sometimes things go sideways and there is no discernible reason. i trained for this hike and recovered from injuries from the training. things were going well right up until they weren’t. to avoid a long, drawn out explanation, my body suddenly became riddled with tendonitis. my left ankle, left knee, right ankle, right hand, right forearm (tennis elbow symptoms), both achilles tendons. the one that was the deciding factor in stopping was my left knee. a persistent and increasing burning sensation at the front right of my knee cap (toward inside of leg) had grown more intense and from past experiences with that feeling i knew that it was only going to get worse if i kept hiking. so, i bailed after 183.5 miles covered over 7.25 days. i started in durango on july 19 and got off at section 18/17 on colorado 114 on july 26 to gunnison where jodi came and picked me up.
i’ve no doubt there is a real reason for all those symptoms to appear almost at once. i just don’t know for sure what it is or was. my best guess is that in low oxygen environments, tendon cells shrink and become less flexible. i was above 11,000 feet on day one and remained at or above that elevation for a good part of the miles i covered. i got down to around 9,500 feet on the evening before and morning i decided to stop.
i felt i was doing an ok job with my breathing, though i would find myself relaxing with it on long, flattish sections and then make a renewed conscious effort to focus on long, deep breaths. pretty sure that was a contributing factor.
other than the fact that i only made it 1/3 of the distance, i enjoyed the hike and things were going as expected. i didn’t get as much rain as my first colorado trail hike. and because i was waiting on a trail angel ride at colorado 114, i got to meet two bicyclers from switzerland that were bikepacking the colorado trail. their bikes needed some repair work, so they were headed into gunnison. spending time and having dinner with them was a highlight of the hike. had i not stopped, we never would have met.
colorado in the mountains is still moody and i still love it. here are some of the pics that i took along way.
