When we discovered the camelback holding Kathy’s water was leaking, at the first lake below those switchbacks we emptied the pack to dry things in the sun and very strong wind. Kathy's bivy bag escaped its rock weight in the wind and started blowing toward the lake. I jumped to stop it, tripped and fell flat on top of it. If you didn’t know I’d tripped, I looked like a 66-year-old lady making a diving save, Monday-Night-Football style. I was definitely a strong-enough weight to hold down the bivy bag, but Kathy suggested I refrain from further heroics. I agreed and put a Band-Aid TM on the scrape on my shin, and we had a few laughs.
The next morning, moisture in the lid to the pot used to boil water for breakfast was frozen before I could dry it. That’s cold. Passing Bighorn Plateau and Crabtree Meadows, we camped at Guitar Lake, a common staging area for PCT hikers, who want to go up Mt. Whitney. (The lake really does look like a guitar as you climb above it.)
Climb above it we did on the following day, leaving most of our gear at Guitar Lake as we slowly moved up and up, from 11,500 feet to 14,494 feet. It was a Sunday, and there must have been 50 people summiting, most from the Whitney Portal side, not from the PCT. Mt. Whitney is a very popular climb, and non-PCT hikers must apply for permission to climb on a lottery system.
Kathy was a funny one. She struggled going over Forrester Pass, a thousand feet lower in elevation than Whitney. But Whitney is a summit. She got summit fever and speeded up that trail. Once on top, she flitted around the summit like a butterfly.
I, on the other hand, was just about wiped out. I didn’t want to move and felt so tired I wondered how I would ever get down. Some guys, who had hiked the John Muir Trail were properly impressed to learn that I’d come all the way from Donner Pass. But they looked at me in my exhausted state, with my complexion gone slightly green-tinged from the altitude, and asked how in the world I’d ever done that. “One step at a time, silly boys. One step at a time.”
Descending to Guitar Lake, we ate dinner, and I bathed part of me, hoping to feel better. Then we packed up and zoomed to Crabtree Meadows another thousand feet lower. Arriving late, we put the tent up in the dark.
The branches of the bushes by Whitney Creek were thickly coated with ice from splashes of water in the morning. The next two days became a little easier, as the character of the mountains changed. We both were very tired with a cumulative fatigue. When we stopped to eat, one or the other of us would simply fall asleep. At Chicken Spring Lake, our last water source, Kathy pumped water, and I took a nap in the sun; I fixed dinner while Kathy napped.
We were so very tired, and we were so very, very dirty, trail dust leaving every exposed surface black. Our bodies needed rest, and we were really looking forward to being clean again. Still, that last night, as we gazed at the sunset through the trees, Kathy said if she wasn’t so tired she would love to hike on and on and on.
Kathy's foot hurt in the morning, as it often did. The wind was blowing cold and sometimes hard. I’d never been dirtier in my life. But we were both grateful we had been able to take such an incredibly beautiful hike.
Our pre-arranged ride picked us up at Horseshoe Meadows, and our timing was good getting out of the mountains. A big storm was expected the next day, with 3 to 6 inches of snow forecast for 8,000 ft. We had been living at 11,000 feet, and I didn’t want to think how much snow might fall at that altitude. I hoped all the hikers would be OK, and I was glad I wouldn’t be one of them as we headed to civilization with showers, restaurants, beds and a plane ride to Washington.
In spite of my problems with knees, it was a glorious 409 miles on the PCT, and I looked forward to the next year’s hiking.
Chapter 12 Fall and Winter 2007-2008
“At your age any quick turn can do it.”
Back home once again, I made an appointment with an orthopedist. He took x-rays and discovered three torn menisci. I remarked that it all had started with that surprise step in an unfamiliar condo, expressing amazement such a thing could result in a torn meniscus.
He said, “At your age any quick turn can do it.”
Thanks, Doc. He went on to say that he thought I needed a hip replacement. He further implied I’d exercised bad judgment to have hiked in the Sierra for so long, and in general, he gave me the impression he thought if I was still walking from the bed to the table at my age I had nothing to complain about. I went looking for another Doc. (BTW, I have hiked on my original hip at least 9,000 miles since I saw him, although other joints have failed me.)
A recommendation from my hiking buddy’s doc led me to another orthopedist. Pictures of mountains he’d climbed adorned his office walls. Good sign. He was considerably more sympathetic to an aging hiker, who wanted to keep hiking. We weighed the options of arthroscopic surgery to clean up the damage in my knees, medical opinion mixed about the advisability. I made the decision for surgery to clean up the damage, and - I hoped - to extend my hiking life.
It should have been a piece of cake, in and out of surgery on the same day, walking pretty normally in a week and quickly moving onward to conditioning for hiking. I had the surgery on both knees the same day, and two days later I was back in the hospital in excruciating pain with a staph infection that was eating my left knee. I was put on antibiotics and cultures identified the strain of staph. At one point when the knee was drained, I distinctly remember coming to from anesthetic hearing someone wailing in a high-pitched cry. Then I realized it was me. Not my favorite memory.
More Un-Favorite Memories
The kind-hearted doc had me on a morphine drip for pain. But morphine wasn’t a good choice for me. It made me paranoid and hallucinate. Really. I saw things – Cuneiform letters written in blood on my wall. I was sure the medical staff wanted to steal fingers and hands from my visitors in some elaborate scheme to make babies. In short, morphine made me stark-raving bonkers. I was living in an alternate and very scary reality, all very real to me. Since that experience, I have great sympathy for anyone suffering from mental illness. It was no fun at all.
I called my friend, Terrie Rae, in the middle of the night, to come get me, and I tried to escape from the hospital on a walker with my IV pole while dressed in my hospital gown. Of course I didn’t make it past the nurse’s desk. My friend called my son, and they both showed up and waited until, in a wheelchair and utterly exhausted, I was given a sedation shot and put back in bed. I don’t remember the rest of the night. Terrie Rae stayed by my side until near morning when I told her to go home and sleep. The next day I chewed her out for leaving me by myself. My drugged brain had no memory of her faithful kindness beside me through the night. I was fortunate she understood it wasn’t really me who had chewed her out, but my addled brain. Morphine was stopped, and my more normal brain function returned. I was put on IV antibiotics to kill the particular kind of infection raging in my knee and shipped off to a nursing home for three weeks. I didn’t much enjoy the nursing home, but at least I was then sane. ☺
“I won’t tell you not to go on your hike. But your knee will tell you how much you can do.”
By the end of January I was home and undergoing intense Physical Therapy Rehabilitation as an outpatient. My right knee became my good knee again. The left knee no longer had a staph infection, but it would never again be a good knee.
The best guess of the doc was that the posterior cruciate ligament no longer existed. I worked hard in therapy, my motivation was to get back on the trail. I had an April date with the PCT at the Mexican border. Terrie Rae thought I should be happy to be alive at that point instead of being obsessed by the trail. I was happy to be alive. But the determination to get back on the trail was what spurred me to work hard in rehabilitation.
I walked, first with a walker, to the end of my driveway. Then I made it halfway down the block. Then it was one block. Then it was two. I progressed to a cane. I walked more blocks. I gave up the cane. I walked some more. I went to PT twice a week and faithfully did exercises at home three times a day. Any time I did too much f
or a particular stage of recovery, the knee swelled, and I had to cut back how hard I worked. It took time, not just for recovery, but also to learn what my limits were and how to stay below those limits. If I worked the knee too hard, my quads (thigh muscles) simply shut down. And no matter how much weight I could lift in therapy with my left leg in exercises, I couldn’t trust my body weight, carried on the left leg, going down any step more than four inches deep.
My doc was impressed with my progress and knew what was driving me. He said, “I won’t tell you not to go on your hike, but your knee will tell you how much you can do.” He said I had to go more slowly. The pack weight must be lighter. I must be very careful. If decided to go, he asked for a phone call when I got back to tell him how it had gone.
I switched to a Gossamer Gear Pack and saved a pound. I got a Henry Shires single person tarp tent and saved more. I made a variety of other small changes, and my base weight was down to 12 pounds. (Base weight is the weight of all gear, everything except food, water and fuel.) Even with adding water for the desert, I thought I could keep the pack weight under 25 pounds, usually under 20. (I was a bit more optimistic than conditions eventually warranted.) My cousin, Liz, from San Diego, would provide me with trail support on the southern part of the PCT, so I wouldn’t be carrying any more than three day’s food at a time for the first hundred miles.
In March I planted peas in my garden. I wouldn’t have to be home for them to grow. I was then up to being on my feet six hours a day and was lifting 10 pounds with my left leg and 20 pounds with my right leg. A lot could happen in a month. In January I left the nursing home on a walker. In February I was just getting off a cane. In March I could walk 2.8 miles in an hour on level ground. I couldn’t do more without my knee swelling in protest. I continued to plan and prepare as if I were going hiking. I would do so unless it was proved to me that I could not. I bought food and organized food drop boxes. I registered for the PCT Kickoff at Lake Morena.
Toward the end of March, I took the first official hike of my recovery. I drove out to the Nisqually Delta and walked the 5.5 miles of the Delta. I set no speed records and carried only lunch and water on level ground. The day was beautiful, a rare spring day with blue skies and no rain, frosty to start, but not too cold. The view of the Olympics over the water filled my heart with joy. I saw a raccoon, a few dozen ducks, and hundreds of geese, five of which decided to get up close and personal. Small birds flitted and sang. It was a great day. The knee was tired by the end of the hike and pruning in the yard for an hour or more afterwards contributed to it screaming at me by evening. But the good news was that it only took overnight to recover instead of one or two days. That was very encouraging, as I would need to recover overnight when on the trail.
I added pack weight and went up Mount Pete for my first uphill hike. It took me twice as long as before the knee problems. But I did it. With my blue Gossamer Gear pack I was like the little blue engine. I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.
I planted the rest of the spring veggies in my garden. On April 3rd I made it around the Nisqually Delta twice, with pack, 11 miles. April 8 I made it up and down Mt. Pete again and had my last PT appointment. Time to go. I flew to California to meet my cousin in San Diego. I was going on a hike. It might be 10 miles or it might be 360 miles. The knee would tell me which it would be.
Chapter 13 April 12, 2008
PCT
“Are you the Medicare Pastor? How is your knee?”
On April 12, very early in the morning, I stood at the Mexican Border and signed the register at the Pacific Crest Trail Monument. I’d then been to both the northern and the southern termini; I just had to finish the parts in between. HA!
My cuz and I had sleuthed out the owner of Star Ranch, the land around the trail. We obtained permission for me to get support about ten miles north of the border. So the first day on the trail I took only my lunch, water, first aid kit, down jacket and my camera. I walked slowly, looking at all the flowers and taking pictures of each different kind. Gene, from the Star Ranch, met me at the jeep road with my gear, food and water.
The kindness of Doug and Gene made that first day into a very do-able day for an old lady with a fragile knee. I was grateful. Twelve hikers passed me that first day. I would meet many hikers in Southern California. Ninety-nine-percent of them passed me as I walked my slow and careful pace.
That night, I snuggled into my tent in a small spot in the chaparral out of view of the trail. At 5:30 the next morning I heard many footsteps. It was too early for hikers from the border and too many footsteps for small hiking groups. I couldn’t see them, but they couldn’t see me either. I suspected they were illegals using the PCT. After they were gone, the trail was mine. I concentrated on proper knee function at each step and reached Lake Morena by 2:30.
The next day was a zero. My cuz brought me a food drop and also left food for me at Mt. Laguna. It was strange to take a zero day after only two days and it was strange to take short hikes and stop, the sun still high in the sky. It was strange to have every hiker pass me with so much relative difference in speed that I likely would never see them again.
I reminded myself that I was on a walker only three months ago, hoping to graduate to a cane. I was so very lucky to be hiking at all at any speed. I was so fortunate to be on the trail.
I reached Mt. Laguna two days later. There were times the knee was painful. Critically important, I was recovering overnight. I had a bed and shower, as well as food at Mt. Laguna. In two more days I reached Sunrise Road Trailhead, where Liz met me with another food drop and tasty treats including a piece of apple pie, immediately devoured.
The weather in the desert ranged from freezing nights to very hot days. You might wonder how I was able to hike without being able to manage more than a four-inch high step with my left knee. Well-graded trails generally do not go up more than four inches in elevation in a single step. The right leg took the occasional higher step.
I saw three quail as I started out the second day from Laguna. I think I saw my first rattlesnake that day, too, but it slithered off the trail before I could be sure. Walking along the trail I heard rustling in the leaves beneath the bushes, but didn’t stop to see if the rustles were snakes, lizards, a horny toad, or a bird.
Sunrise Road Trailhead was extremely windy. Dust blew into the tent, hitting the walls and falling down, coating everything inside and out. I breathed dust and ate it, too, glad to pack up in the morning and leave.
Two days later I was at Scissors Crossing. Along the way I walked past bright yellow Bush Poppies in Chariot Canyon. And I met Jellybean, who would become a friend on this trail and whom I would see in later years on other sections of the Triple Crown.
Just before Scissors Crossing, I met a day hiker, and we compared notes about flowers. Giving me her name and phone number, she offered to bring me back to the trail from Julian the next afternoon. Perfect. Liz took me into Julian, famous for apple pie, but more importantly for me was a bed and a shower. That night I met Splash, a hiker from Seattle whom Kathy knew and whose journal I’d read.
She said, “Are you the Medicare Pastor? How is your knee?”
When you read each other’s trail journals, you feel like you know someone before you ever meet in person.
After getting gear, food, and water organized, I spent the next morning with my feet up and my head down on a pillow. My day hiker friend picked me up in the afternoon, so I could go part way up San Felipe Hills in the cool of late afternoon.
It felt good to be back on the trail even if the pack was heavy with five liters of water, my first real test with water weight. The San Felipe Hills were more like true desert in terrain and vegetation than the trail walked from the border, rocks, sand and four or five varieties of cactus, as well as agave.
The stalks that would carry agave blooms looked like giant asparagus stalks. Cholla and barrel cactus, some quite large, were blooming with yellowish green blooms. Beavertail cactus flowers were a
florescent pink; flowers of hedgehog cactus had a silver shine to their pink. All were very pretty.
That evening I met two young women cowboy camped at a bend in the trail with just room enough for one more. (Cowboy camping is sleeping on top of your tent or a ground cloth instead of in it, with just the stars overhead.). I loved it. Most of the rest of Southern California I cowboy camped. With a bum knee, it was much easier to simply sit down on the sleeping bag, everything within reach and no tent door to crawl through.
The water cache at Third Gate contained more than 160 gallon jugs of water, all lugged up a one mile trail, 4-8 gallons each trip, by dedicated trail angels as a work of love for the trail and hikers. I only took two liters as I stopped for the night.
Among the many hikers camped at Barrel Springs, I met RockStar, who was to become my trail companion for much of the Continental Divide Trail years later. After my dust-filled tent at Sunrise Trailhead, my theory for the very windy night at Barrel Springs was to cowboy camp on the sheltered side of a bush and hope wind would blow dust over me instead of hitting the tent wall and falling on me.
The following day I was at Warner Springs and had walked 113.2 miles. Yes, I did it very slowly, taking extra good care of the knee. Yes, I stopped often and never carried much food. But I did get there, very encouraged. I might complete the hike I’d planned.
RockStar and I shared a room at Warner Springs and enjoyed the hot springs swimming pools that night. I also met Ursa Minor, hiking with huge blisters on her feet. The next morning my cuz, Liz, picked me up along with RockStar, and we went back to Lake Morena for the PCT Kickoff.
Kickoff
The Annual PCT Kickoff is an amazing gathering. Lake Morena Park was reserved for hikers and was very full, at least 5-6 people in every site, a veritable forest of tents. There were presentations on bears and water as well as vendors with lightweight gear. I had many conversations with people of differing backgrounds, personalities and ages. People who had previously thru-hiked the PCT taught and supported aspiring thru hikers in one grand gathering with an exciting atmosphere.
Old Lady on the Trail- Triple Crown at 76 Page 8