Mt. McLoughlin

(I just found this old post that I wrote and never published. Oops! So here it is, about a month or more late.)

Kory & I went camping and hiking this weekend because I had a furlough day Friday and that meant and extra day off for the two of us. Kory always has Fridays off, but because I work Friday and he works Sunday, we don't usually have time to get out of town for the weekend. Kory has wanted to climb Mt. McLoughlin since we moved to Oregon, so we decided to finally make it happen. It is the highest peak in Southern Oregon at 9,495 ft and it is probably best that I had no idea how difficult it was going to be, or I might have never started.

We drove to FourMile Lake (which is at the base of McLoughlin) on Thursday evening when we both got off work. I had read online that the campsites were right on the edge of the lake and had incredible views. We didn't arrive until it was just getting dark and all of the lake-side camp sites were full so we just drove around until we found an empty site and made our camp there. Had we read the sign better we would have known that we were in a horse camp...a fact we learned the hard way when, in the middle of the night, a couple horses (that sounded like they were in the tent with us!) started neighing as loud as possible and...I want to say they scared us, but that doesn't adequately describe how terrifying it was...at least for me.

Friday morning, we woke up early (again, thanks to the horses) and got packed up so we could head to the mountain and our plan was to move to an actual tent campsite that night and leave the horses behind. We started up the mountain 3 or 4 times but kept remembering something really important that we had forgot in the car like sunscreen/hiking poles/mosquito repellant, which delayed our start quite a bit. Pretty soon after we started hiking, I could tell the altitude was really getting to me. It felt like I couldn't catch my breath, even though we weren't up very high and the incline wasn't too steep. Long story short, that never got better and I spent the entire hike up feeling VERY out of breath and wondering how I had so grossly overestimated my fitness level. Kory was doing awesome and kept having to wait for me every few minutes. At times I felt nauseous and like I could pass out, other times I was sure I was going to throw up on the trail, and sometimes I felt like I weighed about 300 pounds and hadn't worked out in my entire life. 

I'm still not for sure what the problem was, but I know that too little water, altitude and heat all had to be contributing factors. I will spare you the gross details, but let's just say my tummy didn't adjust well to something on this trip and I got very sick close to the top of the mountain. I know I'm not making this sound like much fun so far, and to be honest, that's how I felt for a lot of the hike up. I should also mention that there was a lot of smoke in the air because of fires in Northern California and Southern Oregon. When we FINALLY reached the top, there was absolutely no view because of all the smoke. It was quite disappointing.

I was about ready to die when we were eating our lunch at the top and I realized we still had hours of climbing back down this mountain. I tried singing the "Like a good neighbor..." jingle, but not even that worked.

Our trip down was, of course, much easier, but my left knee was killing me every step I took and my toes were hitting the front of my shoe and rubbing blisters there, so it was painful to go down also. I've got to say, this wasn't the most fun adventure I've ever been on, but I really am glad I went. It was great to spend time with Kory, particularly in a tough situation, because I think it brought us closer together. Anytime your husband has to go in search of leaves to help you clean up a "situation", you know you've found true love. Plus, there is a huge feeling of accomplishment when you conquer a huge mountain and burn over 3500 calories in an 8 hour hike!

Fear not, we went to Olive Garden afterwards and ate back every one of those delicious calories :) We were pretty gross though...I was trying to wash off in the bathroom sink at OG and definitely got some dirty looks. One bite of those breadsticks made it all worth it though!

We also ended up coming home a night early when we were out of water and in pain and extremely tired by Friday evening. Saturday morning we were really glad we made that decision because our legs were SO sore and we thoroughly enjoyed a day recovering and being lazy. It will probably be a little while before we take on a huge mountain again...I need a while to forget how ridiculously hard this hike was for me!