Tomorrow will make the seventh weekend in a row. I have done Mt. Teneriffe, Mt. Washington, Defiance Peak, Granite Mountain, Kaleetan Peak, and Red Mountain (in the Commonwealth Basin), and tomorrow I will do Mount Dickerman on the Mountain Loop Highway. By now I have regained sufficient stamina to lead basic climbs with relatively short approaches such as The Tooth, South Early Winter Spire, Kangaroo Temple, the South Face of Ingalls, and the like. By the end of this winter coming scramble season, I should have attained a conditioning level to climb at a level prior to the fall.
What has changed, allowing me to get back into the Alpine?
Where the left ankle joint used to be just flat out painful, for some inexplicable reason it really isn't a bother any more, and there remains plenty enough range of motion for alpine work in trail shoes and sturdy mountaineering boots. There was a period of time when the pain was so distracting after just a couple of miles of walking that I was seriously considering either fusing the ankle (but with zero range of motion) or removing the whole blasted thing and replacing it with a blade. Thankfully, my affection for the foot and ankle overcame my frustration at the pain, and somewhere along the way, the pain receded to a point where I am doing 14 mile days with 4k elevation gain.
Also, the left hip used to get really sore because of differing leg lengths as the result of reconstruction after the fall (as well as from the cracked left femur from an intervening bike accident). Initially, I went with an orthotic insert in the right shoe to equalize leg length, but that didn't quite do the trick because although the orthotic resolved the height difference at the heel, as it tapered to leave room inside of my shoe for my foot, the effective adjustment was next to nothing at the ball of my foot, so when walking I was still pushing off with the ball of my foot on a leg significantly shorter than it should be. It took way too long to realize that what I really needed was a 3/4" lift added to the full length of all of my right side footwear (including trail shoes and mountaineering boots). I found a fantastic cobbler with skills in slicing off soles, adding lift material, and gluing everything back together, and voila, I was back to a near-perfect equalization of leg length.
Strangely, lifting the right foot resulted in a new aggravating pain on the outside of the left foot and on the pad under the base joint of the little toe, and once again, it took way too long to figure out that a new custom orthotic for the left foot --- contoured to give extra room in the painful areas and support in the surrounding areas --- could resolve that pain.
The most recent "aha!" moment was resolution of unusually fast building callous on the pads under the base joints of both little toes, which made it feel as though I was walking on thumb tacks! The solution this time was to aggressively grind off the callous using a very rough metal rasp after each bath or shower. The rasp is so rough that it will tare normal skin, and I grind away on the callouses until I begin to feel something. Those callouses don't stand a chance!
It is feeling as though the way is clear for doing distance and elevation gain with increasing pack weight to rebuild muscle and stamina, and the hikes this summer seem to have born this out thus far. I'm probably carrying an additional five pounds of reconstructive gear in feet, ankles, hip, and back, so I'll need to eliminate most all non-contributing body mass, and at 57 years of age that isn't as easy as it once was, but believe me I am not complaining one iota.
Goals? Hmmm, . . . before the fall I was working on the top 100 peaks in Washington State. I suppose there's no harm in continuing along that path, and not making any promises on getting there, but there's zero chance unless I continue to take it just one step at a time.
Should be fun!
