Mt. Pleasant Classical Academy

Last week I posted about our vacation to the Adirondacks and mentioned that at some future time I would post about our trip up to Mt Marcy. Well, here it is—

I can’t remember the first time I used my First Aid Kit on a hike, but I imagine it was to cover a blister with some Moleskin. And then there was the time I went backpacking with friends in the Cumberland Gap National Forest. Shortly after lunch on the second day out of a four-day hike I somehow pulled my groin muscle. Every step was exhuilatingly painful until Glen gave me a few Tylenol with Codeine. Soon I was flying down the trail, and thus managed to hike the remaining trail miles. While I do not have access to such strong pain pills, aspirin, Tylenol or Excedrin always goes in my First Aid Kit.

The night before we hiked Mt Marcy, the highest peak in the Adirondacks, we packed our sandwiches, filled water bottles, packed our ponchos; our fleeces and I threw in my little blue First Aid Kit. At just 2×2x1/2” it held a few bandages, antibiotic suave, a few 2×2” gauze bandages, some Tylenol, and alcohol wipes. In all our hikes out west in June and July I never needed anything from this. In fact, I never used anything from this in all our kayaking, bicycling and hiking trips over the last dozen years, but I packed it anyway.

At 4:30am my cell phone alarm went off, nasty sounding thing that will wake even the dead. By 5am we were in the car headed to Mt Marcy and after signing the trail register we were on the trail by 6:30am. We reached the 2-mile mark in 35 minutes and praised our hiking speed. Hiking at this low altitude was not taxing our bodies as our western hikes had, so we were all feeling great. MK was in the lead setting this rather quick pace too.

MK veered to the left to avoid the tree in the middle of the trail, and as I went around it on the right, I heard SK tumble.

“D$%N-IT, S&*T, UGH!!!”

I turned to see SK with blood on his hand, –where was it coming from? Blood was streaming down his cheek, his nose was covered too— and then I saw the source—-a gash above his eyebrow. When SK tripped over the tree roots his head hit the blunt edge of a very large rock. Then it hit me that I had nothing more than a few Kleenexes to wipe blood up with, so they would have to do.

I searched through my pitiful First Aid Kit to see what I had to clean and cover his wound. An antiseptic wipe, a gauze pad, a couple bandages that were way too small, but they would have to do. Thankfully SK had not lost consciousness, and I used the flashlight, packed just in case our 20-mile hike kept us out too late, to check that SK’s eyes dilated. They did, and he tracked my finger too. SK answered MK’s questions as quickly as if nothing had happened so we made the decision to go forward.

Slowly we trucked onward, stopping twice to change SK’s bandage, and I even used bandages begged from other hikers coming down from Mt Marcy. His injury was still bleeding a bit when we arrived at the summit at noon. As we ate lunch we chatted with the Steward of the Summit and decided to head back the way we came, cutting about 4 miles from our intended route. By 5pm SK was in Lake Placid’s Urgent Care unit getting 5 stitches to close the gash.

It could have been much worst, but one thing for sure our First Aid has been dramatically revamped with SK’s help. It now holds many of the items recommended on the LLBean site:

Moleskin

Hydrogen Peroxide

Antibiotic cream

Masking tape

Gauze pads and roll

Ace Bandage

Band-Aids

Aspirin and Tylenol

Plastic Bags

Eye drops

Bandana

I hope that we go years before I have to open it up and use it on a trail, or on the river, or road but it sure is stocked with more stuff now.

Oh, and at the top of Mt Marcy—the highest peak in NY state—we could see maybe 30′ in any direction. The wind was strong, the clouds were thick and thunderstorms were predicted. It did not look nice from up there at all! After leaving the summit the hiker drops about 500′ rather quickly, and of course the sky which had threatened storms all day cleared out. UGH