Mt. Walker Kicked My Ass

WARNING: Never hike a 2-mile, 20% grade at break-neck speed up and down the mountain, twice. This is your only warning. Unfortunately I had no such warning.

My boss talked me into hiking Mt. Townsend in Quilcene, WA last weekend. As far as hiking mountains goes, I'm pretty much a newb. I didn't know what I was getting myself into.

It was me, my boss, and his brother. We left early in the morning and headed out to the mountain. After driving the majority of the way up the mountain to the trail head, we ran into too much snow to continue. Had we made it to the trail head, we surely would have been hiking the entire trail in snow. So we headed to Mt. Walker instead.

The actual hike up to Mt. Walker is a fairly steep grade at 20%. It's a 2-mile trail with 2000 ft of elevation gain. I wouldn't recommend this trail for anyone who isn't in pretty good shape.

We started out on the trail at a pretty good pace. We all had backpacks on with extra clothing, food, and water. My load was fairly light, maybe 10-15 lbs. My boss, on the other hand, was carrying probably 30-40lbs to help train for his up-coming mountain climbing adventure in Russia. I wasn't training for anything; only along for the ride.

On the way up I felt great. We did the climb in 39 mins. My legs were in great shape, with no burning the entire way up.

And then we went down... This was painful. We basically jogged down the entire mountain. The jarring on your body from an event like this is pretty harsh. My quads were starting to burn on the way down. Having to partially stop my body weight with every step took its toll. By the time I reached the bottom my legs were beginning to feel the pain.

We took a break at the bottom and refreshed ourselves with some food and water. Rather than call it a day after conquering the mountain at a record pace we decided to do something incredibly stupid: climb it again.

We went up the second time at a fairly fast pace, doing it in about 45 minutes. We came down at a little slower pace than the first time, but we certainly weren't taking it easy. My legs felt pretty drained by the time we got down the second time.

On Sunday the ache was beginning to set in. I woke up with some pretty intense leg pain that required a 40 minute (gentle) massage courtesy of my wife. My wife and I were supposed to do a 50-mile bike ride that day, so the massage was pretty much required if I was going to be able to do any riding.

After the massage my legs were feeling a bit looser, but they were still incredibly sore. So we set out on the bikes for the 50-miler, taking a route that would allow me to return to the house if I couldn't make it...... I made it 25 miles before I had to head back to the house. All of the jarring down the mountain made my right knee sore and I didn't want to aggravate it any further.

Later that night after having time to rest, the pain really began to set in. I'm pretty sure getting on the bike was a terrible idea and only worsened my condition. In retrospect getting on the bike was incredibly stupid.

On Monday morning I could barely get out of bed. Just rolling over on my legs in bed was an intense experience. This was a soreness I had never felt before. But I hobbled out of bed and managed to get myself together. Walking was quite challenging. I would have welcomed one of those walker things with the tennis balls on the ends. My legs were so sore that you barely needed to touch them to induce intense pain. The kind of pain you get when you push on freshly bruised muscle. It felt like Muhammed Ali went bare-knuckled on each leg for 10 minutes.

Needless to say I took the car into work. I could barely walk and I wasn't about to ride my bike another 20 miles that day. It was a challenge even getting down my 2 front steps and into the car. My arms did a lot of work on Monday keeping me up right.

Tuesday and Wednesday were much the same as Monday; intense pain, requiring 40-minute massages every night from my wife (THANK YOU!), no bike to work, only car. Today (Thursday) I am at least able to walk around fairly well. The pain has started to subside quite a bit and I'm beginning to return to normal. I took a light spin on the bike to loosen my legs. I think I'll be back on the bike for the commute to work tomorrow. I'm looking forward to the ride in tomorrow given my 4-day recovery period. I never would have expected my intense mountain climbing adventure could put me in so much pain and require such a long recovery period.

You can bet my next mountain climbing adventure will be on my bike.