Memories of years past: Best trips and best "seasons"

[Cross Country]

To giantbrookie from Tom, b1943. Your favorite trip had places from my favorit trip (same year). In fact all of your favorite trips (7 trips) included probably 5-10 of my 15 favorite places. We've had similar interests except you hiked more and I fished more. You bag peaks and I (with my son Mike) climbed only one, Observavation. Mike, 11yo, wanted to go and besides it had the best peak name ever (to me). I communicated with you before. You encourged me to BP more but I don't now that I can. I have lots of physical impediments. From 1971 thru 1995 I went BP more than 600 days and 24 since. I surfed 300 days, skied 250 days, and played 2000 softball games 2500 since. I have been married for 36 years and have two sons. My fondest memories are of my sons and of almost all of my Backpacking trips (150 days with one or both of them). I refer to my wife as Saint Diane (name by mutial friends).

[giantbrookie]

I hope you still have quite a few backpacking trips in you. I do find that as I age I need to incorporate more into my weight training regimen to keep the various moving parts supported and functional. I am actually more stable off trail then I was 10 years ago because I gave up basketball that was my main focus in sports for 30 plus years (quit playing in 2005). I maintain all the damage was worth it, but most of my extensive rehab routine is to work on parts that were damaged by basketball (among the many injuries are multiple knee injuries and two operations spaced 20 years apart: 1978 and 1998).

In any case, the other thing we have in common is the memories shared with family. I owe the whole Sierra thing to my dad, who introduced the family to hiking and the Sierra in 1965. I did my first overnighter (Pear Lake, Alta Peak) in 1967. By the mid 70's family trips were divided into two classes: me and my dad, and the easier trips with the entire family. Then there came the one annual death march with my dad--this tradition went from 1975 to 1988 when my dad celebrated his 60th birthday climbing Seven Gables and showed his stuff by making Lou Beverly Lake from the Edison road (didn't know we could have driven on 'burb to the Bear Creek Diversion dam trailhead so we just hiked the road) in 5.5 hours. His hip deteriorated rapidly after that (probably an aftermath of a fall while climbing Mt. Goddard in 1977) and he had one last strong trip, when we did Mt. Tom in 1991, then slowed down dramatically after that. His last 14er was Mt. Langley in 1995 and that trip showed him that he could no longer carry a full pack (his hip was just too painful--and that man had an epic pain tolerance), so backpacking ended for him at age 67. Still, he bagged his last peak, Dicks Peak, at the age of 70 on a long dayhike from Glen Alpine in 1998 (he blasted by Gilmore Lake in a brisk 1.5 hours). Within a year and a half he was gone, a victim of pancreatic cancer. My dad never fished, for his big thing in the mountains was peak bagging. The two of us climbed 50-some-odd peaks together, with the majority coming between 1968 and 1979. By the early 80's my main focus in the Sierra drifted more and more toward fishing. In 1986 I met my wife and the number of days I spent in the High Sierra steadily went up, reaching its peak between 1992 and 1997 when we averaged 40-some-odd days in the high country each year--vastly more days than I spent in those summers of peak bagging with my dad (he never wanted to take many days off). The number of different high country lakes my wife and I have fished together to date is 523.

I feel incredibly fortunate that I can say that my all time greatest climbing partner was my dad and my greatest fishing (and drinking) buddy is my wife. Now my wife and I are entering the next backcountry phase which is getting our kids (now 4 and 7.5 yrs) into the High Sierra. The oldest one has already scored his first backcountry fish at a trailless Sierran lake and they've gone on two backpacking trips and numerous car camp trips. They are not quite the hikers I was at the same age, but they are slowly making progress. I don't know when they'll get to remote Seki destinations, but my wife and I will do our best to stay in shape until the time the kids are indeed strong enough. I fully intend to get to the Dumbbells (and other such places) in my 60's and so does my wife.

[Cross Country]

I just hope your old basketball injuries don't come back to haunt you as mine have come back to haunt me. What really slows me down, however is that I absolutely have to take a beta blocker. With it my pulse rate won't rise sufficiently with strenuous exercise and I can't get enough oxygen. This is an insurmountable problem at high elevation or with serious exercise. BP is both.

[giantbrookie]

One can never be sure how badly old injuries will come back to bite. My dad took a really hard fall on his hip on Mt. Goddard in 1977 (at age 49). He continued to be a death march horse until 1991. However in 1992 his hip had started to hurt him so badly he could barely make it up to Burro Lakes with his pack (we tried a backpack only once after that in 1995 and it was a trail hike, of course, en route to climb Langley). I took a horrible fall onto my own hip in 1979 (age 19 going on 20) and had pain for 10 plus years after that but it has been OK for awhile. I can only hope. I have some geology friends near my age (one older, one younger) who already have artifical knees. In the meantime, I hope that my epic rehab/preventative routine in the weight room (been a weight room regular now for 30 some odd years--the big reason I've come back from so many injuries) will continue to keep me duct-taped together for many years to come. As for the beta blockers, I can only hope that it will be a long time before I have to deal with that. Last year I had these splitting headaches that I know for sure (because of other symptoms) were related to allergies. My doctor was convinced it was a flow problem with blood vessels in the back of my head. They did an MRI on me and it was inconclusive (they were also checking for other potentially serious causes), but my doctor suggested beta blockers might be the solution for the vascular issue. I figured that even if it was allergies (which I'm pretty sure it was--Judy had a milder bout of the same thing when her allergies flared), if I stepped up my cardio program (I get a bit lazier in off season and tend to primarily do my strength stuff) things should improve. One week of doing my stairwell workout and the headaches vanished. No beta blockers for me before their time. This winter I had the congestion, ear canal clogging, sinus crud that brought things on last year. This winter, though, I kept with my stairwell stuff, so no headaches (except the morning after too much good beer or wine).