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This is part IV of a series on hiking Barr Trail. Read part I, part II, part III.

At the end of the day, I had mixed feelings about not hiking back down the mountain. On one hand, we’d enjoyed an unqualified success:

• gorgeous weather
• 0 injuries
• 0 cases of AMS
• 100% completion to the summit (12.6 miles, +7600 feet)

This victory is especially sweet considering the inexperience and less-than-ideal training or acclimitization put in by some of the participants.

I also have to mention that I hiked without pain and without painkillers. I’ve had recent battles with knee and shin problems but neither affected me, proving that the skeletal adjustments I’ve made recently have worked. I used no orthotics, external joint bracing, or support wraps. I must be doing something right.

But there’s that unchallenged part of me that wanted to complete the round-trip. I think I will do that 25-mile hike at some point. I’m not disappointed in our decision not to hike down this time, because even now I can’t imagine enjoying a 9pm finish. Hiking down in those conditions would have been a mistake. But I think it is possible for a smaller group, with similar conditioning and a decent night’s sleep, to finish this roundtrip in 12-14 hours. Maybe I’ll put that trip together in a few years. I hope to conquer a few other fourteeners first.

Getting down the mountain was a challenge, albeit of a different nature than the ascent. Three different people, including the director of Barr Camp, had told us that the staff at the summit house would make a PA announcement to help us solicit rides down the mountain from tourists who had driven there. However, when I approached the clerk at the information counter, I was met with a haughty attitude which I’d previously thought was limited to employees of German railroads. She shut me down, not only refusing my request but acting insulted that I’d had the audacity to ask. Apparently they fear the liability should something bad happen on the drive down the mountain. “But you need not arrange specific rides,” I pointed out, “you could simply announce that there are hikers looking for rides, and leave it to us to —” She cut me off and was rude enough to look over my shoulder to the next customer in line, asking “Can I help you?” as if I’d ceased to exist.

Still, I knew I’d have no problem arranging a ride, because of the awe factor I’d experienced earlier. Some of our group felt differently; they were visibly nervous about the task. Then as some of us were discussing it, a woman approached and offered the two empty seats in her car. What could be easier? Two down; five to go.

I stepped outside and approached the first group I saw. I struck up a brief conversation about the ascent, and then once I had them engaged I set the hook. “You wouldn’t have any extra seats in that enormous maxi-van, would you?” They took three of us. At that point, with five of seven rides arranged in less than five minutes’ effort, I claimed a seat for myself and assumed someone else would find the final two rides.

This turned out to be more difficult than I expected; our last two hikers got rejected a dozen times before finally accepting a ride from some senior citizens who made them ride in the bed of a pickup truck, which was otherwise filled with souvenir rocks. The truck stopped at every vista point on the descent, and again so one of the elderly passengers could lean out the door to vomit. They got dropped off on the freeway a mile outside of town. It was, unfortunately, the worst ride of all. In contrast, we were provided seats, food, conversation (complete with entertaining Fargo-esque accents), and were driven all the way to our rental car.

I was badly in need of a nap at that point, but we drove out to round up the rest of our group. Then came a shower, dinner, and several pints of beer. I still felt glassy-eyed and disconnected, making me suspect that sleep loss was a primary component of my mountaintop fog. I crashed hard at 9:30 and slept the sleep of a guy with no plans at 2AM except “sleep another six hours”.

Believe it or not… I have more to say. Read part V.

This is part III of a series on hiking Barr Trail. Yes, the narrative is nearly as long as the hike, thank you very much. Read part I or part II.

The fries were a highlight of the summit house. The crowd was a low-light. Some of the (nicer) folks were in awe that we’d hiked up the mountain; I could have done with more of these, but still fewer people overall. The density of the room was much more pleasant between the departure of one train and the arrival of the next.

The merchandise in the gift shop was a low-light. Really, how can a shellacked plank of wood with a Pike’s Peak decal on it commemorate this amazing mountain?

The bathrooms were a horror — long lines of unsuspecting people waiting for a cesspool-stinking hell, featuring a slanted floor flooded with two inches of muck. Nature called, so I ventured inside, only to change my mind halfway into the room. My nose is less sensitive than most, as many of my friends insist, but this place was disgusting. But a few minutes later I had to brave it after all. (Nature called back.)

I suffered more ill effects of the thin air and lack of sleep. The best way I can describe it is “spontaneous theta state,” a term I just invented. I sat down to wait for the rest of our crew, and every few seconds I’d hear a voice from a nearby table and I’d have the feeling that I’d just become conscious. It wasn’t a drowsy, sleepy sort of experience. I think my brain was shutting off in protest of abuse, only to be jarred awake partial seconds later by some external stimulus (like a voice), even before gravity had grabbed my head and slammed it into the litter of food-bar wrappers on the table in front of me. I was a little bit dizzy and a lot disconnected. The world seemed very plastic and un-real up there, physically at hand but experientially remote, pausing and restarting as if projected onto my consciousness by a machine with a gimpy power supply. If I didn’t tend to overuse the word bizarre, I’d probably use it here.

At one end of the summit house is an oxygen bar. Of all the junk for sale in the room, this single item had potential to be useful. Fighting through a press of bodies and a funk of gauzy semi-consciousness, I approached the “bartender” and inquired about fees. They charge $6 for 5 minutes, more or less. They provide a nose tube and a seat at the bar. The girl showed me the apparatus — the oxygen bubbles through “flavor” tubes, and the mechanism allows the user to dial up whatever flavor is most appealing. The names scared me; they were a sickly-sweet mix of lip gloss colors and Snapple combinations, like Strawberry-Kiwi-Peach. I asked if I could sample one because I wanted the oxygen but feared that the added scent would make me nauseous. (Plain, odorless oxygen is not an option, in yet-another triumph of marketing over common sense.)

The girl turned on the gas and held the tube up… I took a whiff and staggered back a full step. “Oh my god, that’s disgusting!” I said with a lot more volume than she appreciated. I didn’t mean to scare off the dozen interested potential customers that had gathered around, but I’m sure that was exactly the result. If you end up at the summit house and the oxygen bar refuses your request for a sample, you’ll have me to thank.

Finally I realized that the outside air would be a lot fresher than the murk inside the summit house, which at one end smelled of deep-fried fats, the other of chemical fruit substitutes, and the middle (where the bathroom crowds gathered) of, basically, fermented ass. I went outside to breathe, catch up with my summit partner, and wait for the other five guys in the group.

They came up together, evidence that they’d been supporting one another along the way. They looked good. I was proud of them for making it, because although some had been certain of success, some were not.

One of the five, the group leader and most experienced “peak-bagger,” brought up the rear in silent testimony to his assumed role of coach and cheerleader. He was one of a few who had been committed to hiking back down. My summit partner was prepared to join him, as was another friend, if given a convincing argument. I felt physically strong enough, but mentally and emotionally wiped out after having sat around the summit being dizzy for two hours. I pointed out that even a quick descent would put us back in Manitou Springs after 9:00 PM, too late for dinner, in the dark. It would mean being on the trail for 19 hours. When I’d arrived at the summit, I was looking forward to descending into ever-denser air, but by the time the rest of the group arrived I had convinced myself that the more pleasant descent would be the one in the back seat of someone’s car.

And I guess I ended up convincing the others, too, although that wasn’t my intention. The prospect of rest and food was simply too appealing.

Yes, there’s a part IV…

This is part II of a series on hiking Barr Trail. Read part I.

The temperature on the trail was around 50°F at 2:00 AM and didn’t get much warmer; by the time the sun had come up we were above 10,000 feet where the air temperature would have been colder anyway. Wind temperatures varied from a nipple-stiffening 0° Kelvin (subjective estimate) to occasional teaser gusts of warm air, maybe 65° F. I wore shorts and a polypropylene top, and felt underdressed. At some point I donned a fleece, which I exchanged for a windproof jacket toward the summit.

The final three miles are the hardest on the trail. The grade is steep, the air is thin, the sun is bright (with no tree cover for shade), and we’d been working hard for over six hours on little sleep. The third-last mile took 40 minutes… the second-last took 50… and the final mile took over an hour.

We lost a half-hour in there somewhere, too, when we missed a switchback and tried to traverse an ice field. We were acting on bad advice and tried to climb up a 25% grade of hip-deep snow. Then I nearly sprained my shoulder trying to pull my boot through the leg of my snowpants. All in all this was the sorriest episode on the mountain, genuine evidence of misfiring synapses at high altitude. In a nutshell, we’d overlooked the trail and were cutting the switchback because we didn’t see any other way.

Finally, my companion and I reached the summit at 11:22 AM, 9 hours 12 minutes after leaving the trailhead. This is dreadfully slow — it works out to 1.3 mph, a respectable speed for the “16 Golden Stairs” in the final mile, but an embarrassing average for the day. I’ll have to do it better next time.

The altitude was a bigger challenge than the climb, I think. During the last three miles, I would get winded after two minutes’ exertion. I pushed through, but on my own I probably would have taken many short breaks. I noticed that after each break, I’d feel fine for the first few minutes, and then came a sort of uphill full-body-heaviness, and a realization like I sometimes get when I drink too much and in a moment of lucidity think, “Ugh, I don’t want to drink any more.” That’s what it felt like: I didn’t want to climb any more. But then I’d rest for a moment and feel better. The air at 14,000 feet is half as dense as the air at my house. (My unofficial calculation: at 14,111 feet, the atmospheric pressure is 56% that of sea level.)

The lack of sleep combined with oxygen deprivation to cause a few curious mental blunders. First was the missing-trail syndrome described above. Next, about a half-mile from the summit, I realized with a shock that I’d run out of water. This seemed impossible, that I’d already drunk three liters since Barr Camp, but I checked all my bottles twice — they were all empty.

Then at the summit, in line at the french fry concession (give me a break — this was the only vegan food item to be had), I unconsciously pulled a bottle from my pack to discover that it was still full. A tourist nearby barked out a laugh and made a sarcastic comment about me hauling un-needed water all the way up the mountain. He found this hilarious, that I could be so dumb. He would have been even more amused to know that although he was incorrect that the water was so much surplus weight, I’d been so addled that I hadn’t drunk any because I’d believed the bottle to be empty.

There was even more fun at the summit house; read part III.

Our warmup hikes brought a happy surprise: no shin pain. None at all. It was as if I’d never had an injury. I’m mystified, but there it is. I’d bought a 2 lb. bag if Safeway peas and carrots and didn’t even need it.

One of our hiking group has a brand-new Ph. D. in psychology. He proposed that my tendonitis had been an anxiety injury, because he’d suffered similar problems in recent weeks. I argued against it… I’ve hiked a lot, and I was in great shape when I hurt myself. There was the specific exercise I was doing that is, for better or worse, very hard on the tendons of the lower leg. And there was visible swelling (not in my brain, but in my ankle). The symptoms were real. Besides, even now that the hike is behind me, my left shin is still tender.

But I can’t say I was completely free of anxiety. It hit me Friday night, as we tried to go to sleep. We ate dinner early and planned to sleep from 8pm to midnight. I am not talented at sleeping when I know I have to get up in a few hours (although, ironically, I’m spectacularly talented at getting up in a few hours when I could sleep in if I wanted). I dozed briefly without achieving any actual rest. Thoughts flared through my mind like tracer bullets aimed at my fear center. Was I hydrated enough? Damn, I left my water bottle in the kitchen. Had I taken ginko after dinner? I couldn’t remember! Would my leg really be OK? What if I oversleep? What time is it?

Tiny sounds woke me. Normally I sleep like a deaf man in a coma. This night, to say that sleep was elusive would be like saying post-9/11 air travel presents occasional inconveniences. That is, it’s an understatement, with unpleasant consequences.

At 12:30 AM, I got up, ate a bowl of granola, stretched, filled water bottles, and did a final gear check. We were on the trail at 2:10 AM.

The group of seven stayed together for the first few hours. We hiked a 70-minute cycle: an hour hiking followed by a ten-minute break. The pace felt slow to me, but I expected to need whatever energy I was conserving for the final ascent. Also we’d lost two of seven headlamps; in order to share light we stayed in a tight line.

So it was social, but made for somewhat slow going. We reached Barr Camp, 6.8 miles and +3600 feet into the climb, at around 6:30 AM, on a pace of about 1.5 mph. For reference: my sea-level climbing pace is nearly twice as fast, 2.5-3 mph. In retrospect we were wondering if hiking in the dark is inherently slow. Personally I think it’s more an issue of group size, because we moved at the pace of the slowest hiker.

I don’t mean to say I felt like I was being held back. I was wary of injury (besides the recent tendonitis, I used to frequently suffer knee pain during climbs), and I was afraid to gain altitude too quickly, and I wanted to save my energy for the steeper climb at the top of the trail. So for those first four hours I was happy to stick with the group.

Then, leaving Barr Camp after sunrise, several of us decided to find our own pace. I set out with the three fastest of the seven. Two then dropped back to address an over-packing issue (one had to lighten his load) and ended up hanging back to help the rest of the group. I regret that we didn’t see them again until the summit.

I continued on with a guy who is training for the Denver marathon. All his high-altitude running has put him in excellent cardiovascular shape, and his pace was faster than mine. I told him as much, and was surprised to hear him disagree. Maybe there’s something to the psychology of leading or following that affects the perception of effort.

We hiked quickly through the rolling hills in the middle of the trail, slowing as we began the steep incline. We took occasional breaks, but never for long — a radio check-in with the other hikers, an occasional photo, a change of clothes.

This isn’t a particularly dramatic spot to split the narrative, but I’m going to do it anyway. Read part II.

Over the past three months I’ve accelerated my normal exercise routine, increasing the intensity and duration and frequency of workouts. In addition I’ve augmented these with an 8-10 mile trail hike every weekend. In addition I’ve maintained a stretching and strengthening program I began in February, the goal of which is the correction of assorted skeletal mis-alignments that plague most everybody who works at a desk. All together this comes to about 11 hrs/week spent working out.

One of my exercises was designed to first loosen and then strengthen the ankle, to support proper foot position. Whenever I’d complete this exercise, I’d feel muscles burning in my lower leg. This is apparently normal. Then one day, the burn didn’t go away. I followed up the exercise set with my standard period on the incline treadmill, and I felt a dull ache in my left shin. I have almost no experience with injury, so I kept walking. The sensation didn’t get worse, but didn’t go away. And now, three weeks later, it’s still here.

I have two problems with leg injuries. One is that the treadmill has become my primary form of cardiovascular exercise, and it’s the means I employ to stay in shape. Without it, I fear I may regain the corpulent and complacent existence I shed two years ago.

The second is that I have a serious hike planned for this weekend.

But this injury is not something I can control. The diagnosis is extensor tendonitis, which I believe is one of the injuries more commonly known as shin splints. It’s an overuse disorder, the two symptoms of which are inflammation and pain, and the only real treatment of which is rest (although compression and ice can help).

My pain was never that bad, but I’m frustrated by its tenacity. I’ve rested for three weeks — no hiking, no treadmill, minimal walking even around the house. This is the longest break I’ve had from exercise in over two years. I got to a point where there was no pain or even minor discomfort in my leg… And then I ran up a flight of stairs, and the pain came back in full. That was late last week.

So now I know all about Ace bandages and ice (my preference: Safeway frozen peas, in a 2 lb. bag). A sports medicine doctor tells me that prescription anti-inflammatories are simply 3x doses of ibuprofin, and suggests that a regimen of 2400 mg/day would be appropriate to see me through Saturday’s climb. She says that I can hike with tendonitis because there is little to no risk of permanent damage.

But it’s not great news. I think I was in good shape for this hike three weeks ago. Today I’m not so sure.

Tomorrow and Friday I’ll take 1-hr warmup hikes on the Barr Trail. Saturday morning at 2:00 AM, we’ll set out to do the whole thing, a 25-mile roundtrip. In my pack will be a bottle of Advil and a chemical cold pack (and about 10 lbs of petroleum-based fabrics and extruded food bars, of course). On my left leg will be a 6'' Ace bandage, wrapped tight to the knee, making my lower leg appear mummified.

My personal prognosis is that in spite of the injury, I’ll reach the summit, take a picture, and then hike back down. But I might instead get my ass kicked. If I’m spent at the summit, I can ride the train down. If I don’t make it to the summit, the options are poor — in a nutshell, I can hike up, or hike down. Not to be melodramatic, but there’s no other way off the mountain.