Thursday, May 10, 2012

4-17-12

Ouch. After completing the majority of a long day it finally happened. The one thing I can never seem to escape. Injury. Mile 19 out of 24 was in the middle of a 6 mile dry section of trail with no water sources and my bottle was nearly emty. It was after 7 and th wun was setting. I took a step down onto some leaves covering the trail and the next thing I knew I'm lying on my side, face in the dirt with a shooting pain in my left ankle.
Immediately, grab it and try to assess the damage. No bones sticking out, that's good. It'snot a full on tib/fib break, so thats good. with the help of my poles I stod up. Right leg first, slowly putting weight on the left.
The rest of the night will be hell. This HURTS. But I had at least 5 miles to go if I wanted any water tonight.
Each step was a reminder that I'm not the one in control out here, but they each also reassured me that it couldn't be broken. Although finally getting to Johns Spring Shelter was a huge relief to finally get off of my hurt ankle and get some water from what was the nastiest water source i've encountered thus far.
But before all of this injury nonsense started it was a fun day, with a snake encounter, getting to go down dragons tooth (an especially steep descent down a rock face, with ladder rungs made of steel drilled into the mountain), and even a run in with a bull  of all animals. Well, actually it was an entire herd of cattle, bulls, cows, and calves. But the first thing I saw when I came over a hill was a bull, and  of all of the animals I was prpared tp face when I came out here, a bull would have ranked about as low on the list as orangutan, and giraffe.

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