This year my new years resolution was not to “waste” any weekends staying at home. I wanted to spend each of them skiing, diving or hiking. I would try to do something on both saturday and sunday but as long i did something on either of the days it was ok.
It went pretty well till beginning on June, by that time the only weekend i didn’t do anything was before my two week philippines dive trip. But then things really changed on Mt Baldy hike.
I had organized the hike to mt baldy from bear canyon trail, something which is very familiar to me but at the same time this trail is intense, 6 miles and 6000 ft elevation gain. It was the same trail which i took for my solo backpacking trip.
Only 4 people decide to come for the hike which was fine but come saturday morning I didn’t feel motivated to go for the hike but since I was the organizer I had to go, that is what I felt.
First hour on the trail I was fine but then all of sudden I didn’t want to be on the hike, I wasn’t enjoying the trail at all and all I wanted to do is return. I was confused as well since never in my life I have felt that way on the trail.
I continued slowly but I was hating it, the only reason I didn’t want to turn back is because everyone else was ahead of me and it won’t be fair for me to turn back without notifying them. There was other group who knew folks in our group so I asked them to pass the message that i intended to turn back mid way.
With the assurance that the team would get the message that I have decided to return I started descending. But something told me to stop and hesitantly i started hiking to the top.
It was really slow going and i was hiking like a kid who has no interest in the thing he is doing. Eventually i did make it to the top but if i had ran into someone from the group just 10 ft away from the summit i would have given my message and returned, such was my mental state of mind.
The top was a zoo which didn’t help, there must have been around 50-60 people on the peak when i got there. Since couple of folks were going to descend from a different route we finalized the pick up plans etc and then i started descending.
I was fine during the descent and all it seemed normal at the end of the hike but this little episode caused me some worry and got me thinking what if don’t enjoy hiking anymore. I have been hiking since i was 10 years old and all of sudden i stopped enjoying it,it felt really weird and the thought of me having to give up hiking is scary. I didn’t want to experience the same thing again so i decided to cancel my plans for hiking for the next two weeks.
The weird thing is there is nothing else going on in my life which is stressful and cause me to think/act this way. It was one of those days and thats how i thought about it but it worried me for sure.
I just chilled at home for next couple of weekends while doing some diving but then i had to be ready for Mt Shasta so i did go on a training hike to San Gorgonio which turned out to be fine and it was a huge relief. Not to mention i throughly enjoyed the climb to Mt shasta which we summited on July 14th 2012.
In hindsight i feel that i might have gotten “burned out” and the break definitely helped me so i have decided going forward i will take such breaks once in a while for sure.
After all if i am not going to enjoy some activity why do it. I just put this incident as a “burn out” or one of those days where your head is not in the right place. Hopefully it doesn’t happen again with me in the future.
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