Alas

Today, I was a failed hiker. This appears to be a common theme in my hiking.

Last week, my attending told me about a hiking trail through the Mission Mountains. The Mission Mountains are all tribal lands, and from what I've read, they intentionally make them somewhat inaccessable. The trails are there and everything, but there's no common map to tell people where they are. Also, the trailheads aren't very well maintained, there's no parking and the roads going to the trails are terrible. These are not tourist trails.

Anyway, the first set of directions I got told me to take a right where I should take a left. I tried to find this place twice, before I learned I was going the wrong direction. You would think a mountain would be easy to find, but this is a chain of them and it's never clear which ones have trails and which ones don't. Anyway, I get there and off I go. Of course, it is very beautiful, the trail wound down through the mountain valley, then up the side of a mountain and father back in. My attending told me there was a lake at the end, and I decided to try and reach it (he never had). However, I didn't make it. An hour and a half in (and I was partly running - I meant to run the whole way, but the terrtain started getting more and more dangerous as I went into the mountains. This was not a place to risk a sprain or other injury.) I didn't seem to be getting there, and I hadn't brought any provisions for an extended hike. Plus, the trail was getting more and more overgrown the farther in I went. So, I failed.

In retrospect, I think I did the right thing. I just pulled up google's satalite images of the region, and I think I was only about halfway there. It's hard to tell, but there were some distinctive gravel/stone regions (a bitch to run on) that I made it to, and they weren't very close to what I presume is the lake. So much for that, I suppose. I could pack a lunch and try again, but a pair of nice men from my rafting trip told me about Jewel Basin, which is supposed to be very pretty as well. I'm not quite sure how to get to it through. It had a website from the federal government, but they reference access roads that don't appears on Google maps. I know it's general location, but you can drive for hours out here if you don't know exactly where you're going.

On the clinical side of things, I'm really enjoying myself. I get to see a lot of different patients, far more than I would have thought going into this. I feel like I've learned a lot. It's all tidbits of information, but I really like it.

phone!