Two days after my last post I was walking on rocks (what else it is Pennsylvania) after an exhausting section of trail called “Knife Edge”(it is as steep an nerve wracking as it sounds) when I somehow managed to basically get all my limbs caught in one spot. My feet were pinned along with my hiking poles and I just sort of fell forward. In the 1-2 seconds it took me to fall I thought oh shit I’m going to hit my head. I have not fallen and hit my head since I was a child. There is something rather awful about it, not only am I going to hurt my now fully fused cranial vault but I am going to react with the emotional maturity of a toddler having not had any practice since then where head injuries are concerned.
Once on the ground I had to untangle my body from my pack and assess the damage. This all sounds like I was quite calm and handling things well, but really I was a mess. I had to keep telling myself that it couldn't be too bad cause I hadn't lost consciousness. I had been cognizant of my temple being ground into the rock and the noise it had made when it scratched my glasses. I cleaned my head and held my cold water bottle to my eyebrow. I called my mom and we figured out that she would come and get me the next day and I would hike 2.5 miles to a B&B. So I hiked out listening to Bill Bryson’s “In A Sunburned Country”. It made me feel better to think of a country far away from where I had just fallen.
I made it to the B&B around 3pm and checked in. The owner gave me some Ice for my head and my shin (oh yeah I hit my shin too) before leaving me to deal with my various injuries. I showered, ate some ramen, and went to bed. My mom came to pick me up the next day and I’m back in NH with what I believe to be my first shiner.
If I hadn’t fallen I might still not have been able to stay out there too much longer. The nights were getting very cold and the night before I had had a very hard time staying warm. My sleeping bag is rated at 15 but it wasn’t really holding up.
I’m going to continue my hiking by doing some overnights and such in Vermont and the White Mountains with my mom. We will overnight in a heated camper and shuttle around. Hopefully this will mean I can still get about 30 miles a week or more of the trail done. There are also some fully enclosed shelters that I might still be able to use. Doing shorter trips will also mean less weight and next time I fall I won’t have that extra 40lbs of weight making the fall that much harder.
I think that it is possible, well highly likely, I still have some nerve damage in my right foot and leg. The doctors did say it could take up to 2 years to have all the nerves and the muscles firing at full power. I have noticed that while my right leg is getting stronger it's not where i thought it would be and I still don't have a lot of stability in the ankle. It also seems likely that I have some arthritis in that foot from the break.
