With a little grit, and A LOT of determination and soul searching, I summited and finished the 8 pack with a torn meniscus!

This hiking season has been, for me, incredibly difficult. I’ve never had so many injuries in my life, much less all packed together in such a condensed time frame. To make a long story short I’ve been hopping from injury to injury since the beginning of the year, one of which kept me off the trail for MONTHS. This has all culminated in what is most likely a misdiagnosed torn meniscus in my left knee. 2 days prior to setting out from Vivian creek I saw my MRI results. The radiologist said no tear, however, I have some anomalies in a commonly misdiagnosed area of the meniscus (posterior medial horn for you medical junkies lol). 10-20% of tears in this area are diagnosed as no tear. My orthopedist says it looks exactly like a tear on the images and he’s very suspicious that it is indeed a tear. I’m almost positive I do have a tear. Second opinion here I come! Needless to say this put a damper on my planned Gorgornio summit that I had planned for 2 days later. I originally wanted to be done with the 8 pack by April but that just didn’t happen and after some soul searching Wednesday and Thursday I decided to strap on my gear and try to summit anyway. No way I was letting this stop me from my goal! Unless I literally can’t walk XD

I set out on Friday morning by my lonesome as my hiking buddy was down and out with a bug. I hit the parking lot while it was still dark, stretched out, loaded up, and headed out onto the trail just as the sun was coming up. There was only one other person on the trail with me. Nervous as all hell but determined, I took the first mile and a half (the gas out climb as I call it) slower than I normally would. Just the fact that my knee has been giving me issues since the tear and the fact that almost no one else was on this trail made me wonder if I was doing the right thing here. After all it’s 8.5 miles up and 8.5 miles back and I remember how tired and sore I felt after summiting last year. The one good thing about all these injuries though is that I’m now HYPER aware of my body and muscles/joints and how it feels. As I got out of the first climb and into the main section of the trail I knew right then and there that I was going to summit. My knee felt good and all I had to do was just pay attention to my body and keep moving. And that’s exactly what I did. I stretched out regularly and kept moving as quick as my knee would let me without barking at me to slow down. The weather was perfect too. Couldn’t ask for a better day to summit.

From trailhead to summit, I made the climb in 5 hours on the nose. Pretty good for having a torn meniscus. The hike was amazing and I ended up being the only one at the top, which meant I had to take my own summit selfie! I chilled with the chipmunks for a bit for lunch. They ended up eating some of my self-spilled pumpkin seeds within arms reach of me (I’m such a klutz sometimes). The Gorgornio Summit Chipmunks and I are fast friends now LOL. After some lunch I decided to head down. Saw about 6 people coming up at this point, which meant if I bit the dust on the way down at least someone would see my body LOL. The climb down was slower but this was planned. Can’t mess myself up anymore than I already am! All in all it was a great day and I can’t be more happy with the way things turned out. I did learn one very important lesson. Know your limits, but don’t be afraid to test them either. Also, don’t be afraid to turn around if your test goes awry LOL