Collegiates West, Day 2, In Which I Invoke the Mid-Day Nap Rule

I awoke the next morning to find my tent full of water, soaking my one pair of pants and shirt. This is not the first time I’ve woken up to find water standing snuggly in my tent as though it were a plastic bag holding a goldfish. Thusly I spent the cold morning breaking camp in my underwear while my clothes dried and Rob and Ed went out of their way to make no comment.

The first couple of days at altitude are hard for me, and I worried that I might slow the pace for my two Colorado-based friends. Ed is a natural athlete–an athlete who by his own repeated appraisal needs to lose about 30 pounds. You look at him, looking at his pronounced belly, and you can see him thinking “how did this happen to me?” But Ed gets up in the morning like a puppy, all energy and enthusiasm. I have never known anyone who pushes themselves as hard as Ed did every day on this trip. Rob however is truly unique, the single person I know most attuned to backpacking high mountain trails. He makes it look like he is not even trying, which in this case was probably true.

So Ed took off–BOOM, gone. Then Rob would be back there behind me, and he’d disappear for a while, but suddenly there he’d be again, literally strolling along like he was just going out for the mail. I suspect that my slower pace had allowed him to occasionally veer off the trail and follow his whimsy, perhaps summitting 14,003 foot Huron Peak unnoticed as Ed and I made our way forward. It was a good feeling, knowing that these two were looking out for me by cradling me between them.

I am “fitter” than Ed, but I take the “slow but steady wins the race” view of hiking and life in general. Ed however starts fast, but then there is a noticeable crash as the day progresses, and slowly Ed doubts his stamina. I am familiar with this, being 62, and so I introduced my hiking partners to the Mid-Day Nap Rule: “it is hot, and we’re going to find a flat spot in the shade and take a nap until the sun is lower and it cools off a little.” So Rob reluctantly humored me, and Ed seemed grateful, and curling up on some shaded pine needles mid-day became our custom for the rest of the trip.

It was still hot after our nap. You have to wrap your mind around the fact that even though you may be sitting next to a bank of snow, the UV light is quite strong up high, and you may not be sweating much but you are surely baking from the inside out. You feel “hot,” but the heat is all inside of you, and trying obstinately to come out. And so we paused again next to a small stream a few miles before our big climb of the day, up and over Cottonwood Pass.

I don’t know what came over me sitting next to that stream–the need to be alone, the desire to get it over with, maybe just wanting to prove something to myself. But after a brief rest, I raised myself up and started walking, without saying a word to Rob and Ed. I’d look back occasionally to see if they were back there; they weren’t, but I knew they’d be coming. When I got to the base of the big climb up over the pass, I said “that doesn’t look so bad,” looked back and saw Rob and Ed coming over a rise, raised an arm in affirmation, and took off up the climb.

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Hiking alone, I’ve gotten discouraged as each step became a shuffle, reduced from a 30″ stride speaking power to a perhaps 20″ step that said “I am old, and tired, and I should not be here.” But I roared up and over Cottonwood Pass. I was so very happy at the top, because each pass is a marker, a tangible symbol that you have done something significant. Rob was not far behind, and I will admit to a certain sense of awe as I realized that even Rob had needed to reach down deeper to come over the top. And then finally Ed, beautiful Ed, coming up to the top, not looking up at all as I’d said “smile for the picture!,” willing himself to get there. And then Ed paused and said “you brought us all over the top!”

Within an hour I’d be standing exhausted in the dark, too tired to even decide where to place my tent, much less to actually pitch it. But at that moment, I felt quite good.