The
Trail to Mount Everest
Practicing
Medicine at the
World’s
Highest Hospital
Chapter
3
Training
on the Colorado Plateau
It goes without saying that trekking to Pheriche at 14,517.5 feet won’t be like walking to the Port Gamble post office to pick up the mail. I have vivid recollections of the 1996 Gokyo Ri trek which topped out at 18,023 feet. I would walk into camp either as the last to arrive or in the company of a group that came to call itself “The Final Four.” I would make a beeline for my designated tent, break into the trekking bag, get out the sleeping bag, find the pillow and assume the recumbent position as soon as I could. Sometimes I even missed the dinner bell. I don’t recommend it as a weight loss program but it certainly did work in that regard. Somehow, the aches and pains had abated by the next morning and I would feel like going on.
And so it was in anticipation of a staged trek (taking a 2 month breather at Pheriche) this year to the Everest Base camp at 17,600 feet and thence up Kala Patar at 18,360 feet that I planned to engage in a more extensive program of physical training.
The Colorado Plateau is a magnificent land encompassing parts of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. It harbors some of America’s most splendid National Parks. Sue and I had visited the plateau in January of 2002 taking in parts of the Navajo Reservation plus both Canyonlands and Arches National Parks in east-central Utah. There are trails in abundance and elevations go up to over 9,000 feet at Bryce Canyon National Park. 9,000 feet is 300 feet shy of where the trek to Pheriche will commence but it is a wee bit higher than Port Gamble at 86 feet.
On September 26th we departed the fall colors of Port Gamble in a GMC van. Our first stop was Moab, Utah on the doorstep of both Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. And they were glorious. Sue, still recovering from her near brush with death in April, was able to accompany me on some of the trails. My first hike was down Wall Street. I thought I should start out on an easy walk downhill.
My most vivid memory at Arches occurred in the northern netherlands of the park near Double O Arch. I was on a remote and primitive trail where a number of segments traversed over slick rock. The trail was sparsely marked in many places by an occasional rock cairn. I stopped in a very remote part of the trail to take a picture and spied a young girl who had wandered off the “beaten path” and was definitely lost. Regaining the trail, we walked together for a bit and then she was off having significantly more spring in her step than I.
But about half an hour later, I caught up to her once again. By this time the trail now lay in a creek bed. It had rained very hard the night before. The canyon walls on either side of the creek had been narrowing for about 250 yards. Composed of slick rock, they rose 50 or 60 feet above us. Not a problem. And then I came up on the girl. She was stymied by a rather large and ominous pool of water in the creek bed between the two walls of slick rock. The ramparts on either side looked nearly impassable. The only way to continue was straight ahead. But I had neglected to bring my inflatable life raft and the pool of water was about 40 feet long and maybe 10-20 feet wide. And the rather sheer rock walls on either side disappeared directly into the pool. We both studied the situation. How deep was the water? Maybe a foot, possibly ten? Who knew? It was either turn around and retrace our steps (about 4 miles with some difficult climbing), peel off our gear and attempt to swim or take a chance on traversing the slick rock. Neither of us had any desire to get wet especially with the camera gear we both had. But neither of us wanted to turn around.
The young woman, who was from Europe, decided to try and traverse across one of the rock faces. The face was probably 55 degrees. She was making great progress when she suddenly lost traction and started to slip toward the dark water below her. Now you would think that, as a concerned gentleman, I would have been at the ready to jump into the pool to save her life should she have the misfortune of falling in to the water? But I had already recognized a potentially great photo opportunity and it was the video camera that was at the ready. She quickly arrested herself. The pitch of the wall increased as she inched forward but also downward toward the pool. She turned and assumed the prone position against the face of the rock in an attempt to gain more traction. Her descent was arrested once again. But as she once again tried to creep ahead and make headway, she once again started slipping and accelerating toward to unknown depths below. Going down! Next stop! The water!
How deep was the water? The video documents that she only went in up to her shoe tops. How anticlimactic! She was kind enough to wade back toward me to give me an indication of the depth. Knee deep at the maximum! So with my shoes tied around my neck, I waded across the pool. She declined to give me her name and address when I offered to send her a copy of the tape.
We visited Canyonlands where it was cold and wet and then Capitol Reef walking all of the half day hikes I could find. My left knee bothered me at first from a fall I suffered skiing at Schweitzer the year before. But that discomfort soon worked its way out. I was pleased that my stamina and my wind seemed to be good and that I was keeping within the time frames advertised for most of the trails. I gradually started choosing hikes with more vertical ascent. Bryce Canyon was ideal for that. And then I returned to Zion National Park where I had had the great good fortune to live while I attended my senior year in high school at Hurricane. I had done some of the more difficult hikes in Zion when I was 16 and 17 years old, including some rudimentary rock climbing but had never done many of the established trails. One such trail leads up the West Rim of the canyon to a point called Scout’s Lookout. From there you can turn left and go on up to the West Rim. Or you can turn right and climb a precipitous rock fin called Angel’s Landing. I turned right.
Angel’s Landing rises vertically about 1,400 feet above the floor of Zion Canyon. The final 500 feet of the climb are not for the faint of heart or for those who suffer from acrophobia. There are points on the climb that you can carefully glance either right or left and encounter a 1,000 foot vertical drop straight down. This rock massif held such draw for visitors that the National Park Service placed stationary chains along the route after several fatal falls. But the climb is well worth it. The vistas from the top both up the canyon toward the Zion Narrows and down the canyon where the Virgin River departs the canyon’s sandstone walls are unparalleled. Working my way up, I noted that there wasn’t much gray hair among the other climbers. Maybe that speaks to my lack of common sense (my 95 year old mother would nod her head in the affirmative). I spent about an hour on top of Angel’s Landing simply drinking in the spectacular scenery. Off to the south was Lady Mountain, one of the technical climbs that I had done several times when I was 17. And then it was time to descend. The National Park Service has (unfortunately) paved the trail all the way from the canyon floor to Scout’s Lookout. Not so good on the knees especially when you are descending. About half way down, my right knee started aching and by the time I got to the canyon floor, I was limping badly. The next morning, things were no better and there was swelling in the knee.
My grand finale was to cross the Grand Canyon from the north to the south rim. Something that I had done when I was in college after my family moved from Zion to the South Rim in 1957. Sue and I drove to the north rim the next day where my knee gave me the very clear message that trying to walk 21 miles across the Grand Canyon was sheer folly. It was obvious that I would not be able to continue. What a disappointment. My father had spent 5 years of his life on these trails doing the surveys and supervising the construction of the trans canyon water line from Roaring Springs below the north rim to Indian Gardens below the south rim. So I was doubly disappointed.
The long and short of it is that an MRI showed a tear in both the medial and lateral meniscus of the right knee and a bone bruise of the tibia. In mid November I underwent arthroscopic surgery on the right knee to repair the tears. As an encore, I had a tarsal tunnel release on the right ankle because of numbness in my foot that had developed after returning from Everest in 1996. Unfortunately, that incision broke down in the face of bleeding and a terrible contact dermatitis from some substance in the dressing that resulted in a second-degree burn. And so I was grounded. The knee has been slowly getting better and a repeat MRI just before I left for Nepal showed nothing to be concerned about, if I can believe my favorite orthopedic surgeon. The open wound on my ankle has been more of an issue. By the time I start the trek on the 24th of February, the wound should be healed to the point that it should pose no problem. Time will tell.
I will be in Kathmandu for about 10 days prior to departing for Pheriche. And you walk nearly everywhere in Kathmandu. Maybe I should ride a yak (just kidding) to Pheriche but a horse is not out of the question. If I can find a horse that will volunteer!
A little bit up and a little bit down. That is trekking in the Solu Khumbu of Nepal.