[at-l] Gutsy's interesting summer

[danandgailsc at aol.com]

Note:  I wrote this to send to my colleagues at work.  Please forgive some of the comments meant for the trail illiterate.  

In June I hiked 200 miles in the Shenadoahs and ended in Harpers Ferry. Then after a road trip to Montana with Brenda my husband Dan joined me and we hiked 250 miles starting near Helena. We had to rethink our hike after arriving in Anaconda, Montana, and we followed a route around Butte since we were unable to get into the Anaconda-Pinler mountains. We were hoping that would buy us enough time for the high snow to melt to allow us access into the mountains. One morning near Delmoe Lake campground I got up at 5:30 a.m. to get ready for another day of hiking 20+ miles. My husband had neatly lined up our water bottles near the tent and I didn't notice that one of them had duct tape X's on it, indicating that it was his campstove fuel. I grabbed that particular bottle and turned it up to "hydrate" well before we set out. It burned my throat and I realized that I had drunk his stove fuel instead of water. I gagged to get my breath and Dan came out to see what was the matter with me. After I could speak, I told Dan what I'd done. Drinking methanol is serious so the first thing I tried to do was to make myself vomit. When I could not do that I immediately drank down two and a half liters of water. We usually don't carry our cell phones but since we couldn't decide what to do with them (we usually mail them ahead) we both20had ours in our packs. We were near Butte so we had a signal. We were also near a campground on a gravel, but well traveled road. At that point I felt fine so I told Dan we might as well pack up and have everything in order before we called 911. I almost did not go with the ambulance when it came because I really did not feel sick. I told the EMT's that I felt fine and they said they would call the hospital and relay that news. Well, the hospital said that there is a delay of 12-24 hours on symptoms from methanol, the symptoms being kidney failure and blindness. That really left me with no choice but to get in the ambulance and go with them. And since we were on foot with no car around and no friends to contact, they let Dan ride in the front of the ambulance. Dan said the driver was going 90 mph after getting off the gravel road. 

It turns out that Butte did not have access to the treatment I needed to take the methanol out of my system, so the decision was made to airlift me to Messoula, MT. But the treatment to buy my body time by keeping the methanol from metablizing was to get grain alcohol. Now, believe it or not, they do use some kind of intravenous alcohol, but Butte did not have this. The ER personal asked all around the hospital to find out if someone had a stash of alcohol in their offices but no one did (or no one would admit to it! : ) So the ambulance driver went out and bought strawberry and cranberry vodka and gave me a 
choice. Well, I'm a pretty good Southern Baptist who doesn't drink so I chose strawberry because I happen to like strawberries. Well, that stuff is not even remotely related to strawberries and they could not dilute it because I needed to get drunk. The nurse kept checking my blood level until it reached .1. By this timeI was feeling very sleeping and having trouble talking. (But I don't think I flirted with the EMT or anything like that!) The ambulance then delivered me to the airport where Dan said a small airplane was waiting. The EMT asked if I suffer from air sickness and I said, yes. So they put something in my IV and I didn't remember anything else until 4:00 p.m. I never got to tell them that I usually feel sick on an airplane but I never throw up and I usually don't take anything because I don't like that "drugged" feeling. Dan told me later that he was light enough and so were our backpacks so they let him go along on the airplane. If either one of us had been heavier he wouldn't have been allowed to go. 

At St. Patrick's hospital in Missoula, I was on the MICU floor. The first thing I asked for when I woke up was a remote for the TV. No one uses the TV’s on this floor so she had to go find one. When I am out backpacking for long periods of time I eat large in towns because I’m always short on calories. I asked about food and was given a menu. The food I ordered had to be brought up on two trays from the kitchen. My nurse was20wonderful, but she told me they didn't know what to do with me on this floor since most of the patients were on ventilators.. I was connected to the wall for my IV and other stuff (don't ask me). It wasn't the case where I could wheel my IV around with me. They did bring me a potty chair because I couldn't move away from my bed. At least I didn't have to use a bed pan! That night I got very little sleep because the blood pressure cuff went off every hour. When I first arrived at the hospital they took a sample of my blood to see how much methanol I actually ingested, but the lab was closed over the weekend so they did not expect results until Tuesday (this was Saturday). Fortunately, someone in the lab decided to run my sample and it came back on Sunday with levels low enough for me to leave. Yes! 

Now that I was able to think about leaving, I began to think about my clothes. When I do my long distance hiking, I don't have spare clothes. One outfit does it the entire time. If I really need to wash my clothes (I know...I know) I wear my rain gear. It wears like a sauna, but it is modest. Since I was three sheets to the wind the day before I wasn't certain what they did with my clothes. 

So here I am in a hospital gown wondering what I'm going to wear out on the trail. My backpack was sitting on a chair in the room, but just out of reach. When I was loosed from my tethers and was able to check out my backpack, I found my pants and20shirt. Yay! Dan and I spent that night at St. Pat's house which is like a Ronald MacDonald house. The next day we took Greyhound back to Butte, to continue our hike. We hiked about 90 more miles taking us up to the Anaconda-Pintlers (mountains). At 8000 feet we came to a high lake which is surrounded by a cirque. A cirque is where the mountains and the lake at the base are carved out by glacial action. It was the most beautiful spot on our hike so far. And since we would be seeing lots of those high lakes in the Anacondas, I was psyched. But at 9000 feet we ran into steep snow fields 

which covered the trail. We kick steps in the snow and crossed the first two but the third was impossible with views of worse to come so we had to turn back. We hiked back to the lake (2 m.) and slept there. By the way, it was 30* that night. We realized our hike was officially over for this year and that we would have to return next year and hope the snowpack would be low enough so we can get through. Those mountains were so beautiful that I almost cried as we had to turn back. But they'll be there next year. 


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.backcountry.net/pipermail/at-l/attachments/20080816/f9c930d9/attachment.html