Day 8: Trail Lake to Mono lake canyon, near the Mono creek,
tucked in the forest
Quite the site we stayed at last night at Trail lake with
huge granite slabs that keep the camp clean and tidy, flat areas for nice tent
sites, and my personal favorite feature: a flat rock next to a shallow
shoreline on a surprisingly “not too frigid” lake for the evening bath.
Maybe because I am blogging about our travels this year and
attempting to create an inspiring “how to get your kids in the backcountry”
book are we experiencing things we have never dealt with. It’s almost a comedy of errors and I am
pretty sure it all is happening for you, the reader’s benefit. So please enjoy!
This morning Cade woke up with a mild stomachache. He had been unusually tired the night before
as we climbed over that 12,000-foot pass; 2000 feet of elevation change over
about 5 miles of hiking, starting at 2:00 on a hot afternoon. Cade is our super athlete, always moving
fast, never sick, always-smiling, super boy.
I watched him scarf down his granola from the comforts of my tent and
happily went about my morning chores.
Within a short time, he started complaining of his stomach
hurting even worse. Hoping it would
relieve shortly, we advised that he just relax and drink some water. Mistake number one had been the small amount
of water he had consumed as he climbed the pass, as the air was cool and
deceiving.
Unfortunately, the pain increased at an alarming rate. He started clutching his stomach, as he laid
on a granite rock immoveable, moaning and crying.
My mind flashed back to the week earlier when friends had
surprised us and had come down to our California hideout to camp with us. They all had gotten sick, throwing up and
feeling generally rotten, but we had chocked it up to altitude sickness. Most folks that go from sea level to 10,000
feet would suffer exactly like they did.
The kink in our theory happened two days after their misery when Bekah
clutched her stomach in pain. Crazily
enough, we could explain it away as we had fed her a huge banana split with
sugary/corn syrup laden sorbet. She
simply overate. To help her out, I gave
her some Pepto Bismol and the pink promise of pain relief almost instantly
gagged her and resulted in her first throwing up experience of her life. When she threw up an hour later for a second
time, we were starting to realize our friends’ altitude sickness might be
contagious, meaning it wasn’t altitude sickness at all. It was a virus. We actually delayed our trip a day as we needed to make sure that
there was not a virus running rampant, as that is no way to start a 100 mile
through hike.
So, as we watched and helped Cade, who was now convinced he
was dying, we suddenly didn’t know if we should hike out or hike on. Realizing that if it were altitude, hiking
out would be very difficult and he’d get worse climbing up over the 12,000-foot
pass again. We were at 11,000 ft and
decided the best plan was to help him get to lower elevation. We divvied out items in his pack so that it
was super light, and got his shoes on and helped him up. He was shaky and miserable and quickly, upon
standing, threw up.
Ok, Bekah has never thrown up in her life and Cade has never
had altitude sickness and yet we had two bouts of vomit in 4 days. Seemed like a virus had hit the clan and we
were at a loss as to how to proceed.
Hundreds of dollars of food was waiting for us at two different drop
spots down the trail, we had planned/dreamed/prepared for months, and we had
family coming down to shuttle us from trailhead to resupply and back to the
trailhead. Did we really want to abort
the trip?
Cade’s symptoms were classic high altitude distress. We’d learn later from many hikers that we
talked to that altitude sickness could strike anyone, anytime, anywhere, even
if you are acclimatized. We started
hiking down, down, down until we reached Golden Stream where Cade begged for a
nap. We stopped and let him nap for two
hours at our new elevation of about 10,000 ft. as we nervously wondered if Cory
or I would soon be sick and how long it would take Cade to rebound.
He woke up and felt improved, so we hiked on – down, down,
down we went. By the time we reached a
lunch spot, we were at 8,500 ft, plenty of elevation change to bring relief to
someone dealing with altitude sickness.
Cade dipped his hiking hat in the water, put it on his head, and
declared that he was feeling 97% better.
From “near death” to “near perfect” in half a day did not
speak of a virus. His rebound was
remarkable but also a classic textbook case of altitude sickness – drink water,
nap, and get to lower elevations and improvement should happen quickly, and it
did.
The stress of the day knocked the appetite right out of Cory
and I. Helplessly watching our son feel
so wretched, far away from the comforts of home and wondering if we were next,
all made for a morose day.
We got in to camp and went forward with the plans as normal
– rehydrating our meat stew that I had made 6 weeks earlier and unpacking the
backpacks. As Cade, now feeling 100%,
unpacked, he discovered a damp sleeping bag.
We determined that his Platypus water bag had sprouted a leak (suddenly
their lifetime warranty made no difference!).
We laid his bag out to dry and determined to repair his water bag the
next day.
The final blow of the day came during dinner – Cory suddenly
became worried that the dehydrated beef in our stew might be rancid so he
immediately halted dinner and we had to throw our dinners out. Honestly, my stomach was so nervous and
stressed from this crazy day that I had little use for food so it wasn’t a big
deal, but normally, our appetites are ferocious and we would have wanted to
murder anyone who got between our mouth and our food. Ready to just go to sleep and try again the next day, we all just
gave in and went to bed.
New mercies always (usually) come in the morning so we went
to bed with a belief that the next day would be better. We’d have no way of knowing, as we closed
our eyes that night with high hopes of a better day, how incredibly opposite of
a day we had in store for us.
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