If I had been weaker? Less prepared? I don't know...something...I would have been in tears at this point. The pain was relentless and unlike anything I've ever felt. I had to keep pausing every other step when we walked downhill. I kept right on smiling. I'd made it nearly 16 miles, I could do 8 more. Besides that, hiking down is optional. Hiking up is mandatory. I knew that going in.
How I made it though those downhill stretches I'll never know. My knees screamed at me with every available nerve ending at every step. They tensed. They occasionally locked up. They begged me not to bend them.
I did my best to listen to what they were saying. To rest when things got really bad. To stretch out the tendons. To tense my quadriceps and lift my knee caps in between steps. Still they pleaded with me. No. More. Downhill.
We reached a point where a small creek crossed the path and we took an extended break here. I took off my shoes again and let my feet dry out. I had several blisters at this point, but none of them were very bad or terribly painful. I re-bandaged/taped/moleskined my feet and put on a pair of clean dry socks. I ate some more food (though truthfully, I was both eating and drinking continuously for close to 98% of this hike). A couple other people from our group met up with us there. One of the women in particular had the single most amazing blister on her heel I had ever seen. It was super intense. We could not figure out how to bandage it. It was nuts. Comparatively, my feet were in amazing shape.
From here, the trail was mostly uphill. I was THRILLED. My knees immediately felt better. I actually had NO pain at all on uphill steps, but every now and then when I had to step down, even a little bit, I got a seriously painful jolt.
The trail wound around through some marshy green areas for a bit. There were lizards everywhere, and lots of shade. Soon however, that all gave way to some serious climbing. We found ourselves approaching the Devils Corkscrew at the hottest point of the day.
The Devils Corkscrew is where the serious climbing begins. It is a series of evil corkscrews, full of stairs, winding through the black rocks of the Vishnu Schist. The temperature can soar to over 130 degrees here in the summer. It only hit 110 while we were there, but man was it hot! I tied my kool towel around my head, and that was a huge help.
Antoline was starting to struggle with the heat and elevation during this stretch. She thought she felt a headace coming on so we IMMEDIATELY found some shade and sat down to rest. More food, water, and tylenol were consumed, and before long she was feeling much better. I tried my best to get some good shots of the Devils Corkscrew as we left it behind, but the shadows from the canyon walls made it difficult.
Our breaks became much more frequent from here on out. The heat was sucking the momentum out of us, and is was important that we didn't push ourselves too hard. I wasn't about to start having issues now, I'd come entirely too far. Our pace was just about perfect. We were tired, and struggled a little bit at points, but we both felt really good. We never got nauseous or faint, and my knees were feeling terrific by this point.
It took forever to reach Indian Gardens. Forever. It was without a doubt, the longest 3.2 miles I have ever walked. There were points where we thought we must have missed Indian Garden. We had been walking for what felt like forever. How could we not have gone a measly 3.2 miles?
The trail started getting greener, and the heat started to be less of a bother.
We were getting close, we could feel it. At every corner I said, 'this is the last corner, I can feel it'. I was wrong many, many times. We came around one corner, and there were deer on the trail!
They were unimpressed with our presence and slowly moved out of the way, continuing their grazing.
Finally, FINALLY we made it to Indian Garden.
It. Was. Awesome.
We were officially half way up the Bright Angel. We'd come almost 20 miles, were back up to 3,800 ft. elevation, and the sun was getting low in the sky. It felt magical. MAGICAL.
No comments:
Post a Comment