After our last hike to Camp Muir didn't go so well, we knew that we had to try going up one more time to see how I would handle the altitude. I made sure to talk to lots of people about my headache issues and got a lot of good advice. I called the guides at Alpine Ascents to ask them what to do about my headache, and they thought that I had enough water, but that I was just extra sensitive to altitude. I asked them exactly what they did when they hiked up, and he said that they stop every hour for 15 minutes. So on Saturday, I brought a stop watch and timed it so that we could do exactly that. I also took their advice and bought some Nuun electrolyte tablets to put into water instead of using Gatorade, which has a lot of sugar in it. Nuun has several flavors and it is very tasty. It worked out great for me. Also the week before we practiced going to bed early and getting up 30 minutes earlier each day of the week, so when 4:30 am rolled around on Saturday, we were ready for it. And the last, and probably the best thing we did, was baked a Papa Murphy's gourmet veggie pizza and put four slices in our bags to eat at each stop. They say that it doesn't matter what you eat on the mountain, just as long as it has enough calories and as long as it is appetizing. When at elevation, your body doesn't really feel hungry, so it is important to eat no matter what. I don't think that I ate enough last time, so we made sure that we had good food for fuel.
On Saturday morning we picked up my co-worker Garrett on the way to Rainier. He is also a Climb to Fight Breast Cancer participant, but his expedition is on August 21, two weeks after ours. If we made it to Camp Muir, it would be his first time to 10,188 ft.
The weather was stellar at about 70 degrees and sunny. It felt cooler than July 10th because of a nice breeze coming off of the snow. The trail up to Muir looked different than last time because the snow is continuing to melt, so the park rangers constantly are changing the route. In June we couldn't see the 12 foot trees near Paradise, which means we were probably walking over the top of them. On Saturday, there wasn't any snow at all for the first 1/2 mile or so. This makes it tough walking in our plastic boots, but overall the route is getting easier and more direct.
Not a cloud in the sky.
On our way up we kept leapfrogging with another group that consisted of an older woman and a few others. She looked very strong and had obviously been on a few mountains in her life. We estimated that she was in her early 70's, but we weren't for sure. Garrett was brave enough to ask her how old she really was when we saw her at Muir. She seemed only partially surprised at the question and then answered, "I'm 85 years old." We were shocked! Not only did she make it up to Muir, but she made it as fast as we did, and we're almost 60 years younger than she is! Wow!
After our first hour, we stopped in the shade of some rocks and took a break. That slice of pizza sure tasted good. Then we went another hour and stopped for another 15 minutes. After the third hour, we sat on a few rocks and enjoyed the view for around 30 minutes, for a total break time of one hour. After the third stop, I started to get a headache like last time around. Then I remembered what a colleague of mine told me about pressure breathing (#4 in this good article on coping with altitude). It is a technique that forces the CO2 out of the lungs so that oxygen exchange is better and headaches don't occur. I continued to pressure breathe all the way to Muir and felt a hundred times better than before. We arrived around 2 pm, after 5 hours of hiking, which is about average.
A couple of huts at Muir.
Enjoying the view...Mt. Adams is just to the right of my head. It rises to about 12,300 feet and looks a lot like Rainier.
Lots of people at the top, but not as many as July 10th. We couldn't figure out why there weren't as many people hiking this time, but it made for a nicer trip.
A group making it to the top.
After about an hour, we ventured down, this time by glissading...a fancy term for sledding down snow chutes. We brought heavy duty plastic bags and proceeded down the mountain. We probably went on five different chutes that varied in length, which cut down our descent time to two hours instead of three.
After a successful day, we drove home and saw a full moon, which looked like it was right next to Rainier. Those staying overnight on the mountain probably had an amazing view. We can't wait until our overnight trip to the summit, which is less than two weeks away! Can't wait!
0 comments:
Post a Comment