I'm Doing This, Why??
Back in spring 2019, I decided that I should hike up Barr Trail to the top of Pikes Peak. All 12-13 miles, 14,100' tall, with a nearly 6000' elevation gain. My hubby, daughters, along a few other sons and daughters of other dads and mothers have done this hike. It was my job to drive up and fetch their tired, but happy asses and bring them back home safe and sound.
It was now my turn.
I began by walking the granddog daily, increasing our walks until 3 miles was the norm, with the intent of going up the Barr Trail in earnest in 2020.
Well, Covid decided to rear its ugly head and keep me from hiking for many, many months as the trail remained closed.
There went my 2020 plans.
Things gradually reopened and by late spring 2021, I had begun to occasionally go up the Barr Trail, but mostly try to extend my weekend walks with my wonderful hubby Mike as we were walking further than I did with the Granddog so the Granddog's feet didn't fall off. He's a Mini-Aussie, and a real trouper. However, even with massive amounts of stretching I was having a lot of tightness in my glutes and piriformis to the point that CBD and 800mg Ibuprofen along with occasional rounds of muscle relaxers were needed just to get through my regular daily activity. Even the chiropractor was only bringing me short term relief.
Something had to give, and so my medial meniscus took one for the team and snapped, requiring surgery late summer. My surgeon did the unbelievable and reattached said meniscus as opposed to removing it. This, however, threw a wrench in my hiking plans as I was unable to put any weight on it for six weeks and it was four months of physical therapy 2-3 times a week.
So much for 2021.
2022 brought it's own set of challenges, as my mother in law died early summer and there were lots of back and forth trips to her city to get her house ready to sell, so a September summit was not in the cards.
But, I recommitted to going up the Peak in June 2023, and twice a week hubby and I would hike up a ways and down, to the point that by the time we went to Ecuador the end of September I had made it 5.5 miles up the trail! (And found the Aspen Mike had carved our initials in about 20 years earlier)
That also means 5.5 miles DOWN the trail.
My poor footies.
We did a lot of high altitude hiking in Ecuador, and in Cotopaxi hiked up 14,700' before I was nope-ing it out of there(it would have taken too long for me to reach the Observation Deck at 16,000' and with weather coming in, only had an hour) but Mike was AWESOME and made it up and back in like 38 minutes. Our guide was bragging to the other guides about what a beast the American gringo was. At least I have more confidence in my ability to achieve the goal of summiting the Peak because of hiking higher than the Peak, the key difference is I had a shorter hike in Cotopaxi. Gotta keep working on endurance.
With the winter snows I have not been back on the trail. I'm 64 years old and not fond of hiking on the surface of an ice rink, and yak traks only help so much. The elliptical and treadmill and bike have been my friends at the gym along with long hikes with the hubby on Sundays(mostly flatland trails) until early April, when I hopefully will be able to head back up the Barr Trail before we head off to Iceland and a month of long hikes in search of natural hot springs to relax in.
Hoping to Summit the weekend of June 10th, 2023
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