Pain With Each Gain

 

 

 

 

Optimism in the face of perilous Day Hiking

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We contemplated what we were going to do.  We didn't know for a fact that we had actually been at Lil's Lake.  It could have been a different lake, there were no signs, no labels no anything.  Along with finding no trail, we decided to move on and look for the real Lil's Lake.

After a further two miles, we knew we had messed up.  We were a full eight and a half miles up the trail and we hadn't crossed over to the other Pacific Crest Trail.  Also, Diamond's Peak was creeping up on our left and we were beginning to go past it.  On our right was another peak, we figured it had to be Mount Yoran.  Two people passed us on the trail, and with help of their topographical, we knew we were off course.

Understand that I never go hiking without a topographical map.  It's a matter of principal for me.  Why?  For situations exactly what we had run into this day.  We were lost, stuck between two peaks in the middle of the forest...but we were on a trail!  No bushwacking...yet.

We headed back down the trail determined to find a path that crossed between the two Pacific Crest Trails.  The problem was, the book gave directions from a bushwacking perspective.  And for us, these instructions were going backward.  We made it back to Lil's Lake and again, hiked all the way around the lake looking for a supposed trail.  No dice.  Somewhere along the way, a six year old child took over my body and hurled the hiking book about twenty-five yards into the dense forest.  My wife very quietly retrieved it with a smirk.  It's not her retrieving it that get's my ire, it's the smirk.  She knows.  She knows so much and it hurts!  I don't like to be known that well, I would rather be that thing that only I know and no one else can figure out.  But after eight years of marriage, she knows.  She knows all.  She is all-powerful.

The rest of the hike was enduring pain.  Our bodies betrayed their age and it's fragile state.  Ankles, knees, hips all sang a symphony of pain and resistance.  It's like someone put sand in our joints and turned our ball joints into daggers digging into things and scraping.  At times I could hear them grating.  This hike turned itno the second longest I have ever done (AIT in the military was 19 miles) and the longest hike Linda had ever done.

What was great about it was we never lost our good humor, which could have been so easy to do.  We laughed about it and had a fantastic day.  Even at the end we were laughing about it.  It was a fantastic hike.