Stay on Offense Climb Mountains

Attacking Adversity

Go Hiking And Build Your Best Life

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Hiking for me is the best part of living the life I want. Being in nature, challenging my body, moving. If you hike you know it can become an important part of your life.

At 78 I ask myself, “Will I be able to do it this next March?” Right now I am not so sure, but I will know better in February.

An Alternative

So what if you can’t hike anymore? You have some disease or a heart condition and the doctor says you can’t stress yourself that much. I am not so naive to think that I will never not be able to climb mountains, but I prefer it be at least after my 85th year. Only six and a half years to go with this going wrong and that going wrong.

Let’s say you are 86 and you just van’t get the body up the mountain again. What is an alternative. You start walking up the hills where you live. You can even walk for a longer time because you are not driving to a trailhead. Of course you will be hitting the gym as usual, right?

Building the Life You Want

Maybe you are in your 40s and just started hiking. This is when you can make it a habit. Hiking will become like brushing your teeth. You will make sure your career doesn’t get in the way. Only take the job if you will have time to hike.

Hiking becomes a part of your identity. It is a big part of who you are. Or maybe you will become a trail runner or a rock climber. Nothing wrong with those except I think hiking is best.

Always Anticipating

This time of year when I am on my winter break from hiking I begin to anticipate the next season. What challenges will I face? Will I see another UFO (UAP)? Will I be able to climb Mt Si twice in one morning again? Do I even want to do it. What about Mailbox Peak?

This next season Mt Pilchuck will reopen. They were fixing the potholes on the road to the trailhead so seeing the results of that will be interesting.

Go Hiking and See A UFO

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Dirty Harry’s Peak is not a hike I look forward to every year, but it is a good challenge and great for conditioning your legs. Old legs need all the conditioning they can get.

This year was no different in that regard, but the hike did hold a couple of surprises.

Early Morning

As anyone knows if they have been reading these posts, I like to go hiking very early in the morning. So I pulled up into the Dirty Harry trailhead parking lot at 3:45 AM. I got out of the car to make some last adjustments to my pack and looked up past the sky. It is my custom to see how much cloud cover there is or just to look at the stars.

When I look up I see what appears to be a passenger jet going across the sky from y right to my left. It appeared to be higher than most passenger jets. Then it stopped. It did not slow down.It stopped.

Arrested Attention

Haver you ever had something happen where all of s sudden all of your attention was focused on that thing? This is how it was that morning. The “jet” moved down to the right. I grabbed my phone and started taking a video. It moved around some more and then I stopped filming it and I put my phone down and looked back up. It was gone.

Where did it go? I had no time right then so I went on my hike. A typical brutal last two miles to an area that doesn’t have much of a view compared to other places I go.

The Answer?

When I finished my hike it was about 9:45 AM. As I drove from the trailhead to the freeway along a cement but potholed road, there on the side of the road were about six or seven military jeeps and trucks and soldiers walking around.

“That was it,” I said to myself. A military drone. That’s what I saw. This explains it. The military has some cool stuff.

Then I got home and watched the video: https://studio.youtube.com/video/D_g_oYl1YnA/edit

Go Hiking And Do Some Men’s Work

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It’s Sunday and of course that means I climbed a mountain this morning. I think I might have seen more women on the mountain this morning than men. Not sure!

As usual I begin my climbs very early in the morning so when I am coming down the mountain I see all the people coming up. I often wonder how the top of the mountain accommodates all those people. I am going to find out next week.

Doubles

Yes, on the 14th of May, two months before my 78th birthday I will attempt to climb Mt Si twice in the same morning. I think it might bleed into the early afternoon. On the other hand there is always a chance that I will collapse.

Have gone so far as to arrange to take Monday off of work (yes, I still work). That will give me some time to recover or get in and out of the hospital. Five months ago I had knee surgery. I would like to say it has completely healed but I would be lying.

It’s Nothing or Is It Something

It might seem like a pretty big deal for an old guy my age to do something like this, but I am reminded of Bronco Sundstrom who at age 77 summited Mt Rainier. The little mountain I will be climbing twice is just 4000 ft not over 14,000 ft. If I recall correctly she continued to climb it for many years. So doing doubles on Mt Si is nothing really own the bigger picture.

However, for me it will be a huge challenge. It is s supposed to be hot that weekend so that will present more of a challenge. The other thing is I have never done it before. No, not even when I was younger.

Go Hiking and Never Finish

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It has been over a month now and I am still nursing myself after knee surgery. Friends tell me to go slow but I am typically in a hurry. After reading Goggins book I think I have it pretty good. However, during the surgery they reinsured an older surgery on the same knee and that has been giving me problems. All this to say that I am a little nervous about being ready to head up into the mountains the first week in March.

Maybe it will take me until April this year. That would be disappointing but would still be a decent season. I have already begun to prepare in other ways. I am getting new rear brakes for my car so I can actually get to the mountains and of course doing lots off step ups even with knee recovery.

On and On and On

Only two and a half more years and I will be 80 years old. That is shocking to think about so I typically don’t. Someone told me today that I was just going to break one of these days because I push so hard. I asked if they had read the poem, “The Wonderful One Horse Shay?” It was not made ion a day and I feel like the might be me. One of these days everything will break at once.

However, so far little things are going wrong here and there. Arthritis, hip pain, neuropathy all are trying to slow me down. They won’t stop me because, like Goggins I am never finished.

Adapt and Overcome

It might be that I won’t be able to run down the mountain as fast as last year. I ask myself once in a while if I will be able to run down the mountain at all. The answer is yes, of course, until I am not able. That is unlikely.

The worst case is that I will just adapt and overcome whatever the obstacle might be.

Go Hiking But Have A Plan B

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As I write this I am wearing a leg brace. This last Tuesday I had knee surgery. Hiking starts in March and I think I should be good to go by then, but if for some reason I am not then I will need a Plan B.

If you can afford it get Stem Cell therapy or at least investigate before you do what I did. It is my understanding you can get Stem Cell therapy for about $6,000 a knee. Insurance does not pay for it so that was not an option for me.

No Hike. Then What?

If the result of this knee surgery means hiking is in my rear window it’s ok. I know I will be able to walk because I can do that even with the leg brace. But there is no way to tell at this point. My first option would be to do what I did when they closed the trails during the Pandemic shut down. Walk. A lot.

However, this experience got me thinking what if I could really barely walk or something else happened to me physically. I mean what could possibly happen physically to an almost eighty year old man? What would I do? Well, I play guitar so I would play guitar. I write. So I would write more. I like to read so I would read more. That would be my Plan B.

Trust and Belief

The thing is I don’t want to have to use Plan B. I want to hike starting March 2023. Lots of people say they are going to go with me up some of these mountains and I don’t want to disappoint them.

Recently, I heard a motivational speaker say that one of the important things you need when facing any adversity is trust and belief. Trust that it will all work out for the best and belief that it will. That is what I am counting on. But you don’t have to wait for me to get better. Go hiking!

Go Hiking And Endure Or Not

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I know what you’re thinking! He’s going to tell me I need to endure the hikes even if I am sick and tired or over trained. If I had written this a year ago, I would have said you were dead right.

However, climbing a grueling mountain trail when you are over trained doesn’t make a lot of sense. Like I said, a year ago I would have done it anyway, but I changed my mind.

Pay Attention

If you are fortunate or nerdy enough to use the NatureBeat (Sweetwaterhrv) App, Whoop, or even a Garmin watch, you are paying attention to your heart rate variability. With NatureBeat it will give you both your Sympathetic and Parasympathetic numbers. Those to numbers make represent you autonomic nervous system. The first one is your “flight or flight” readiness and the second your “rest and digest” score. With the Whoop you also get a recovery score.

So what do you do if you don’t have any of this technology? Listen to your body! If you are overly tired maybe a day off would be the wisest choice. Then you will have less chance of getting an injury or even sick. Now don’t think you can just be a slacker. You can get improvements in fitness by pushing yourself when the numbers are bad. Just don’t do it all the time.

Pay With Your Heath

If you do not listen to your body and push through there is a good chance you will not do well. I learned this myself the hard way. A pattern developed where I was not getting enough sleep and was exercising hard every day and then of course, climbing a mountain. All my numbers were bad. So I thought I would see if I could get the numbers to go back up after taking a week off from exercise. It worked. They went up a little. More on that other time.

After once again hitting the trail, a late night (anything after 5:00 PM) wedding resulted in making me even more tired than the exercise. Of course I had climbed a mountain the day before so I was primed for weariness.

My Permission

It is official. You have my permission to take a week off from s hike if everything is stacked against you. You do not have to endure! Of course you don’t need my permission for anything!

The most important think to remember as a general rule with some exceptions: Go Hiking!