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 | Sandy Saddle TM 10, AZ | | -
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| Volunteer | 8.00 Miles |
2,000 AEG |
| | Volunteer | 8.00 Miles | 3 Days | | |
| 2,000 ft AEG | | | | |
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[ show ]
| no partners | | Set out on Friday for a 3-day outing on Sandy Saddle Trail. The weather was pristine, had a brand new audiobook queued up, and I was really looking forward to a solid few days of solitude. Turns out that the karma gods had other plans...
Hiking up Barnhardt was quick and easy. No one on trailhead, no one on trail, and good flow at the falls & creek below. Cutting off at the junction was also easy and I dropped my pack at the planned dry camp site and got to work. Progress was slow, there were a lot of small manzanitas, which meant more clipping, more throwing, and more roots to pull up, but hey, I make my own timelines on this project. After a few hours I pushed down to the creek below, filtered up, made some lunch, worked some more on the trail, and around five I called it for the day and did the camp thing under a sky full of stars.
Day two was more of the same. In the morning I worked on the trail from the top half heading down towards the creek, and around noon I broke to filter water and work on the bottom half towards my campsite. I was starting to accept that this last section of trail (I'll attach a photo) would take more than the planned three days so I began partial clearing just to make a semblance of a route, and will plan on "polishing" (arms outstretched, yaddah yaddah) on future outings. Stopped again around five and enjoyed the stars.
And then... Day three never happened. I woke up before midnight in pain, my right knee swollen and warm to touch. Hoping that it was a mild sprain from working the last two days I took some Ibuprofen and tried to slip back into a sleep that never came. By 4am it was apparent that this was an emergency situation so I got up, packed up the best I could, and huddled on the ground in pain. At 6am I called my wife to debate extraction options. At 8am we called it in to 911, who got me in touch with the SAR coordinator, and he decided to hoist me out (yes, that was my ride, @diablo). By 9:30 I was in the Payson ER, and they figured out it was a fast-moving infection and pumped me full of antibiotics & pain meds. Wife was able to get my car from the trailhead and then drive me home, but the adventure wasn't done yet.
On Monday morning I woke up and my entire right leg, from mid-quad down, was red, swollen, and painful. The antibiotics weren't strong enough. This time we went to the Ironwood hospital and they immediately admitted me. A week in the hospital, knee surgery, and who knows how many tens of thousands of greenbacks later, and I'm finally home. Still don't know for sure what full recovery looks like, or even what kind of bacteria was able to wriggle through which little cut or how it found it's way into my knee's bursa, but my leg is still attached and I'm (patiently) counting down the weeks until I can get back out there and continue on what is quickly becoming a very expensive hobby. |
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