CLIMBING OUT OF MY COMFORT ZONE – PART 2 | Daterella's Adventures In Dating

Tags

#adventure, #bear, #bucketlist, #california, #camp, #camping, #goals, #hike, #hiker, #hikerchick, #Mountwhitney, #MtWhitney, #roughingit, #tent

It’s 3 a.m. on Sunday morning, and my phone alarm wakes me up in my hotel room. Thanks to screaming kids in the room next door, even though I’d gone to bed at 8:30 p.m., I’d only gotten 3.5 hours of sleep. Not the preferred amount for climbing the highest peak in the contiguous U.S.

I quickly guzzled an entire bottle of water. Hydration, right? No. It was part of my plan to never have to use a WAG bag to haul out human waste on this trip. So far, my plan was working.

After showering, just as I had in my days of ballet and pointe shoes, I carefully wrapped a couple of my blister-prone toes in tape before dressing and pulling on my hiking boots. I slipped the lip gloss that I could not do without into a pants pocket and put everything unneeded for the hike into a bear can to leave in my trunk. For my fellow indoor folks, a bear can is a large, plastic container you store anything scented in while camping. The theory is that this will keep the bears away – or at least out of your stuff. I wish they made a tent-sized bear can.

I forced myself to eat a yogurt and part of a muffin the hotel provided before grabbing my pre-packed backpack that I was sure weighed 60 pounds and headed to the car.

I met the other three hikers in my group at the Mt. Whitney Portal shortly after 4 a.m. After one last restroom call, we donned our headlamps, slipped on our backpacks that carried camping gear, and headed into the quiet darkness to begin a trek to conquer a mountain as well as my own fear.

We couldn’t have gone a quarter mile before my shoulder blades started to throb under the weight of my backpack. Everyone else was handling their backpack with such ease that I was sure mine must weigh considerably more. My backpack was so overloaded that the brain of it hung over the backboard and pushed my head forward, not allowing me to look skyward. I knew the others in my group were seasoned hikers and campers, and I refused to be the weak link. I didn’t utter a peep of complaint but followed them through the darkness on the four-mile trek to our camp site as smoke from forest fires drifted around us.

Less than a mile into the hike, my pack was causing me a huge amount of not only discomfort but imbalance. When I’d first put it on at the car, I had struggled to keep from falling backward. Now we walked along a dark path with uneven footing, balanced on logs crossing streams, and stepped on slippery rocks crossing streams. Easy, right? Not with what I was sure was an extra 60 pounds on my back. My balance was completely thrown off, making the stream crossings in the dark especially precarious.

When someone stopped for a break, I found a large rock and leaned on its rocky shelf to hold my backpack and relieve my stress. My pain was now not only in my shoulders but in my collar bones. The heavily-laden straps dug into my skin. I was worried. I didn’t see how I could possibly make it to the camp site with this pack. I was afraid to walk back in the dark with bears, Bigfoot, and possibly a Chupacabra lurking in the shadows. I was more afraid of the Chupacabra than I was of permanently damaging my back, so I blinked back the tears of fear and pain and powered on.

Two miles in, my mind was constantly going back and forth between quit now and go back or ask for a break. No one else seemed to be having a problem with their pack, so I was not going to be the complainer or quitter. Not a peep.

That’s when I remembered something. It was something from my very distant past and an unlikely source. I remember my ballet teachers saying, “Every movement comes from your center.” For some reason, that sentence played over and over in my mind until I acted on it. Instead of slumping my back and moving my legs of lead, I pulled in my center, sending energy up, into my back. Every time my legs moved, the movement started in my center and emanated outwards. I know it sounds silly, but it helped. My back pain seemed to lessen, and I imagined myself flitting across a ballet stage, as I had in my teens and 20s, lightly, easily, and with every movement coming from my center. The sentences and images continued to play in my mind, constantly reminding me every time incorrect muscles fired.

As the sun came up and we turned off our headlamps, I could see the amazing scenery around us. It reminded me of Yosemite. Grand mountains of granite jutted up all around us. There were green, pine forests, mountain lakes and streams, and even some wildlife. It was beautiful, and I prayed a silent prayer of gratitude for being allowed to experience this.

When we finally reached our camp site, I was so relieved! I couldn’t believe my body had hauled this pack that felt heavier than a large bag of dog food on my back four miles up a mountain. Taking that thing off was one of the best days of my life and one of my largest accomplishments.

Next came setting up camp. I’d done a test setup of the tent in my living room, so I felt pretty confident that I could handle this even though the setup instructions consisted of four pictures, two of which looked exactly the same. I quickly spread everything out, assembled the frame, and put the ends into the holders at the four corners of the tent. When I assembled the center cross pieces and tried to slip them into their holders, they kept snapping out and collapsing the tent. One of the guys came over to help me. He couldn’t get it to stay together either. I knew we had to get on the trail if we were going to summit today, so I told him to never mind, it would be fine.

“Can you even sleep in that?” he asked in a dubious tone.

“Sure,” I said with a light wave of the hand. “I’ll be fine,” I concluded looking at my coffin-sized tent that looked like something Charlie Brown would end up in.

“Can you even get your stuff in there?” he asked, unconvinced.

Not wanting to hold anyone up, I waved my hand again, “Yeah, yeah, it’ll be fine. Let’s go.”

Putting on our packs that were only slightly less heavy without the camping equipment, we headed for the trail to complete the next eight miles. I glanced back at our campsite to see three full-figured tents and my little, Charlie Brown, coffin tent. But I didn’t make a peep. I could man-up and do this for one night. This was a little farther outside of my comfort zone than I’d planned to go, but I was going to do this. I wasn’t going to play it safe. I was going to make the memories and push my limits, darn it. And away we went.