This was a classic Mustard Seed kind of hike. If anything could be weird or go wrong, it would. If I had the vision to see miracles happen right in front of me, I could. In fact, I spent a great deal of time actually underground on this one. It was a miracle that I came back out to my truck on my own legs and not dragging myself along on the snow though. This was a day where I was taking every miracle I could get! But let me start at the beginning for you my friends.
So after recently tackling my fear of driving up onto the mountains last week, I decided I was finally ready to drive the exact road and the exact corner where I had my recent PTSD inducing accident. I thought I was totally fine and was super confident for the first hour of that drive. But when I came within a few miles of the infamous corner, I started to feel things shift inside myself. I began to sweat and my gut suddenly was churning painfully. My heart rate increased and I was virtually panting, closer to hyperventilating than breathing really. I started to repeat "You're fine, everything is fine" over and over again out loud in my truck. I am quite sure I held my breath and was driving painfully slow around that corner, but I did it and that surely felt like a miracle. I pumped my fist in the air and yelled a loud "YES!" to Josie the Wolf who was sleeping in the backseat unaware of what all the excitement was for.
Once I got around that obstacle, I felt like a million dollars and couldn't wait to get back up to my favorite mountain in the world....Mt. Adams. It wasn't long before snow coated the road as we drove to the trailhead of the day. It is always hit and miss if things will be plowed as far as I want to go, but luckily I made it all the way to my favorite parking lot. It had been beautifully plowed, even though it was thickly coated in ice and I slipped around a bit even in 4wd. But I had the entire lot to myself!!
As I slowly geared up, strapping on my gaiters over my lower legs, putting on my snow boots, slipping on my full mountain spikes, then zipping up all my coats and vests and getting out my hat and gloves, I heard an engine roaring toward us. Suddenly we were no longer alone. I watched a big tricked out Jeep come barreling into the parking lot and back up right next to my truck despite the many parking spaces available. "I hope he doesn't have a dog" I mumbled to Josie knowing how much she hates other dogs on the trail and it has become a "thing" for us to encounter them......especially because all the other dogs seem to be off leash and starting trouble for us.
As I watched the stranger through the windows between our trucks, I saw him zip up his bright blue jacket, grab something fuzzy and start walking toward us to the trailhead. "What??" I thought. No backpack, no water bottle, no spikes, skis or snowshoes?? Who was this man and what was he doing up here on a snow hike? But as he neared me, I started to get a better look at the fuzzy thing in his arms. It clearly was not a dog. In fact, I realized as he rounded the front of my truck, it was a large stuffed animal. At this point, I completely stopped strapping on my camera gear, gun and knife to just stare at him. When he was just a few feet from me, I couldn't help myself....I had to speak to the stranger. That is something I don't do very often if I can help it.
"Um, its not very often you see a man carrying a large ape into the woods." I told him as I realized the stuffed animal was some sort of ape like creature. He looked at me and laughed and then started walking fast to the trail as if embarrassed. I couldn't believe it. No words, no explanation.....nothing. Just a grown man walking into the woods with his large, fuzzy stuffed ape. I got the giggles big time after that. I could swear even Josie was confused. We finished strapping on gear, locked the truck and headed after the man up the trail.
I could come up with only two explanations for this strange sighting. Since we are in Bigfoot country, I figured the man might be having a little fun and wanting to take pictures of his little Sasquatch in the snow. But I did not see any sort of camera equipment on him. Of course, since he is like most humans, I figured he probably had a cell phone in his pocket that could take photos. The only other thought I could brainstorm was that there is a cabin within a few miles of where we were that is rented out. Perhaps he had come here with his family and he had a small child at the cabin who forgot their favorite stuffie and couldn't sleep without it. Perhaps he was just a very good and patient Dad. I had to go with one of those two scenarios to explain the strange sighting, but figured I would never know.
As luck would have it, I had my second miracle of the day. After only a mile or two, I ran into the man again. This time he was hiking back to his truck, still with his stuffed ape in hand. Clearly he was not out here for any length of time and had completed his mission. He pulled over to give the Wolf and I a wide berth as he had read her "stay back" patches on her backpack. But as I got close to him, I had to be the first to speak once more.
"Please won't you tell me the story of why you are out here with a giant stuffed ape??" He laughed again and then explained to me that he has lived his whole life here in Trout Lake and that he was doing advertising and marketing for the little Trout Lake Cafe. So he was taking some snow photos with his little Sasquatch friend that he had had since he was a boy. I loved that story and was so happy that I was not completely crazy yet! I explained to him how for the last mile I had been racking my brain trying to figure out what he was doing and we had a good laugh. I told him about my hiking blog and the pics I like to take on the trail and he asked if I would like to take pics of Sasquatch too.
Normally, I would always say no to anyone offering anything to me as I hate to be an inconvienence. I started to decline his offer, but then surprised even myself when I told him that actually, I would really love to. He laughed and said it would take him a minute to make the ape sit up straight. So there we stood, two grown adults, a nervous Wolf and a Sasquatch puppet in the snow having a photo shoot. I have rarely had so much fun!!! Here are my two new friends.
(After I returned home from this hike, I did google the Trout Lake Cafe to see if I could find his pics, but alas, they were not yet posted. However, I did learn that this cafe has the best Huckleberry Milkshakes in the free world, so I am clearly going to have to stop and check them out soon!!!)
After finally having my dream come true and meeting Sasquatch on the trail (okay he is the unofficial Bigfoot...but it still counts in my book!), we continued on our hike on the ice covered snow. Before long we came to some caves. I have only ever been to these caves once before, and it was also in January. I have never seen them without the ladder down into the caves looking like a total ice and snow slide. I don't think you are suppose to go down there this time of year, but how can I possibly resist? This sort of place is meant for exploring! Josie looked down into the caves unsure if she wanted to join me.
Both times I have done this, I have been surprised by how much longer this slide down into the caves is than I thought it would be. From the top it looks like nothing, but about halfway down you are questioning your sanity. Your sliding speed also increases exponentially about halfway down I can tell you that. I have to admit I have this terrible habit on the trail. I will do things that probably are not the brightest and when I start to wonder how I will get myself out of whatever predicament I am getting myself into, I always take a "we'll cross that bridge when we come to it and figure it out" approach. As I was halfway down this slide, I was a bit worried about how I was going to climb back out of this as it was way more icy than I thought. My spikes were skidding off the ice and not sinking in at all. I figured I would just have to use my upper body to hold onto the icy wooden handrails and pull both myself and the Wolf up. Keep in mind that with her pack on, that Wolf is a good 75% of my own body weight. "Details" I said to myself. "I don't lift weights six days a week for nothing!" But I secretly wished I had brought my ice axe or maybe some rope to tie on at the top of this thing.
As we got to the bottom of the slide, right where I assumed I would stop, my body spun around to the right and just kept sliding on pure ice around the backside of the ladder. Since I had placed Josie behind me, and she kept slamming into my back, she followed right along. The momentum was impressive.....as was the 6 inches of ice we were flying across. I tried to reach out and grab at the handrail and then boulders to slow our progression, but all that did was wrench my right arm from my shoulder socket until I yelped. Luckily we eventually stopped when my feet slammed into a large ice covered boulder in front of us.
Josie was a bit nervous as our world had suddenly become much darker. But I pulled out my head torch and two other flashlights, clipping them onto our gear. We picked our way through the tunnel leading away from the ladder and when we went around the first corner, we were plunged into darkness. I have always wondered how the Wolf would do deep inside a cave and I was surprised to find her quite comfortable. I realized that this must be because she is so use to night hiking with me, that it was no different to her. What she clearly did not appreciate, however, was that so much of the floor was coated in thick ice. In fact, I couldn't even walk in many places as my long metal spikes could not get any purchase down into the thick ice. So I used my arms to balance slowly moving from boulder to boulder. We came across the most amazing stalagmites and stalactites made all out of ice. It was like our own special little winter world down here underground and I was entralled. It was like Narnia I thought!
It was so cold that you could really see our breath in the caves, creating clouds of mist all around us. As we moved slowly from room to room and around corners exploring, we adjusted to our new surroundings. Josie and I are well practiced at bouldering while tied together, but the ice really took things up a notch. She took a couple bad falls that made me have to keep her closer and hold on to her at times. "I cannot carry you out of here by myself if you get hurt." I reminded her. But she started to get where she wanted to explore deeper. I realized that she seemed to be drawn to an almost imperceptible breeze we felt coming down the tunnel. "Oh yeah Josie, let's keep going." I told her.
The ice was incredible. Some was so thick that I could use them as handles under my gloved hands to propel myself forward on the icy cave bottom.
Then we came to the coolest ice waterfall. As we were admiring that, I realized the tunnel continued past the waterfall. So onward we went, crawling over more boulders and squeezing through some smaller shoots. Between tight squeezes, we entered large rooms. It was terrific. But nothing in comparison to what my experienced caving friend experiences regularly. I could almost hear him saying "amateurs!"
I had to be careful that the leash between us didn't break off any of the icy formations though! So we stayed as close together as we could. I swear I even heard Josie sighing in contentment at what we were seeing. We did both have to taste some of the ice....which I now do not recommend. I couldn't spit enough to get that mineral taste out of my mouth!!!
We kept exploring and finding that the passage narrowed more and more as we progressed through the tunnel. Every now and then we would hear water dripping. But we knew it would almost instantly turn to ice. Our new world was surreal and we loved it. I also loved that we were totally and utterly alone and no one on the planet knew where we were.....except maybe Sasquatch man who probably figured we were heading for the caves since he knew this area well.
I am not sure how long we stayed underground, but eventually I had to tell Josie that it was time to head back out to the above ground world. We had a plan to snow hike a good 15 miles today, which is why Princess Nova stayed at home where she was warm and dry and she wouldn't blow her only non-bionic knee remaining. As we slowly picked our way back to the cave entrance. I realized that the area surrounding the ladder was really thickly coated in deep ice. There was just not a super safe way to walk on that. I decided it would be a better idea to get down on my knees and use my upper body to pull myself over the ice by reaching from boulder to boulder. The beauty of the daylight piercing down into the cave took my breath away as we moved toward that opening.
This is where we had a little problem. Somehow, while I was concentrating on sliding myself along the ice, Josie must have either taken a giant leap, or a bad fall, but either way the sudden jerking tug on the line between us caused my body to rapidly accelerate across the ice unexpectedly. The momentum could not be stopped and before I even knew what was happening, my bad left knee slammed full kneecap into a giant ice coated boulder.
The pain was immediate and debilitating. I screamed out in agony, trying to roll and grab my knee. I could not hold a coherant thought in that moment if I had tried. If anyone had tried to speak to me, I would not have been able to answer. My brain simply exploded in stars of pain. My stomach turned and I wanted to vomit. Despite the freezing temperatures, I felt sweat break out on my forehead. All I could get out of my mouth were moans and curses that surely made the cave bats blush. I felt the rush of warmth across my knee and knew that I was either bleeding inside or outside my skin, but was unsure which through all my winter layers.
After laying in the fetal position on the icy floor of that cave for a solid 15 minutes, I was finally able to sit up. My only thought was that I was in deep trouble. I started to look around myself trying to figure out what happened to the Wolf. Normally, if I take a fall, she is pouncing on my body trying to get me up. But she hadn't touched me at all during my fetal position break. I am not sure if that is because she was blushing along with the bats or feeling guilty. But I quietly said her name outloud and she popped up from behind some boulders and came over to sit next to me. She looked into my soul as if we were both having the same thought.....if I just broke my knee, how on earth were we going to climb up out of this cave, let alone get back to the trailhead?
So I did what any reasonable person would do in that situation. Using only my arms, I pulled and slid the lower half of my then lifeless body to lay under the base of the ladder and rolled over onto my back to stare up at the sky. What I saw above me was so gorgeous it took my breath away for another reason, besides utter pain. If I was going to die here, I was going to document the last thing I saw. I pulled out my camera. It was a pretty good final view, I will say, watching the rays of sun ring the tops of the trees.
The thought came to me that this is one of those moments you need, or at least I need. When you need to see the sunlight after a dark winter. When you need to feel loved after not feeling that way forever. When you need to feel hope after being hopeless. When you need to have faith beyond all understanding. When you just need to slow down and stop for a little while. I lay there and basked in the views luxuriating in the sweetness of the bitter pain and seeing the silver lining in the moment. My only fear now was if someone walked up to the cave's edge in this moment and looked down on my prostrate body. I would be so embarrassed to explain myself....surely like the man with the stuffed ape felt with me.
After more time had passed, I was ready to give myself the pep talk. This is when the drill sergeant who lives in my head comes out and tells me that I am going to suck it up. I am going to pull us up out of this hole if it kills me and I am going to get on my feet and walk this crap off. So that is just what we did. Don't ask me exactly how we did this, as like most uncomfortable things in life, I blocked it from my memory. But what I do remember is getting to my feet at the top entrance to the cave and just staring through the trees. The sun was so much lower in the sky than I thought it should be that I couldn't figure out just how long we had been down underground.
I walked around in some slow careful circles testing my knee. It hurt like crazy, but I was able to hold weight on it. In fact, the more I walked on it, the better I felt like I could do.....until I sank into snow and screamed out in pain. But I figured this was my next miracle of the day. I had gotten up out of the hole and needed to get my miles in. I know....believe me....I know. If I was a sane person, I would have hobbled back to my truck at this point in total defeat. But I am not a sane person. I had faith that I could get in more miles and could get back to the truck without having to drag my body face first in the icy snow. Besides I really wanted to climb a peak near here that has views of two mountains. So we headed that way.
The problem soon became clear to me. I could not shuffle my legs into deep snow at all. Any degree of postholing or pressure against my leg, made my knee scream at very high volumes. I had to stay on some of the groomed tracks in the area instead of climbing rogue up to the peak. Okay, I conceeded to my initial plan. No peak, no fifteen miles today. But we could just follow the groomed paths until we were too painful to go further, hopefully leaving enough in me to make it to the truck. That would be a fine line. Besides, I figured with temps down in the 20's on the mountain today, it really was like icing my knee while hiking.
Although we never saw another person on the trail the rest of this hike, we did find evidence that they had been here! We laughed at this face and I wanted to add a beard to our snowman friend, but it hurt my knee too much to get off the groomed trail. Alas.
Josie was being extra good on this hike, careful not to pull me too much. She knew I was gimping along and struggling to keep going. She heard the sharp intakes of breath and gasps as my knee would occasionally slip or twist. I tried to diagnose myself as I moved along the snowy paths. I figured I had damaged my kneecap. I did not think it was a full break as I couldn't feel a lot of movement when I tenderly probbed the knee thru my pants, but certainly some serious damage had occurred. I knew what I really needed was an Xray. So I started to think that we should cut our hike short in order to try to get to Urgent Care for some imaging. Now if you know me at all, this should tell you how much pain I was in!! I never want to go to a Doctor....ever. The fact that I was planning it, means I was pretty desperate. I was so desperate and wrapped up in my knee in fact, that the miles passed by and I barely noticed anything.
We finally looped around and started to slowly head back to the trailhead. We would cap our day at 9 miles of snow hiking. Of course at least six of that was after my injury. There is a song we sing sometimes in my Church about a dark and painful road. I had a new vision of what a dark and painful road was in my life on that hike out. But then one thought suddenly entered my brain and I froze in place, unable to continue down that dark and painful path.
"Oh my gosh Wolfie" I said to Josie as I turned to look at her for guidance. "I cannot possibly go to a Doctor for this!!! How on earth could I ever describe what happened today without them locking me up and throwing away the key??" You see, in my head in that moment, all I could visualize was my sitting in front of a very serious Doctor while wearing a krinkly cotton gown and saying, "Well you see Sir, I ran into the unofficial Sasquatch on the trail while on a snow hike. Shortly after that, I slide into some ice caves alone to explore. On the way out, I was tied to a Wolf who jumped or fell and made me slide my knee into a large boulder while I was on my hands and knees on the icy cave floor. I felt my knee explode and had to lie there for a long time before snow hiking another six plus miles to get back to my truck and drive two hours home."
Nope. There was no way I was going to say that outloud!! I just didn't really have a cliff note version for how my injury occurred. Besides, when I get in a Doctor's office, I get really, really nervous and get diarrhea of the mouth. It would invariably come out or they would surely see that I was hiding something dark and sinister. I almost screamed up to the sky in that moment out of frustration. But instead, I focused on hobbling my way to my truck....although slower, because now I was clearly avoiding making it to urgent care before they closed.....and I don't do emergency rooms unless I am unconscious. God made me smile by giving me little gifts on the trail though. One was this beautiful tree lit up by the setting sun. He was talking to me as I shuffled along, laughing and giving me encouragement.
But finally, probably my favorite sight of the day, was coming back to the trailhead and seeing my trusty beloved truck waiting for me like a long lost lover. How I wanted to embrace him once more. (It won't be the first time he got kissed by me!!) I think he was my next miracle of the day....and the fact that I was walking upright to him! Plus the fact that my internal temperature was back down to 92 degrees, meaning I was icing my body from the inside out was pretty cool too.
Although, God gave me one last miracle on my way out. While driving home, just after getting past that infamous corner once more, I saw a huge shooting star blast from east to west across the sky right in front of me. "I am hearing you Jesus!" I said back to him with a smile.
Now, I am sure you want to know what has happened to my knee. Sadly, I can't really tell you. I did have every intent to make it to urgent care the next couple of days after this hike to get some imaging. But I was busy and just had too many responsibilities to take care of. I iced my knee like a crazy person for days. I even kept it wrapped in ice when I slept or did my nightly 3 miles on the treadmill. I tried to keep my leg elevated as much as possible.
Everything I googled told me I indeed had every symptom of a damaged or broken kneecap. But when I googled the treatment for that, there was nothing I wanted to hear. Rest. Immobilization with cast or splint. Don't use your leg. Possible surgery. Blah, blah, blah. The swelling only lasted for 4 days. The bruising is improving. I can walk on level surfaces without pain. It is really only stairs that are the problem currently.
Now, just so you don't think me completely stupid, I did attempt to get an E-visit with my insurance provider over the weekend.....but the computer then only recommended rest and stretching. When I tried to schedule a Virtual visit with an actual MD who could order me up an Xray, it said the soonest opening was days away. Forever impatient, I gave up. "They want me to stretch do they?? I can do that on next week's hike" I said outloud after another useless search for help online. Besides I don't really want to know how much arthritis and damage is inside my bad knee! And that my friends is surely the last miracle of the day. That God puts up with me and lets me make one bad decision after another; always trusting Him to surround me with His angels who have far more patience than I do. Faith the size of a mustard seed is all I need to persevere. We are clearly starting off 2025 right!
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