Part 3: Hallucinations, Blisters and Other Delicious Treats
We all leave the TA in a great mood; we haven’t been this chatty and elated in a while. 37 hours without sleep and counting. Rod has taken over the navigation duties to give Sara a break, we wanted to make some good progress in the 3 hours of sunlight we had left. Rod convinces us to bushwhack to cut out roughly ½ a mile to get to the trail we want. Even though our feet were screaming at us to take the trail, we began to bushwhack. Rod had showed us all the map and what we were shooting for, it looked straight forward. We were to go until we hit the drainage and then the trail should be on the other side of the drainage. We get to the drainage, it’s stuffed full of dead fall. The other side of the drainage has a lot of deadfall too, but we see a faint trail. We assume the trail hasn’t been used in a long time and continue up the drainage, very slow going. We get further and further along, the trail is no longer there, but we’ve convinced ourselves that we are getting close to the saddle that we want and then hopefully the trail will be there. Climbing over logs, under logs, on top of logs, logs crumbling as we put weight on them. Finally, we decide the best way is to go up, we had to get out of this dead fall, on more than one occasion somebody said something to the effect of “Somebody just needs to throw a match in this damn tinder box”. Rod and I top out first, we take some compass bearings to nearby peaks and it seems to match up well, we even see a trail on the saddle below us, but the saddle is like 40 feet below us instead of 300 feet, and the trail was actually a rock band faking us out. Sara and Jim join us and we investigate things and we discuss things. The light bulb goes off and we realize that the slope we came up was running East-West, not North-South like we wanted. We all had missed it, we were on top of the wrong mountain. Lesson learned, trust the topography on the map, it doesn’t change. Using the last of the daylight we hurried back down the mountain and quickly found the beautiful wide highway of a trail that we should have been on. 3 hours blown because none of use realized we were looking for the 2nd drainage, not the first.
We made it to the top of the saddle a little after sunset. It was getting dark fast, our conversation had died down and I was realizing how solar-powered I really am. At 9:45 I’m starting to get the “blinkies”, I’m fighting to stay awake and it’s only been dark for 15 minutes! I abruptly start a loud conversation with the rest of the team, I don’t really remember about what, but I burned up the only joke I could remember, “How many A.D.D. kids does it take to screw in a light bulb?” Nobody is being very chatty back to me, this makes it difficult to stay awake via conversation. Finally, at 10:30 I give in, time to grab the hammer and break the glass in case of emergency; I opened up the caffeine pills. Each pill is equal to 1 cup of coffee and since I don’t ever have any caffeine I take one. The sleep monsters are tugging on my eyelids pretty heavily now and the hallucinations are beginning. Every white rock I see is either a discarded Styrofoam coffee cup or a baggie full of electrolyte drink mix, I test them all with my trekking poles. Look! A giant lizard! Nope just a stick, wait that’s a lizard! Nope, damn sticks. Then the oddest hallucination yet, in the leaves of a plant I see, plain as day, the face of my white cat, sticking his tongue out at me. When will this caffeine ever kick in! Jim needs to fill his water bladder, he lost half of it to a leak earlier in the trek, so we stop to fill it at a stream and I take the opportunity to try and rest a little. I didn’t fall asleep, but I think lying on the ground for 5 minutes, on the most comfortable decomposing log I’ve ever encountered by the way, helped the caffeine work into my system. We continue and I’m now awake and chatty as ever, it’s my goal to get everyone as awake as I am. I ask questions to each individual, not allowing a one or two word answer to suffice. Soon, we’re to the first CP of the leg, sweet. We continue on and my caffeine is wearing off, now whenever anyone has to take a nature break the other three of us take the chance to lie down. Pop another pill, it has been 3 hours since the last one. This pill doesn’t perk me up as much as the other, the trail keeps climbing and we’re all fighting to stay awake, Jim and Rod both give in too “Fine, give me a damn evil caffeine pill.” About 2/3rd of the way to the next CP Jim has to “build a cairn” (nature was calling), the other three of us lay down in middle of the trail , the most comfortable trail I’ve ever encountered by the way, and I’m out instantly. I don’t remember it but apparently Jim came back and said he wanted a little rest and I said “You better set an alarm if you want any rest.” Jim set his watch alarm and ten minutes later we were all up and going again after a weird 15-20 minute pseudo sleep.
Trudging along, dodging downed trees, and then the trail disappears, we look all over and a two person team catches us while we’re looking. With all of us looking we find it again after about 45 mintues. The two person team is feeling stronger and they go ahead, we trod along eventually topping out a little over 10,000’ a little before sunrise. We descend and this is when our feet begin to really hurt, but the foot pain cannot help me stay awake, where’s the sun!? The sun mercifully rises and after about 45 minutes of sunlight in my face I’m back awake. We roll into the TA at 7 something in the morning. We all drink and eat a little and decide to take a nap. I took care of my feet before going to sleep and had my “pro” moment; I was draining my left little toe (80% of the toe was a blister) and when I punctured it, it squirted out several feet, jut like on TV! I lay down, wide awake, it takes at least 15 minutes for me to fall asleep, ridiculous. It was our first real sleep in 51 hours. I wake up after 45 minutes of sleep in an incredible sweat, the sun is blazing and the tent is an oven; Andie hands me a cold wet towel and I go outside to sleep. A little over an hour later Andie wakes me up, the team is up, the other 4-person team is in, we have to get going. I’m in bad shape the hot sweaty sleep has left me low on water and electrolytes. I hop on the bike, I’m now belching once or twice every minute, my stomach is complaining about something. Andie would later tell me that she was just about crying when she saw me leave; I looked like I was in really bad shape.
The start of the bike was 7 kilometers of downhill, just what I needed. I had warned the team that I may need a tow during this leg, but by the time the descent was done I had cooled back down, and had taken in a lot of food, water and electrolytes, though the belching persisted for another hour or so. We climbed up a small hill and a few people exclaimed at how hard the climb was, I thought it wasn’t bad, a good sign that I had recovered from my funk, though I wasn’t going to press my luck by towing someone just yet. The first CP was a little tricky, but we figured that we got it in the average time of the other teams, as we were approaching it we saw the 4 person team that had passed us leaving it, we were closing. I had familiarized myself with the map and I felt like I was a General directing an army on the move, giving loud commands to the rest of the team and descriptions detailed enough that nobody had questions. A little more climbing and then a beautiful fast singletrack descent. This descent was loose so once again Jim was a little slow, nobody cared though. I let Sara pass as she was following closely and I didn’t want the crasher to crash because of something I do, big mistake. Sara shoots off ahead and I wait to see Rod and Jim and then continue. I descend past a few people that were hiking up and meet Sara at the bottom at the next CP. “Did that woman back there have her top on when you went by? she asked. “Yeah, why?” I said, slightly confused. “She was topless when I went by, and she asked if there were any guys coming down behind me.” Missed opportunity, I knew I should’ve stayed in the lead.
Now we were on the road, a quick ride through some farm country and then we turned up the canyon again. Sara was feeling fine, but couldn’t keep up with the pace we were all cranking out so I hooked up a tow. Rod and I traded off on towing Sara while Jim stayed at the front of the paceline. Soon we were passing a campground and I suggested that we go in and soak our legs in the river, the heat was picking up now. Reluctantly they all agreed and we took a 10 minute siesta in the river. BT, I thank you for teaching me the benefits of cold river water on tired legs. I was the only one to sit fully in the river, everyone else were just feet soakers, but everybody loved it. We considered a soaking at every stream crossing from then on. This was the best TA yet, we roll in and Andie is dumbfounded. We told her it would be 7 hours, 4 hours later we show up! She’s really excited for us, the other 4 person team is nowhere to be seen yet. I love it when she’s this excited, it happened before in the Moab race when I rolled by her in 3rd place with 2nd just seconds in front of me, her excitement really pumps me up. Everyone was stunned at how fast we did it, we were 2 hours faster than Team Timberland, the pro team that was in the lead; we were the fastest team through that segment, even with our river leg soak.
We transitioned while the other team’s support crew talked to us and fed us lies about there teams whereabouts (those guys were always trying to slow us down, trickery). Sometime during the transistion, I heard that our next leg was 45 miles of trekking. I was secretly panicking, not wanting to show it to my team though. 45 miles, that would be the longest trek I’ve ever done, and my feet hurt already. Truthfully, I wasn’t sure Sara would make it, I had seen her feet, they were the worst of the bunch. Jim now had both ankles hurting, he had them both taped and was wearing three braces between the 2 ankles.
Stay tuned for the finale Part 4: The Calm Before the Storm Before the Calm.
No comments:
Post a Comment