[pct-l] Injury on the Trail...

[jjolson@uwyo.edu (Jeffrey Olson)]

This summer I was going to hike for three and a half weeks on the CDT.  I got
eight days into the trip when I fell off an inch and a half rock and badly
sprained my ankle.  This is an ankle I'd damaged a month earlier and had spent
lots of time nursing back to strength.  It had also been sprained more times
than I can remember over the years - basketball and tennis injury.  It was even
taped as a precaution, and taped well, or so I thought.

The pain was excruciating, a 9 on a scale of 10.  It wasn't a ten because I
didn't pass out from the pain.  My consciousness wavered and I screamed for
about 30 seconds, sweat starting from my whole body.  The world was reduced to
pain.  My friend undid the shoulder straps and hipbelt and pulled the 25 pound
pack off as I lay there.

Fortuitously, there was a spring 10' from where I went down.  After ten minutes
of letting out great bellows and hyperventilating I crawled to the spring and
placed my foot, running shoe and all, into the little hole my hiking partner
had dug.  I ate five or six ibuprofen

It was hot - the sun was beating down, and all I could think about was the
dream was dead.  We'd done 18 miles the day before and I hadn't killed myself.
I was ready for two and a half weeks of 20 mile days.  But no more.

Now it was a matter of deciding what to do.  There seemed to be two options, to
pack me out on a horse or get a helicopter in there.  I hated the thought of
either.  I think it is a guy thing.  It would have been humiliating, not to
mention expensive.

I lay on the trail with my foot in the springwater for two hours.  My friend
had rigged up a tarp over me to ward off the sun, and had started to put up my
lightyear tent as shelter for the time he would be gone getting help.

Dave was getting close to heading out.  I decided to see if I could stand on
it.  An hour earlier I about fainted from trying it.  This time I managed to
hobble.  I walked ten steps and said, "pack up the tent.  I can hike out."

It was six downhill miles to a 4-wheel drive trailhead at Pole Creek and the
Colorado Trail, and I hiked it in about four hours.  I'm convinced it was the
ibuprofen that did it, and not taking off the tape.  Compression, cold and
painkillers allowed me the window to extricate myself from a terrible
situation.  I've sprained my ankles many times over the last 35 years, and this
was the worst.  I was lucky.

Jeffrey Olson
Laramie, WY where the Halloween storm's snow is still on the ground...