Day 146 : Injury

23rd September 2013
Mile 2333 to mile 2356 : Chinook Pass to Urich Shelter
Mileage : 23
I was annoyed this morning that my sleeping bag hadn't dried out overnight from my body heat. I was too tired to be annoyed when i discovered it was wet in the first place as i got ready for bed last night, but now i was annoyed. My sleeping bag was wet because a) my rucksack cover is useless , and b) my rucksack liner is also useless. I bought these two items with the express purpose that they keep my stuff dry, but the are patently failing miserably. My warm kit, including my.sleeping bag has a goose down fill as the insulating material, which is superb when dry, and dangerous when wet as it loses all its heat retention properties. Survival in the mountains during bad weather is therefore dependant on keeping this warm kit dry, and last night my sleeping bag, the key lifesaving bit of kit in an emergency, was more than a little damp. As is often the case in mountaineering/hiking equipment, low tech, low cost solutions often out-perform the latest and greatest offering from the big brand names. For my sleeping bag i triple wrapped it in standard shopping bags, and then lined my rurucksack with 2 thick bin bags. It certainly isn't chic, but it works. On a similar note, Shotput and Pepperflake, whom i would see in a couple days for the first time since the Californian border bad solved the wet glove problem. Again it appears that waterproof gloves are rarely so with prolonged exposure to the elements, with my perhaps frostnipped fingers proving the qualities of my own gloves. Shotput and Pepperflake therefore decided an outer layer of household cleaning gloves would help keep their hands dry and therefore warm. Another example of low tech beating high tech. Although i would adopt this in the future, for the coming section i would have to put up with perenially cold and wet hands. Dishcloth dropped Peter Pan, HoopDreams and myself off at the pass and after a small amount of procrastinating, wet set off up the trail. Thankfully it didn't rain too hard today, but even so the constant drizzle, mist, cold an.occasional wind made for unpleasant hiking. For my part, the unpleasantness descended into misery rapidly from the get go. The ankle issue i had felt the night before had not gone away, infact.it.had gotten much, much worse. I must have turned/strained/sprained/twisted it pretty badly yesterday, and for whatever reason was taking its time to surface. But surface it did during the hike today getting worse and worse with each passing mile. I tried to console myself by remembering my.previous ankle issues in the desert 2000 miles ago that as long as i treated it gently, and didn't subject it to too much stress, it would get better in a few days. These thoughts did little to comfort me in the short term however. One thing i have learned about my body when it comes to pain is that it is unable to multi-task, and so my ankle pain actually went away for a lot of the day as it was replaced by something much, much worse : knee pain. About 15 miles in to the hike all was sort of going well, when suddenly my right knee started to hurt. To be specific it was the outward face.if the kneecap that hurt whenever i would bend the knee. For the first few miles after i noticed the pain there was mere discomfort, no great problem as discomfort is all to often the name of the game when it comes to thru-hiking. Soon though, the pain became really noticeable and i became seriously worried. Had the weather been better i would have slowed the pace down, but had i gone any slower i would not have been able to stat warm. Also, the finishline for the day was an actual shelter with a rumoured wood burning stove, i would just have to put up with the pain til i got there. Get i did just after sundown, and it was worth all the fast hiking with my two injuries. The fire was roaring when i arrived, and before long Pan, Hoopdreams and I were thawing out in front of the fire chatting about the day while watching the.steam rising from all our wet hiking clothes strewn all around the fire. We were pretty unaltered andbhit the hay early for some well deserved rest prior to doing it all again the next day, only this time without the cosy cabin at the end of it.