A 47-year-old man died of heart failure on the North Kaibab Trail a couple of weeks ago, just above the Supai Tunnel, which is the farthest I've ever gone down that trail. I've called it a killer trail and it really is. This started a conversation with my HH.
HH monitors his health very closely and I think is frustrated with my c'est la vie attitude toward mine. I grudgingly take prescription drugs but am in general pretty smug about my good health and fitness level, which I think is the best I've had, ever. However, that man's death made me listen to HH a little more, and to take his advice to carry (and use!) an oximeter - a little device that goes on your finger and gives you bad news - when I go out walking. Using it is an eye-opener, especially considering his doctor's comments regarding hypoxia, low oxygen levels in the blood.
To keep this from being altogether boring, I'm tossing in some photos I took on Sunday at a place called the Basin, here in the park. Last week it was glorious with wildflowers so we went again to see the effect of some rain we'd had. The flowers were past their peak but the rain was still evident, and its effects were magical.
Lupine leaves.
I don't know the name of this one. The flowers are clustered on a stalk which is only a foot or so high.
Look at the surface tension holding the water between two blades of grass.
I have one kidney and HH told me about some poor guy who also had only one. He was in an accident and his kidney was damaged to the point it was removed, without anyone realizing he had just the one. He didn't live to tell about it. So I now have on my phone's home screen a notice not to remove what I have left, no matter how badly it might be injured. This leads to what HH's doctor said about hypoxia: that a blood oxygen reading of 85 or below is a sign of hypoxia and the first organs to be affected are the kidneys. That's what opened my ears and softened my resistance to paying better attention to my exertions here on the North Rim, at 8,500 feet, and at places like Cedar Breaks, 11,500 feet. Walking
faster than an embarrassingly slow pace or up any amount of incline
at these altitudes easily lowers my O2 to below 90. I've seen it at 83 and if that won't make me
start deep breathing, nothing will.
How does hypoxia happen? Like everyone, I'd heard it said that the higher
the elevation, the thinner the air, but what does that mean? There's a
neat website that will calculate how much oxygen is
available at whatever altitude is entered. At 8,500 feet, just 74% of
sea-level oxygen is there for you to use. At 11,500 feet, it's only 63%.
At the elevation of Cedar Breaks, then, there's less than 2/3 the oxygen you're breathing in standing at the ocean's edge. The next question is, how does your body compensate for this? Another informative website says (and this begins at 8,000 feet), "When we
breathe in air at sea level, the atmospheric pressure of about 14.7 pounds per square inch
causes oxygen to easily pass through selectively
permeable lung membranes into the blood. At high altitudes, the lower air
pressure makes it more difficult for oxygen to enter our vascular systems. There is an increase in
breathing and heart rate to as much as double, even while
resting. Pulse rate and blood pressure go up
sharply as our hearts pump harder to get more oxygen to the cells." It goes on to say that over a period of time the body acclimatizes but never reaches its sea-level capacities for physical and mental fitness.
Aster
Now that I've been checking on heart rate and O2, one of my experiences on the North Kaibab Trail scares the dickens out of me: at one point my chest felt so tight I could barely breathe. I felt I was strangling. At that time I was still in the scoffing stage of resistance. Not any more.
This is a kind of grass. Even when it's dry it has beautiful lines.
The same grass.
See the drop on lower right inverting the horizon? Cool!
The other issue is heart rate. You've heard of target heart rate, the range of beats per minute you should aim for if you're interested in a good cardiac workout. You arrive at that number by subtracting your age from 220, then multiplying that by 60% for the low end, and 80% for the high end. Some people say 85%. For me, in my decrepidity, that gives me a range of 96-128 beats a minute. Going over the 80% or 85% number is not recommended. What I've discovered here is that it doesn't take much to tip me over the 128.
Blue flax.
Of course, the younger you are, the more you can exert yourself. A 25-year-old's range is 117-156 beats a minute; a 40-year-old has a range of 108-144. I can hit 108 just walking around the house. I feel ridiculous, old, and feeble. I won't be going down the North Kaibab again, or the Widforss, now look for level routes to take on foot, and I will be taking the oximeter with me wherever I go. I hate this getting old.
Parry's bellflower
Common yarrow. There are also white versions here.
I don't know this one but want to extend my heartfelt thanks to HH, who remarked that it looks like a duck. Now that's all I see.
The next couple are the same flower which looks like a member of the pea family to me.
No idea. The lavender is the extent of the flower and it's about 1/2" long.
Phlox, I think. I saw carpets of these when we first got here but it looks like they're in a second, lesser, bloom.
Another one I don't know. Gorgeous color.
A view to the north in the Basin. There is still color in the fore- and middle - ground from the wildflowers.
Like every other getting-older malady that I've forbidden from approaching my body but losing those battles regardless, the effects of this high altitude at my age is a real thing, not some theory to argue over. C'est la vie, indeed.
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Thought of the day:
Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art. - Eleanor Roosevelt
This post would have been up days ago
but for the completely inadequate internet here. HH and I had been doing
very well at Petrified Forest with a Verizon add-on through a third
party that gave us decent service. Well, that requires actual Verizon
service and to that the North Rim says Ha!, so we had a satellite dish installed behind the house and thought we were covered, but it works when and how fast it wants to.
We
can get only 10 gigs a month, daytime, and another 10 at night which is
defined as something like 2am-8am. If we use up the 10 daytime gigs
we're not cut off but it slows to less than dial-up speed for those of
you who remember that (and remember how we thought that was the cat's
meow, just to have internet?). The night gigs are supposed to remain at
full speed even if we go over but there's not a lot of interneting going
on during those hours anyway. If there's a cloud in the sky somewhere
in Arizona or if the wind blows or if a tree drops a needle, service
slows. I couldn't get any work done on the blog because, I admit it, I
don't have the patience to wait 3 or 4 minutes for a photo to upload and
then be told over and over that my Save isn't working. Right now I
can't see a preview of the post, only the draft version, so I have to
publish without that final proof I do. Let the reader beware.
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Here
is Cedar Breaks, finally. To get there, to get anywhere, as I've said
before, you have to drive through Jacob Lake where there's a
cookie-magnet phenomenon going on. I was strong and just kept driving. I
was so, so strong.
I
headed north on Highway 89A, a dotted (scenic) road on my map. Even
with three stops for road construction and the fact that this was my
third or fourth time driving it, it's a lovely road to travel. There
aren't more than a couple dozen camping spots at Cedar Breaks, some reservable and
some held for walk-ins, so I left home early to better my chances. This
is the spot I got, primary considerations being the view of the meadow
and in deference to my age, its proximity to the loo.
Cedar
Breaks National Monument kept the name given to the area by Mormon
pioneers. They saw all the junipers and thought they were cedars, and
the word breaks was commonly used as another term for
badlands.
Note:
Anywhere there's a description of the flowers that sounds like
something I wouldn't normally know, which is mostly all of it, it's
because I copied it from the Monument's website.
I
got set up after considerable references to the directions for putting
on the rainfly, and headed out for a ranger-led wildflower walk. Aspen
bluebells were going strong along the trail. According to the park's
wildflower identifier, these bluebells are favorite fodder for cattle
and sheep. The reason they're abundant here is because there aren't any sheep or cows.
I've
seen what I thought was this same purple penstemon at the Grand Canyon,
but the species at Cedar Breaks, the Markagunt Penstemon, is endemic to
Utah’s Markagunt Plateau. Here's something I learned: The scientific
name Penstemon refers to the fact that the flowers have five stamens.
Another common name for this group of plants, beardtongues, refers to
the fact that one of the five stamens does not bear pollen but is
covered with hairs or is bearded.
The
butterfly was so busy feeding that it didn't startle away even with
people moving all around it. The flower might be a showy goldeneye.
It's
not all about the flowers here, although they steal the show for a good
part of the summer. The canyon reminds me quite a bit of Bryce Canyon,
just on a smaller scale.
I don't know about this one at all.
Shrubby cinquefoil, low-growing, and a member of the Rose family.
There
are so many of this kind of flower in bloom that I can't tell them
apart. It may be Orange Sneezeweed. As with other members of the Aster
family, the flower heads are actually a composite of many central disk
flowers surrounded by petal-looking ray flowers. In other words, the
petals aren't petals.
Some
kind of larkspur. The one listed on the Monument's website is called
Subalpine, but I can't tell from their photo if it's the same flower as
this.
A stand of larkspur with a backdrop of canyon.
This
is another penstemon, a Rydberg. The genus Penstemon is one of the
largest in the US, with about 100 species found in Utah alone.
Mountain deathcamus, highly toxic but apparently not to pollinators. The flowers are about the size of my fingernail.
This
species of Colorado Columbine occurs throughout the Rocky Mountains
where flowers are typically blue and white, hence the name, caerulea,
from Latin for blue. Many of the plants at Cedar Breaks, however, have
flowers that are completely white. The petals of the Columbine flowers
have long spurs that contain nectar as a reward for pollinators such as
bumblebees and hummingbirds. Some insects that don’t have tongues long
enough to reach the nectar, however, will steal it by biting a hole at
the back of the spur and get the reward without doing the work of
fertilization. I saw a bee doing exactly that.
Lupines and columbine at the side of the path.
The
bright red color of Paintbrush “flowers” is actually not from petals
but from specialized leaves called bracts (like poinsettias) that
surround the obscure, light yellow-green flowers inside. The red bracts
do a good job of attracting butterflies and other pollinators to seek
the nectar reward at the base of the tubular flowers.
Paintbrush
species are known as hemi-parasites. While the plant’s leaves and stems
contain chlorophyll and photosynthesize, their roots also can graft
themselves to those of their neighbors and steal nutrients.
Richardson's geranium, very common.
This dragonfly stayed put long enough for me to get a few shots. This is one of my favorite photos of the trip.
This moth was the same, not moving much at all on the thistle. Another thing I learned is moths tend to pollinate white flowers, hummingbirds red, bees will do anything, and flies go to stinky ones.
These might be asters. The color!
The one road cuts around meadows, under a wide blue sky.
Elkweed grows as a rosette
of leaves for years until it stores enough energy, and the growing
conditions are right, for it to bloom. Like agave, once they bloom, they
die.
The stalk is about 3 or 4 feet tall.
The flowers grow all up and down and around the stalk.
I'm
fascinated by all the insects so intent on their work, except for one
gigantic, threatening monster that landed on me at Bryce Canyon.
Thankfully there was a teenager there who, although freaked out by the
whole episode (and if anyone should have been freaked out it should have
been me, don't you think?), brushed it off my shoulder before it could
attack. I don't care who you are, that thing's scary.
Another view of the hoodoos.
Evening primrose.
I
went walking to see the Monument's bristlecone pines. They live on the
rim here, under harsh conditions at 11,500 feet, growing very slowly.
They're like junipers in that they allow parts of themselves to die off
to direct energy toward survival of the rest of the plant. I took the
photo below to say, "I didn't go there," but I actually had to because
the pines are at the end of the peninsula.
In 1964 scientists cut down a bristlecone in Great Basin National Park, not far from Cedar Breaks,
for study. It turned out to be 4,900 years old, probably the oldest
living thing on the planet. Explain that to your supervisor.
This
is the cone from the tree, the bristles giving the tree its name. Its
needles are in clusters of five, just like limber pines that also grow
nearby, but limber pines' needles are longer. They get their name from
the flexibility of their branches; a ranger said they can be tied in a
knot.
Almost there on the trail that skirts the canyon.
This is one of the largest one I saw, about 1,500-1,800 years old. A two-foot sapling is thought to be about 200 years old.
This is fireweed, common as anything, but just beautiful.
And,
finally, my two other favorite photos from the trip. The twist in the
log that makes up the top rail of this fence caught my eye just as it was reflecting the light from the setting sun.
The visitor center was built in 1937 by the CCC and is on the National Register of Historic Places.
As
I said, I was so, so strong on my way to Cedar Breaks, driving past
Jacob Lake cookies with determination. Well, I did the same on the way
back, exhibiting such control I would have wondered who I was if I
hadn't already stopped at Dairy Queen in Cedar City for a Peanut Buster
Parfait (with caramel sauce added). One can be only so strong.
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Thought of the day:
It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end. - Leonardo da Vinci