On the JMT to Devils Postpile

August 20, 2011

So far my experience with bears in the last few days has proven to me the Bearikade was a great idea. It fits great sideways in my Osprey Aura 65 and has proven itself to withstand the efforts of two sets of bears.  It also made a great seat while cooking.  I was more thrilled with the can than my pack.  By this point I have discovered the limitations of this light backpack’s shoulder straps and was cursing their stiffness.  Lucky for me I found a pair of brand new thick synthetic backpacking socks in my camp left there by the previous camper.  After short consideration I chose to cut the bottoms off and use the tubes to pad my shoulder straps.  It paid off, my comfort was greatly increased.  Other than that the pack had so far proven itself to be easy to organize and fit my gear perfectly.  I have also discovered I love the Honeyville powdered eggs. 

Due to the mystery illness I have been suffering from for the last two years, I was determined never to get stuck hiking in the heat. If I could avoid this, I could complete the trip without numb feet and dizziness. After a breakfast at 4:30 am of powdered eggs, grits and coffee I hit the trail about 5:15. I already discovered if you want to have some alone time on the trail the best time to hike was early in the AM, most didn’t seem to leave their camps until about 9 or 10. Sometimes adversity turns into a blessing, it forces you to do things differently.

It was on to Devils Postpile to meet up with Irene who was resupplying me and actually going to hike the next leg to Eddison Lake VVR with me as her first backpacking trip.

Long Journey

I’m off to see the Wizard.  Does he have answers to my demyelization and weird symptoms or not is the looming question. I feel like a patient on the FOX program House.  For the last five days I’ve been totally bedridden with severe sudden onset back pain which  I’m praying isn’t the beginning of a new symptom like the sudden onset foot pain and sudden onset hand pain which much like my back came about out of the blue, one second it wasn’t there and the next it was. No injury or event preceding the pain and lasting 5 to 6 months before disappearing almost as suddenly as it came on.  I have adapted to joints which are almost non-functional but I can’t do back pain like this for a half a year or until it decides to go away.  I now have a four hour drive ahead of me to the UCSF Multiple Sclerosis Center in the hopes of getting some answers. I’m ok with whatever this is, I just need to know WHAT it is so I can adapt.

Practicing

My John Muir Trail challenge is not determination, got plenty of that.  It won’t be altitude sickness, never had that, maybe because I was born in Switzerland, lived in the Rockies, Alaska and now at altitude in the Sierra Nevada range.  My challenge is going to be health.   I’ve been battling and unknown illness for the last year.  Sometimes I feel like a patient on the network show House.   I have days that I can’t walk a straight line if my life depended on it and that’s before any alcohol.  I wobble, have memory issues, tingle, and have severe itches on one arm.  I feel like my upper torso is being compressed.  Then there are the days when most of these symptoms are non-existent, they are few and far between but they do occur.  One would think this would be easy to diagnose but it’s been a year of nearly weekly Dr. visits and specialists and lots of positive and false positive tests and still nothing concrete.  I have accepted that Doctors really do have a license to “practice” that’s truly what it is.  I’m practicing too, practicing keeping a good attitude, practicing adapting to a debilitating illness and practicing keeping most of this hidden from my coworkers.  So far so good.

A Question of Sanity

My husband thinks I’m nuts and maybe I am. I am demyelinating so I have a great excuse, although I have never heard of demyelination causing mental illness. I want to hike the John Muir Trail this summer, all 220 miles of it (Yosemite to Mt. Whitney). I’ve done many extended backpack trips including a 2 week 14er trip in the Rockies and many 3-5 day trips, so what’s the big deal? I’ve got several months of vacation time saved up its time to start using it. I’ve thought this out and if I don’t do it now it won’t happen later. I have reached the point in my life where I recognize putting things off just means they usually don’t happen.
We did a 3 days section of this trip last summer and I’ve done two other sections over the last few years when climbing half dome and Mt. Whitney. The section we did last summer was an eye opener. It was a section not done by those who want to get to a destination like half dome or Whitney. Because of this, most of the people on this section of trail were through hikers doing the JMT . The people we met and stories could fill a book. It was awesome…. Almost as awesome as the views. The hike itself is a lure and the people who choose to do it are equally interesting.

Watch Your Back (pack)

I have to question my own survival instinct.  Sometimes I’m not as with it as I should be.  But then I have a great excuse, I’m demyelinating but that’s a whole other topic.  I just came from listening to Dr. Bruce Perry speak all day on childhood trauma and the developing brain. http://www.childtrauma.org 

I should have trusted my own senses that something wasn’t kosher but instead just brushed it off like most of us do.  The audience of about 1000 was one third law enforcement, one third mental health clinicians and the other third a mixed bag of crisis workers, social workers, and teachers. 

My coworkers and I grabbed our seats among the stadium seating in a large church, the first two seats obviously being reserved (large bags in the seats).  We chose to save the seat between the two reserved seats and my own by placing a personal item of mine and the conference gift (a large backpack) in the seat.  About an hour after we arrived three people showed up to claim the two reserved seats.  A rather interesting looking gentleman immediately started to take my backpack out of the seat leaving my personal item.

The man started to engage me that the backpack was his and the seat was his.  I advised him the seat was empty when we arrived however this response wasn’t suitable for him and he continued on.  After a five minute exchange, I offered him the seat anyway and he turned over the backpack.  I placed it under MY SEAT.

7 hours later, before the Dr. Perry was done, the gentleman and his companions were absent from their seats and so was my backpack.  I should have known better and should have trusted my initial instinct but denied it because of the company I was in.  It was a nothing item to lose but an interesting lesson in trust.  I really have to examine trust and survival instinct.  What if this was an item I needed? 

I have always looked both ways before crossing the street, even when there wasn’t any traffic but today I needed to examine what was next to me more closely.