my hike

Yesterday I hiked Mt. Humphrey's.

My friend Sandy had e-mailed me and asked if I would be interested, and I completely shoved aside the thought that I had not hiked all summer... certainly not up-hill anyway and that I have been experiencing chronic muscle pain and said, yes. We met at 6am, picked up two more hikers, and headed up to big pine country.


I skied this run in March!!!

I was pretty concerned by the time we reached the trail head. My legs had been giving me fits for a couple of days. Historically the person who leads the hike, I told them I would stay to the back and just see how I would do. I took smaller steps, letting them pull out in front of me... I like the silence of the forest anyway, and one of our group was a talker. They would stop pretty often, I thought to wait for me, but eventually when they stopped and I caught up, I just kept walking... slowly, paying attention to my pace... at some point I began to get out of breath... elevation and grade catching up to my lung power... but I started counting my breathes... doing a belly breath. Four steps per in-out breath for a higher grade, three and even four on a flat grade. I think the oxygen was feeding my muscles... I was feeling no muscle fatigue at all.

As I reached the saddle, not the peak, I began to feel my Achilles tendon in my right leg. That was the end of the hike for me, but I had done so much better than I'd expected I wasn't complaining.

Only three of us made the saddle, the other gal had difficulty with the elevation and had turned around. We ate lunch, enjoyed the view, and took a couple pictures to document our accent. Then we headed down.

Down hill was much more difficult. We were tired from our climb. Gena and Sandy both fell as we went down.... I was fortunate that I kept my feet under me... by the time we reached the midway point we stopped and tossed back a couple Advil's... I began to long for Phoenix and the jacuzzi at my health club... as we moaned and complained and wondered both to ourselves and to each other when the end of this descent would come, we also agreed that we had a great day, that we would not have passed it up.

Dela was sitting on the ski lodge patio munching on french fries and sipping a libation. She was glad to see us and we were glad to see her. We decided to grab food there, in the beautiful mountains, rather than in a congested Saturday afternoon Flagstaff.

The jacuzzi was wonderful last night, and when I got home I pretty much fell straight into bed. This morning I still felt okay, but took a couple more Advil as a precautionary measure. Now it is 4:30 and parts of my lower body are really beginning to get stiff. I'll walk later on and pop a couple more Advil before bed.

I remember ten years ago it would take me three or four days to get over a tough hike. I wonder what it will take this time.