Town Stops and Breaking In

We keep coming back to South Lake Tahoe in these early goings, picking up a new walking stick here, a cooler for apples and hard-boiled eggs there. In the process we’ve stayed at three different hotels. Hotels and town stops are the thru-hiker’s Siren call. I’m as guilty of succumbing to that call as anyone, but there are dangers. You go from roughing it to a nice hot shower and bed, then you must return to roughing it again as if nothing happened. For those who avoid the local inns there remains the common occurrence of invading an AYCE buffet with miles still to go on a bloated stomach.

At our last two hotel stays in South Lake Tahoe Cindy got homesick. I told her that we don’t have to do anything, that we can stop the hike at anytime. She replied: “I might as well finish it now,” as if we were near the end of our long journey. That can be an advantage for one with Alzheimer’s, a focus on the present without much cognizance of either the past or the future.

Our hike out of Echo Lake provided an example. Cindy started out with a melancholy hangover from our latest town stop, her mood affecting her stamina and agility. Yet as the day progressed so did Cindy’s mood. About seven miles in I played the word game with Cindy. This is a standard test for Alzheimer’s. You provide three words to remember, then distract the person for a few minutes before asking for those words.

Cindy never passed that test from the very first time it was administered nearly four years ago. On a practice hike I gave Cindy a stripped version of the game where she had some trouble, some success. This time there was success. Cindy could pick out the one word I asked her to remember from a list.

Yet while Cindy improved throughout the day Charissa was in the throes of the dreaded breaking in period. Even us old timers still need to break in to the physical adjustments of long distance hiking, but for a newcomer there are additional adjustments. In Charissa’s case she still needs to adapt to sleeping and the sun exposure with this new lifestyle. She was not a happy camper when I turned back for Echo Lake after 8 miles, having filled my self-appointed role as Sherpa up until then.

This meant the first time I camped apart from my girls. This was done for a few reasons but ultimately because I did not feel comfortable leaving Charissa’s car at the Echo Lake resort area overnight. Another unspoken reason was to allow Charissa the opportunity to thrive on her own in what I think is one of the most beautiful stretches along the PCT, the Desolation Wilderness.

When we hiked through here in 1977 it was September and the daytime temperature was in the thirties. This thwarted our usual game of jumping into any convenient body of water no matter the water temperature. We even broke through ice in pursuit of this game. There was no ice on the Desolation lakes when we passed through, but the air temperature was enough of a deterrent.

Now the temperature was in the eighties but there still was no swimming to be had. Neither Cindy nor Charissa are up for swimming much in the first place; the late start because of our town stop was an extra disincentive. Without the swimming and with the hot sun this was not the perfect overnight stretch for Charissa that I anticipated. It was tough to leave Charissa because of that; Cindy by that time had sufficiently recovered from her early melancholy as to take my leaving with stride.

Things do work best when all three of us are together at camp. The actual hiking, where Cindy is more in her element, does not matter as much. I thought this might be the one golden time for Charissa to be in charge without me, but perhaps some time after the breaking in period would have been better.

In any case we finally leave South Lake Tahoe behind us.