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Emily Badgley
Honors Humanities
The Mountain Top
The cold alpine air bit into my skin as I exited the tent. The sun was only just
starting to rise as we packed our gear for the days hike up Mt. Massive. This would be
the first 14,000ft mountain I would ever hike, it would actually be the first mountain I had
ever hiked. When I was nine I hiked the trail the Engineer Mountain but never climbed
because I was deemed too young to do so. The little kid in me still wanted to prove I
could do anything. All this mountain was was another hard hike. Even, though I had two
inches in diameter blisters on both my heels and was seriously out of shape from doing
nothing for over five months with a foot injury, I felt that this mountain would be easy.
Sure the past few days had been hard carrying what felt like a ton in backpacking gear
(backpacking was also something I had never done before), but we wouldn’t be carrying
our heavy bags up the mountain. Walking into the woods, I had a lot of similarities the
Christopher McCandless. We went in the wild to find ourselves and we were both
arrogant enough to think that the wild was ours to conquer. Now the past couple days
backpacking had humbled me slightly, but not enough for the hours ahead.
Once our food, water, and extra (jackets, medkit,etc) was packed, we split into
two different groups. One would start hiking first and the other would soon follow. Mt.
Massive has a trail up all 14,429 feet to the summit, but we were leaving from our site
and were hiking completely off trail. This added to my excitement as well as my groups
because we would be the only ones going up this way, we wouldn’t have to do an
awkward shuffle around other hikers as we went up the mountain. I was in the first
group that was lead by Rachel. Rachel with the other adult, Ashley lead the San Juan
Mountain SOLES. They were dedicated to teaching young girls leadership skills through
outdoor adventures.
Right out the gate, I’m the slowest of our little group, a trend that has irked me
throughout this trip. As an athlete, I’m not only competitive but expect the best out of
myself even if it transcends human possibility. We hike through a forest as we make our
way to the mountain. The pine needles crunched under my feet as I made my way up
the incline, trying to find the best line through the trees, of course, the other girls have
made their way through the trees with speed that would make a cross country runner
proud.
I kick myself now because if I had stopped being embarrassed by my slowness I
could have taken the time to notice the beauty of what I was walking through. Emotion
can taint memories and my embarrassment has made it hard to remember the smell of
the trees or just the sheer beauty of nature.
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Emily Badgley
Honors Humanities
I caught up to my fellow group mates past tree line to see Mt. Massive before us.
Mt. Massive was well, massive. The first part we had to hike or really climb was like as
grassy wave ready to crash down on our heads. My blisters prickled from the thought of
climbing up sure a steep rise. Making my way up the rise was rougher than I thought, I
had to constantly make my own switchbacks to make it up the rise. Finally, after doing
my best mountain goat impression I mad it up the first little rise in our long climb. I was
already exhausted and that was little more than a hill, however, a very steep one. We
stopped for a snack on these massive rocks that marked the ridge of the mountain. In
front of us was sort of bowl hundreds of feet below the summit. The wind had picked up
making the sweat from our first climb chill my skin. Eventually, we moved on from the
rocks and walked across the bowl to climb the ridge of the mountain. A few nights ago
while helping Ashley hang bear hangs, I revealed that I could do a wicked Scottish
accent (I can only imagine that real Scottish people hear a grossly overexaggerated
girly Sherk impression). As soon as I voiced this trick, everyone wanted me to say
things in that accent, not excluding while we walked across the bowl. I ever the introvert
immediately got stage fright and promptly did not do the accent, much to the dismay of
my groupmates (I did eventually say something, but I can’t remember what).
Our group made our way up the mountain along a ridge that slowly turned from
grass to rock. This rock had patches of snow on it that would never melt, weird seeing
snow given the winter we had and now it was an annoyingly wet obstacle. However,
these rocky bits were more my speed. Ever since I was a little kid I loved scrambling on
rocks pretending to be some adventurer I admired. For the first time, I was the fastest
going up the mountain and I proudly lead the group as we maneuvered our way through
the rocks. My speed would soon die as I grew more and more tired. Eventually, I was
overtaken by my groupmates and I was once again the caboose of our team.
In front of us was the summit of Mt. Massive, the trick was how to get there and
then back down. I talked with Rachel to best determine the best way up to the top of the
mountain. One way made the rise at the beginning of the hike look like a bunny hill.
From our perspective, it looked like we would have to literally climb to the top. The other
way would have us follow the ridge a bit further then cut across and finally reach the
top. With the latter option being the best we continued our journey up the mountain.
As I climbed up the ridge I saw my friends reach the summit, instead of jealousy I
felt propelled to make it to the top and join them. Finally, I reached the top, the rocky
summit was narrow with sheer drops on many sides. The view before me showed other
icy mountains and blue alpine lakes below. My group and I had made it to the mountain
top and all we had to do was wait for the second group to join in the celebration.
When the last person from the second group made it the the summit, we
gathered around with our leftover snacks and celebrated our successful ascent of Mt.
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Honors Humanities
Massive. I was elated, I had fulfilled feat that I always wanted to accomplish. The same
feeling can be related to McCandless’ feeling of success in braving the wilderness,
specifically when he had that streak of animal kills. At the time, McCandless and I in our
own circumstances had conquered the wild.
It’s important to know that the air is pretty thin at 14,429 feet. Sure it’s not like
Everest where you're slowly but surely dying as you climb, but never the less there’s not
a lot of oxygen where we were at. Lack of oxygen can bring about more than just
trouble breathing, altitude sickness can hinder you physically (with symptoms of
confusion, dizziness, balance problems, rapid heart rate) and is a gateway to other
complications such as HACE or HAPE. HAPE is high altitude pulmonary edema, this
means that your lungs begin to fill with fluid and you can drown in your own blood. In
Krakauer's Into Thin Air one of the sherpas gets HAPE and is described as delirious and
coughing up blood. Conditions only worsen if you do not descend immediately. HACE is
high altitude cerebral edema, instead of fluid in the lungs, it’s in your brain and it swells
with this fluid. Symptoms involve that of normal altitude sickness, but can quickly
become more severe. One is a headache that won’t go away with sleep or time, and an
altered mental state. Again if you don’t descend your condition will get worse until you
eventually die.
After enjoying our victory over the mountain we began to descend, going down
the same route we went up. I felt great as I hiked down the mountain, I had hiked up my
first mountain and it was a fourteener. That feeling soon disappeared as I moved slower
and slower down the mountain. I was significantly behind the group and could only see
Rachel ahead of me. I started to trip over every little thing including my own feet.
Everything around me spun and it felt like something was pressing my brain tighter and
tighter. To avoid feeling sick and falling from my sudden lack of balance, I looked at the
ground as I walked. I didn’t even notice that Rachel had stopped as was waiting for me.
She asked me if I was okay and I responded that I was fine. I didn’t tell her what was
wrong because I felt like I would be a burden. This whole trip I had had blisters that had
been taken care of by Rachel or Ashley because I didn’t have the confidence to do so (a
day after this I did start taking care of the blisters on my own). I was the slowest in our
groups and I felt like I had reached the maximum amount of being a burden that I could
allow myself to be.
Rachel clearly didn’t buy my declaration that I was fine for long partly because I
stumbled five minutes later and almost fell. She insisted that I use her hiking poles to
descend and being my “selfreliant” self refused. Eventually, she had me sit down and
tell her just how fine I was. I told her that I didn’t feel right, that I was kind of dizzy and
my head was starting to hurt. She asked other questions about how I was feeling and if I
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Honors Humanities
was experiencing any other kinds of symptoms. She also checked my heart rate, to
which she frown and said,
“Okay Em, You might have some altitude sickness.”
I wanted to cry, here I was being an even bigger burden to the group.
Rachel continued, “Please take my poles and we take our time getting to the
group.”
“Okay,” I responded, “I’m sorry I’m taking so much time and making this difficult.”
“That’s okay, let’s move.”
“Do you think it could get worse?”
“I don’t know”
“Okay, I’m sorry again”
“Are you okay?”
“What?”
I looked up to see that Rachel was about a hundred feet away from me. The
entire conversation apart from when she had insisted I take her poles had been
completely onesided. The person responding to me didn’t exist. That whole time I
thought I was talking to Rachel, was really me talking to myself. I sat in disbelief for a
second before getting up and slowly making my way down.
My balance had gotten progressively worse and my head was pounding. I just
kept telling myself to keep moving forward, the same mantra Lara Croft used in the
more recent Tomb Raider games. I eventually made it to the rest of the group and sat
down. I couldn’t focus or think much like how I felt after getting a concussion. Rachel
had explained to Ashley what was going on and was relaying it to the group. I felt tears
well up, I felt embarrassed that I had been reduced to being incapable of walking
without the assistance of hiking poles and would slow the group down even more.
Ashley and Rachel had determined that everyone, but a volunteer group would go
ahead, while Rachel and the girls who volunteered to stay behind would descend with
me. The girls who volunteered to stay behind showed so much j=kindness and
understanding. As we descended one of them whose name was Grace would wait for
me at each switchback we made. The girls talked about (from what I can barely
remember) Timothee Chalamet and the movies he was in (must have been one heck of
a guy because he was the only thing I remembered from the conversation the girls had).
Eventually, We made it down the mountain a caught up with the rest of the girls. I
went back to camp with Ashley and a different group of girls. Ashley gave me a wet
bandana thing because I mentioned I was hot and we finally got back to camp. Once we
got there, one of my tentmates, Abbey, and I made food while others went to the stream
to wash off. My symptoms did not lessen even after getting off the mountain. I felt sick
because the world continued to spin around me, I would walk and stumble like I was
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Honors Humanities
drunk, and my head felt like it was in a pressure cooker, simultaneously being squeezed
tighter while being lit on fire. Eventually, my head hurt some much I walked to the
stream where Ashley and Rachel were and told them that I felt like my brain was on fire.
They looked at each other and told me to try and take a nap, then afterward, tell them
how I felt. Rachel had once again taken my pulse (which I imagine was really high). So,
I grabbed my sleeping pad and laid it out in a grassy patch outside the hot tent and tried
to sleep. Despite, getting constantly bitten by those stupid triangle flies, I got maybe ten
minutes or more of sleep. When I woke up my head was still pounding and I felt just as
bad as I did before. Ashley walked up and I told her that nothing had changed. She got
Rachel and she took my pulse. Rachel frowned and took it again, then asked Ashley to
take it. To my credit I had some idea of what could be happening, I learned about HACE
and HAPE at a science camp when I was in seventh grade. I asked Rachel If she
thought it was one of the two, to which she said it was most likely HACE. She reassured
me saying that it wasn’t super severe, but could get worse if we didn’t immediately
descend. My heart sank, I would have to make everyone pack up everything and go
down to a new camp just for my sake. Rachel explained to the group what the situation
was and that she would be taking an “advance” team down first with me. Rachel and
Ashley asked my tentmates to pack my stuff and had me sit and rest. Once my stuff was
packed, Rachel took the advance team and me and we started to descend to a lower
altitude. The advance team consisted of one of my tentmates (Abbey) and two other
girls, Sage and Kelsey. Once we had made it about two hundred vertical feet down, my
head stopped hurting, and I could walk in a perfectly straight line. I was shocked and
relieved to find I felt great. Rachel stopped us in a valley and checked my pulse and
asked how I was feeling. After answering that I felt great, we continued to descend so
that we would be certain I would stay fine. The whole time we hiked I laughed and
talked with the other girls like nothing had been wrong with my health a few hours ago.
We finally reached a spot to camp at around 7:00 pm. We help Rachel set up her tent
and camp stove. I realized that I was very hungry and happily ate the mashed potatoes
Rachel had made. We sat in a circle in the tent and talked for what felt like hours. We
began to worry about our fellow group members and their whereabouts. It was dark out
and there was no sign of them. A short time later, we heard them approach and we saw
their headlamps. Apparently, they accidentally went down a ridge and had to climb back
up it. I was relieved to see the rest of our group, our other two tentmates set up the tent
and laid out the sleeping bags and pads. I thanked them repeatedly for carrying all of
the gear for our group and making the descent. I tried to be sure I thanked everyone
because they had to do this on my behalf. I felt awful for having put the group through
all of that. I felt like I had burdened them and ruined the backpacking trip for everyone.
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Emily Badgley
Honors Humanities
In reflection I couldn’t have help getting HACE, it could have been anyone else
and the same outcome of an emergency descent would have happened. In the
beginning I had McCandless’ arrogance that I could do anything, despite a lack of
expirence. I also have always had the mind that helping others is a priority, but never
thought about needing help myself. Like McCandless, I live in my head for a long time
and in a way, my own imagination made me invulnerable. In my head, nothing could
hurt me except myself, but when it came to the wilderness there were a lot more unseen
obstacles. Going out into the wild didn’t immediately help me find myself, it opened a
vault of mental struggles that I had buried deep down. One of these challenges was
asking for help from others. I had always done things by myself, I play with toys as a kid
alone, did most of my schoolwork alone, and was home alone a lot. In my mind, I didn’t
need anybody as was ashamed when I did because I feared that I would annoy them.
McCandless walked into Alaska to prove he could be selfreliant, I walked in already
think I was. Being the best at hiking or the most selfreliant, l learned, wasn’t the point of
SOLES. The point was to get a group of young women to come together, learn
leadership, form strong bonds, and have fun adventures. I learned to trust in the people
around me and I believe that human connection I the best and only way to live. I’m
thankful to have gotten to know Ashley and Rachel and all of my Sole Sisters, having
them in my life has made me far happier than I have ever been. Forging connections
like those and learning to trust them is one of the reasons I walked out of those woods
alive, unlike McCandless who will forever rest in the 142 bus just off the Stampede Trail.
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