Hey Peeps... I know it’s been a long while, but I’m trying to get better about my updates (or lack thereof).

 

So what has happened in the last... say 4-5 months? Jeez, events... school... college ministry... recovering from massive hikes, high stress in classes, sweet birthdays, visits to the south, new years with the McFadden’s in Virginia, flunking Hebrew, fractured sesamoid bones... the list continues. Much has obviously happened... too much to hit on right now, so I’ll just drop one story in.

 

I’ll hit on the most interesting one of the list first: the fractured foot. Yes, I’ve been confined to the likes of a “short walked cast boot” for the last two weeks with still another four weeks to go. “How?” might you ask did I fracture one of the tiny, tiny sesamoid bones in the ball of my foot? Well, I’ll tell you.

 

 

 

 

As we started up the climb, it certainly was a gentle climb as Ryan had said. He failed to mention though, just how high that gentle climb went. The Elevation change is an average of 600 meters. That’s about 2000 feet. That’s also to say that the last portion of the hike actually descends to the cabin, making our highest point higher than 1,514 meters (about 5,000 feet). Trust me, if I had heard those figures before the trip, I probably would not have gone knowing that we only had four hours to make the trip. The last time I made that kind of climb over was the Chilkoot Pass in Alaska and it took about 6-7 hours on rocky terrain.

 

The views were breath taking and as the sun set over the horizon, the beauty carried the whisper of harder times. That may have been because I had just snowshoed up over 600 meters in 3.5 hours to the top of Paul Ridge and was breathing as if I had been a lifetime smoker with emphysema. As the sun went down and my legs quivered under my weight, the temperature dropped rapidly and I realized that stopping was not an option anymore. It was hike or freeze.

 

The next three hours of that night were one of the two hardest physical enterprises I ever undertook. The only one that comes close (and this was worse) was went I reached the summit of the Chilkoot Pass outside Skagway, AK. You know when you’ve reached the most difficult physical challenge of your life when you begin to truly believe that you could die. Maybe that sounds melodramatic, but the only thing that kept me moving was prayer and simply placing one foot in front of the other on the trail. A long way from the physical challenges of hiking when I first came to Washington state in 2004 taking leisurely trails around Mt. Baker or through the Lake Chelan trail.

 

To make matters worse, the snowshoes I had rented were too small for a man of my weight and stature (260 lbs) and every step into the snow proved to be extra sapping because my feet would sink one to two feet into the powder. To make matters even worse, every crest of every hill would sometimes provide a glimpse into the distance that looked like there might be a light or a flicker of the cabin. Each time our hope being extinguished by the realization that we were not there yet. At one point, we even began to believe that we had actually passed the cabin and simply didn’t see it because of the darkness. All we had were our headlamps to guide us at 5,000 feet in the miles and miles of snow and freezing temperatures. Luckily the weather was very temperate that night. Had there been a storm, I don’t know what would have happened.

 

The moment when we realized that we were close to the cabin and had made it was one of the more monumental times in my life. Even more so, I didn’t have the strength to be mad at Ryan for putting me through this hell.

 

 

As we entered the cabin, it was warm and comfortable with its hardwood everything. It never felt so soft. We ate together after singing the doxology and ate a king’s feast of various soups and treats. The friends, the food, the warmth of the propane stove all proved the best cure for the aches in my body. It was beautiful.

 

 

 

The next morning we ate breakfast and left early to make sure to get back in time, seeing that it took nearly 7 hours for people like myself to complete the trip. It was one of the most breath taking sets of views I’ve ever seen as we traveled back. It was well worth all the effort and the accomplishment of it all was a huge bonus. As I sit here though with my foot in a cast because of this trip which was taken over a month ago, I wonder if it was worth it or not.

 

Yeah, it was worth it! :)

 

PS- it was probably the trek down the mountain that caused the fracture. Too much pounding with all my “pound-age” :)