Day 3: Shira Camp to Lava Tower to Barranca Camp - 6/16/2009

Day 3

We woke at 6:30am to the wake up call of Benson, the waiter who brings our morning beverage. It was cold, but the sun was out and I was excited to hike. My stomach hurt when I woke up. It iddn’t feel like anything new – ie, probably not altitude, but just normal indigestion. Day 3 would be an acclimation day – lots of up and down. We would go as high as 4630M at the Lava tower, but then descend to our camp at 3900M. The hike today would be long (about 15KM), have lots of ups and downs, and we would get a hot lunch.

Breakfast was the same as the day before – porridge (mainly water), eggs, sausage, bread, and some fruits. When we left breakfast, it was warm again, so I ditched the pants and stuck to my shorts. Godbless questioned this decision, so I let him carry my pants for me. Also, three of us were carrying bags without waist straps. MK had been given advice by someone who had hiked the entire Appalacian Trail and approved her bag. The bag was way too small and didn’t have a waist strap, so that advice was not very good for our purposes. As such, the guides took some of the stuff from the three of us (me, MK, and Bea) who had no waist straps on our bags. The weight without the waist strap was felt entirely on our backs, which was starting to hurt.

We headed out of camp and up a dry path toward the mountain. The incline was moderate, and we kept a slow pace. Peter led us keeping the pace slow. They kept telling us ‘Pole Pole’ (slowly, slowly). Increasing altitude too quickly is not good, so whenever we went up, we kept the pace slow. After the first day, I followed the pace of the guide. I knew the altitude on the first day was altitude that I had run at before. After 3000M, it was a level that I had never been to before. I had read about altitude sickness before the hike, so I respected the severity of the challenges, danger, and randomness of altitude sickness. I had no idea how my body would react to altitude. I consider myself to be in pretty good shape, but altitude sickness is completely random. I knew cold would be an issue for me, I knew my lungs are strong so can handle oxygen deprivation, but other than that, I had no idea how my body would respond.

After a few hours, we reached our hot lunch. My stomach was still hurting me. I had packed a ‘safety sandwich’ in the morning when I wasn’t able to eat much, but I hadn’t touched it. The lunch was a curried vegetable and some soup (also curry). I didn’t think it was a good idea to put that stuff in my already troubled stomach, so I stuck to my safety sandwich – a less risky peanut butter and honey. No one was feeling too horrible due to the altitude yet, which is pretty good. Some of us had mild headaches (mine came in the morning), but we were all popping advil about twice a day as a preventative measure. Also, all of us, minus Alannah, who is allergic to sulfur, were on Diamox, a drug that helps with altitude. It’s unclear how diamox helps – apparently it just increases your threshold a bit. You can’t completely erase the effects of altitude, so diamox just helps you to handle a bit more than your body would normally be able to handle.

After lunch, we continued the hike. After about an hour, we hit the Lava Tower, our highest point thusfar at 4600M. It was cold there. I finally succumbed and asked Godbless for my Gortex pants. I hated the Goretex pants. First, I like having my legs free. Second, I had let someone borrow my Goretex pants and when I came to get them back for the hike, she mistakenly gave me her Goretex pants. These just didn’t fit me right. Too short, fell off me, they were just not comfortable. Anyway, we took some pictures at the Lava Tower, met some other hikers who were staying there to acclimate for a night, and went on with our hike.
We hiked another 2 hours, mainly downhill into the valley, with great views of the rock walls. We were all getting pretty tired by the end of this hike. It was a long day. About halfway in, I shed the Goretex pants, which made me way more comfortable. We finally reached our camp around 4:30PM and settled into our tents.

We had the same nightly routine – tea, break, dinner, and then shivering cold, we went to bed. A day full of hiking was making us all tired so going to bed at 9:30 seemed totally normal.