone--my original proposed destination--and started to hear the thunder directly above. But other than a few big drops, no real rain. Then the rest of the group came up, and their original plan was to continue to Deer Creek, another 5 miles down the trail. Well, if I had to chance to not camp alone tonight, I wanted to take it (if nothing else, just so if something went really wrong in the night there'll be people around to know that something went really wrong in the night), so I went with them. The rest of the way to Deer Creek I stayed with the group, just hanging in the back, and the storm stayed at bay behind us, and then we arrived in this gentle wood with cleared campsites, the creek flowing just over there, and we made camp.

And that was the hike! The day after the fall, I put my head down and just try to get to Red's Meadow, ignoring all the beautiful views all around, and end up doing the most miles I've ever done in the Sierras. And a day that I started alone, pushing up and over Silver Pass locked in my own little world of 10-feet and restrained breathing, I end reuniting with a whole group of good folks, camping surrounded by lots of people. A very dichotomous day, and one that ends on a good note!

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Some notes:

-- Makeshift campsite > Silver Pass > Goodale Pass Junction > Fish Creek > Lake Virginia > Purple Lake > Duck Lake > Deer Creek
-- In addition to the physical pain, one of the agitations of the day was trying to find a room in Mammoth. I worked with Terry to try and find a place, but I'm coming in on Fourth of July weekend, and pretty much everything was booked, especially if I wanted 2 nights (I wanted an extra day to rest from the fall, and didn't want to have to change hotels to do it). Terry tried but, for the life of him, couldn't find anything. We even considered getting a place down in Bishop and renting a car in Mammoth and driving down, but car rental pickup was at the Mammoth Airport, which is far outside town and would require me getting a hitch just to get there. In the end, I was resolved to just camp in Red's Meadow, then take the shuttle in and out of town for the next couple days to hit the urgent care and do errands. But when I joined the group, they did manage to get a 2 rooms for 2 nights, very expensive, but when split amongst 7 (then 8) people, much more affordable. So that's another benefit of joining up with a group: takes away some of the anxiety of worrying about finding a place to stay--I'm bad at that, but there are people much more capable than me! 

-- Today I met Mike, who was a tremendously chill dude backpacking through the Sierras. He's done this for the past 4 years or so, usually doing a part of the JMT and then heading off on little sojourns. He was a nice guy, got to talking to me at the top of Silver Pass (where we were both laying out stuff to dry), and I went over the weather with him, getting his opinion on the stormfront coming up behind us. Well, usually there's rain on the south side of Silver Pass, but usually it doesn't come over to the north side, but then again some southbound folks said they had had rain yesterday, so who knows? Mike also let me know that, if I wanted to get to Red's Meadow sooner, there was a trail out from Duck Lake that would go to a road, from where I could hitch into Mammoth Lakes. That's what he and his hiking buddy were doing. Do you have accommodations in Mammoth, I asked, because it's Fourth of July weekend and a lot of stuff is already booked. No, he said, but--and here he was so chill is didn't even shrug--there will be cancellations and we'll find a room. Oh, he then added, and if you get to Mammoth, check out the Liberty Bar: that's where we'll be tonight. Mike left Silver Pass ahead of me, so I told him that if he bumped into a guy in blue (i.e., Dylan) to let him know what happened to me. Ok, Mike said, let him know that you fell and now have f***ed up ribs and arm, no problem. I would see Mike one more time on the trail, at a river crossing with a bridge, where I would pass him as he was filtering water. Hey, you're not in so bad shape if you're keeping up with us, he said. I went over the rent-a-car and go-to-Bishop plan with him, and he actually raised an eyebrow. That's not a bad idea, he said. Which was reassuring: getting the approval of an old-hand is always a good feeling. Didn't pan out (as mentioned above), but I talking with Mike first atop Silver Pass, and then at the river crossing, was good: it gave me a sense that I wasn't entirely alone on the trail, and that my ideas of how to get out were weren't crazy.

-- Today I met Tress, who came up to the top of Silver Pass just a bit after me. I offered to take a photo of her at the top of the pass on her phone, and we talked a bit. She asked me how I was and I told her about the fall. Turns out she's a doctor from Switzerland: she guessed I had a contusion from the fall, and noted that there's not much for that other than time. She did offer me a painkiller--one that starts with "A", she said, but she couldn't remember what the brand name was here in the States (it's not Aleve, I tried that one)--and said that it can be taken in parallel with ibuprofen since it gets processed in a different organ. But it