The Adventures of Whit & Dan: The Hike From Hell

Hiking a mountain...something I have always wanted to do...and something that I never need to do again! We thought we're young and in descent shape, so this should be doable for us...little did we know...

We left Saturday morning and began our hike at the base of the mountain. The terrain was at first dirt and rock as we began our ascent up the mountain, so by the first couple breaks we were feeling pretty good about things. As we continued to climb the terrain changed to boulders and then to sand. The funny thing about hiking up sand, is that for every 2 steps up, you slide 1 back! As the terrain became more difficult the altitude also increased, and by 6th hour and about 14,000 ft, altitude sickness set in. I began to feel light headed and had to stop and break every 20 steps or so. Luckily our friend Ko was having similar difficulties so we kept each other company bring up the rear! We got into Base Camp at about 4:00 and ate hot soup and spaghetti with tuna fish (interesting mix I have to say wasn't too bad). We promptly went to bed as the plan was to begin our hike to the summit at 3:00 am. By the time we went to bed the temp had dropped to about 20-30 degrees so we were dressed from head to toe in snow gear when we snuggled into out bags. We didn't sleep much as we didn't have any pillows and then also a group of fellow campers came up blasting music (darn youngsters!) Finally we get to sleep and I'm woken up in the middle of the night with a headache & nausea :( Altitude sickness in full force! So when 3:00 am rolls around I opted to stay at base camp while the others hiked the summit, so I got a few more hours of sleep and Dan embarked on a 7-hour round-trip hike to the top of Misti! About noon the group rolls back into base Camp...beaten, battered, bruised, exhausted and sick! Poor guys were spent and had only a little bit to rest before we began our descent back to the bottom. It's crazy that a hike that took 7 hours coming up the mountain only took 2 hours going down! The cool part about hiking down in sand...sliding all the way! Half-way on our descent my legs were shaking and all I could think of was laying down in my bed and not moving for a LONG time!

Hiking a mountain...one more thing to cross of the bucket list!