August dawn on the Mission Mountains Wilderness and Swan Valley in Montana. Scene viewed from unnamed peak (8771 ft) in the Albino Basin area of the Swan Range, Bob Marshall Wilderness.
In 48 hours, it will have been three weeks since I sought medical help for my left leg, which had been troubling me for a week and a half. The swift diagnosis of the blood clot was unexpected and more than a little unsettling.
Besides the anticoagulation shots that began immediately through the weekend, it was Saturday evening when they began; I have been on a regimen of anticoagulation pills since then. In addition, I received directions that the only exercise I could do was walking inside my home every one or two hours. I lasted until the following Friday. That is when I did a small walk of just over one mile into the basin area of Mount Helena City Park in Helena Montana.
Drinkable glacier water one half mile below the source in Montana’s Swan Range, Bob Marshall Wilderness. Reminiscing about an area that may no longer be available to me.
Tomorrow, it will be two weeks since I began walking again. Walking? More like an easy stroll. For most of that time, I have kept my heart rate below 130 BPM. The last two days I have kept it beneath 137 BPM. The route I have been walking for five days has a distance of 3.65 miles in an ascent/descent of 850 feet. It takes me approximately 1.75 hours to complete— yes, an easy stroll.
The only adverse effect I have felt during the walks is a tiredness in my left leg. It is my understanding that is a side effect of the blood clot. For some people that condition appears to be permanent. I am unsure whether it will be for me.
What is certain is my increased tempo beginning tomorrow. I will be adding another mile and 600 feet of ascent/descent to that easy stroll. I will also take my maximum heart rate up to 140 BPM. Since medical personnel have not sanctioned my exercises, if this turns out to be my last blog, then apparently I suffered the consequences of strolling a little too hard.
After a November snowstorm in Helena Montana, from the Prairie Trail a wintry scene of the cliffs of Mount Helena City Park.
November 1, 2014 marked the beginning of my third and final phase of training for the Continental Divide winter trip. This was also the start of the winter training. In a growing snowpack, I will undertake at least three multi-night backcountry trips. Here in Helena Montana, I have increased my daily training regimen. I am now exercising at least twice a day in the basement for approximately one half hour per segment (the physical therapist says where my back is concerned, it is critical to do the exercises three times a day). The daily minimum exercise on Mount Helena includes carrying a 53-pound load 3.5 miles with an ascent/descent of 800 feet.
Although the announced plan is to begin the Continental Divide winter trip on February 1, 2015, I have to be ready to go by January 1. If there is enough snowpack coupled with a crust on the surface after the New Year begins, that is when the trip will begin. In short, 46 days might be all that remains before the trip begins.
On Monday, November 17, I will begin my first winter training trip 75 miles north of Helena with three nights in the Scapegoat Wilderness’s Dearborn River Canyon. Although there will be snow on the ground, I am unsure whether snowshoes will be necessary. Make no mistake; I will have the flotation gear with me. Skimping during past winter trips has afforded me plenty of opportunity for some costly lessons, one nearly fatal. Weather wise, as of the morning of November 13 the extended forecast calls for moderating temperatures with a low of approximately 14°F on Monday and a high of 32°F by Tuesday, excellent traveling temperatures. The load weight will be approximately 75 pounds, not counting the nearly 6-pound snowshoes. Unfortunately, less than one week ago I began training with a 53-pound load. That Dearborn trip load is probably going to feel like a wheelbarrow load of batteries. Uggh.
This trip will also mark the first time I have been in the beautiful Dearborn Canyon since January 2002. If the next two winters go according to plan, I will travel through this canyon again in 2016, during the second leg of the Continental Divide winter trips.
I will be using the satellite connected personal messenger device. All Facebook and Twitter users will be able to follow my daily progress. That is, you will be able to locate my camp at the end of each day on a provided map.
After the Dearborn trip, I will attempt to do two more training trips, likely in December before beginning the main trip. Although unsure of these other trip locations, I suspect one will be to Lionhead Mountain in Henrys Lake Mountains near West Yellowstone, Montana.
Finally, yesterday the physical therapist made clear that where my back is concerned, the pain free days of travel with a load are behind me. All the training I am doing, particularly the strength and endurance training concerning the small of my back will only lessen the pain, not eliminate it. That interprets into a slower pace. Simultaneously it shortens each day’s travel time. The challenge continues to grow.
With that said, the morning exercises are front and center. Although I am unsure what the results will be, I will continue to prepare for the Continental Divide trip. In other words, where the trip and its preparations are concerned, all is normal.
Goldstone Lake in the Southern Bitterroot Range. Located at the head of Bloody Dick Creek Canyon, near Goldstone Pass on the Montana and Idaho border, which is also the Continental Divide.
As I traipsed up the hillside of Mount Helena 90, 60, and then only 30 days ago, I asked myself repeatedly why I should keep going. Wasn’t it already clear enough that my days of carrying a load were over?
On the Fourth of July weekend my wife, Carleen, the dogs, and I day hiked to Johnson Lake in Montana’s Anaconda-Pintler Wilderness, five miles beyond the trailhead, and retrieved a four-day cache, which I placed there the previous autumn. Going in I doubt I was carrying 25 pounds. During the exit the load was approximately 45 pounds, and too much for my back. Carleen offered numerous times to relieve me of at least some of the load. I refused and finally requested that she not to ask anymore, which she obliged. At the first of two bridge crossings on Falls Fork Rock Creek, we encountered another day hiker. Seeing the pain I was in, he offered to carry the load. Although tempted, I also turned his good deed away. We saw him again three quarters of an hour later. At this point, the pain was so excruciating, I was stopping every 100 to 200 feet. Once more, he offered to carry the load, which I again turned down. I eventually arrived at the trailhead, though I was near the end of my rope. The following day we hiked up another canyon similar in distance and elevation. This time Carleen carried the pack without any complaints from me for the entire trip.
The Fourth of July weekend was about seven weeks ago. During that time, I have had very little hope that I would ever get to backpack again, much less continue the Continental Divide trips for the next three winters. I continued to ask myself the rhetorical question of why I should keep going, whose real meaning was “I want to quit”. But I kept going. As recently as two weeks ago, Carleen carried my seven-pound camera bag out of the backcountry in the southern Bitterroot Range of the Big Hole Valley. She enthusiastically observed that I carried a 25 or 30-pound load 5 miles in an ascent of close to 2000 feet, a feat I was unable to do one month earlier. She accused that event as being progress, while I disagreed. For heaven’s sakes, in less than six months, I was going to have to carry upwards of 90 to 100 pounds, five to seven hours every day while wearing snowshoes! Yeah, some kind of progress.
Still carrying approximately 20 pounds on my back, we had to stop often until the pain subsided enough for us to continue toward the vehicle. Then something happened. We were within one mile of the vehicle when I called for what turned out to be the final stop. As we started moving again, I recalled what a yoga therapist fruitlessly tried to explain to me three weeks earlier. To minimize the pain as I walked I would attempt to curve my spine in the direction I was walking, while keeping my body upright, rather than hunched over. It worked! The pain disappeared for the remainder of the walk.
Nevertheless, on the chance that it was a fluke I said nothing to Carleen about it until the next day during the exit of another canyon similar to the previous day. Once I verified that the previous day’s experience was bona fide by carrying the same load unassisted, that I had finally hit pay dirt, only then did I tell her about it.
After that day I progressed with ever larger loads until finally two days ago I carried 70.5 pounds on Mount Helena and covered a distance of one and three-quarter miles in one hour. No pain! Encouraged tremendously, the following day I changed out the smaller 20-year-old backpack for the newer and larger backpack. I also included an additional 21 ounces of water, all of which increased my load to 75.5 pounds. The result was a new day, a different experience, and not a pleasant one. For approximately half of the one-hour walk I was on the edge of low-level pain.
I was 300 feet from the asphalt of the city streets when once again I silently asked myself what the use was to continue. This was the same incantation of five months earlier when I was without a load, and then repeatedly through the remainder of spring and again this summer. It is almost as if my head has only one answer for pain and being uncomfortable: Quit. Hell, a barnyard chicken has a larger variety of cackles than that.
So here’s the deal concerning my carrying over 70 pounds for the third day running. I will do my normal stretching and strengthening exercises, put on that large pack and head up the hill. Because it is part of the scheduled strengthening and endurance training, I will also increase the amount of ascending/descending for the day, and travel a greater distance. And when my head once again starts its singular cackle, I will keep walking and climbing.
I have begun to progress strongly with the strength and endurance training for the continuation of next winter’s trip on the Continental Divide. However, one part of my body is not progressing. The painful sciatic nerve condition in my lower back continues to hamper me. Yesterday I did what I now consider a light walk by ascending more than 1700 feet over a distance of 5.3 miles in approximately 2 hours.
I came off the walk feeling okay. With a 500 square feet carpet-cleaning job in front of me though, I was unsure how the rest of the day would go. As it turned out, by the time I left the job site in the latter afternoon, pain was piercing through the small of my back. For the remainder of the day and then in bed last night the back wobbled between painful and uncomfortable.
With that in mind, for today and tomorrow, I have two larger sized carpet-cleaning jobs to complete. For that reason, there will be no training today and likely none tomorrow. The largest job, at 1200 square feet combined with 15 stairs that have to be hand cleaned on my knees, is today. Tomorrow’s work is approximately 2/3 that size, and fortunately is without stairs.
This route has a resounding familiarity. It looks like last summer’s training, which is how I ended up ill prepared in 2013 for the winter Continental Divide trip that was to begin in February. Besides the two illnesses in September and November, there were other substantial interferences through last summer, autumn, and early winter with my daily exercising, which in turn contributed heavily to my failures last winter.
I note that until the winter of 2008, which was when I completed a 150-mile double crossing of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, I exercised two hours every day, that included an additional 10 to 12 minutes of resistance training. Often I would do this while carrying a 45-pound backpack. Afterwards I would clean carpet for much of the day. Now with my aging body and in particular because of my back, I am unable to maintain that schedule. Yet that is exactly the level I have to be at if I am to have any chance at continuing the Continental Divide trip next winter. While I will not be walking or resistance training today and probably not tomorrow, I will have to get to that level this summer, in the next 30 days. Beyond that, at some point I am going to have to start training with a load on my back. Hell!
In addition this summer, I must hike 254 miles of traveling along sections of the Continental Divide in Montana and Idaho. My daily exercises and carpet cleaning is similar to the regimen of climbing mountains with a load on my back. That is why I must be able to exercise daily on Mount Helena and then continue the rest of the day carpet cleaning. If I am unable to maintain this daily level, there is ample reason to doubt my ability to climb with a heavy pack on for multiple days and weeks this summer, much less next winter when the load is far bigger and the travel conditions are far worse.
Through the years, I have found that regardless of the doubts and feelings of hopelessness, which is the state of my present condition, I must continue exercising, work through the pain, and attain that higher level of physical fitness. It almost goes without saying that at times like this it becomes necessary to use the action of one day at a time, or if need be, break it down to just putting one foot in front of the other.
Glacier National Park personnel repeatedly stated that during the winter the high mountain cirque, Hole in the Wall was inaccessible. They were almost right.
This is the story and photos of four trips that almost took the author’s life twice.
