Not Iron Man

I may have found the answer to the reason for my decreased appetite. I did my final blood test on Monday after the hike and found out today that my anemia is probably related to iron deficiency, in turn caused by a hormonal imbalance. Iron is the precursor that the body needs to form hemoglobin. Hemoglobin, in turn, is the oxygen carrying molecule contained in red blood cells.

Fatigue and weakness are symptoms, because the body's tissues aren't getting enough oxygen. Apparently, decreased appetite is also one of the symptoms of iron deficiency anemia. So this may be the reason why I've been having to force myself to eat while hiking.

How annoying that this happened right before our Half Dome hike!

I thought it was weird that I couldn't keep up with Duane last Saturday. I have never been unable to keep up. I'm usually in the lead. I wasn't having a problem during our final conditioning hikes, though I wasn't at as high an altitude either.

Feather Falls is somewhere around 2900 feet elevation. Black Mountain is at about 2800 feet. Saratoga Gap is lower at around 2400 feet. Mission Peak, which we did earlier in the Spring - twice in one day - was 2517 feet. We did the Panorama Trail down to Happy Isles last June and I had no problem at all and had plenty of energy left at the end of the hike. I was at the front of the pack the whole way. During our Half Dome hike I was anywhere from 7200 feet elevation at Glacier Point, down to about 6000 feet at Nevada Fall, and back up to 7300-7500 feet elevation where we finally turned back.

The only surprise for me is the relationship between iron deficiency anemia and appetite. I expected that the anemia could be a problem. I'm nevertheless annoyed.

Black Mountain Revisited

Duane and I decided to do a much longer hike with significantly more elevation gain this morning. I had hiked Black Mountain once before with mentor Deb and fellow hiker Matt. It was a nice hike, but Duane was unable to join us that Sunday morning. So I thought this would be a good hike for him. He would get to see something new, and next week, he would take me someplace new. (We're planning to do the Saratoga Gap hike that I previously missed next week.)



We got to the trailhead, which is located near the end of Rhus Ridge Road, by 7:45 am. We readied our hiking poles and packs to go and took off. As before, there was a few hundred feet of a short warm up, before we started to climb 600 feet in less than a mile. It was a beautiful day. Warm, though not terribly hot. The trail had plenty of shade for most of the way. We reached the trail junction at the Duveneck Windmill pasture area: left towards Rancho San Antonio and left towards the top of Black Mountain and Montebello Road. We turned left and started on a series of gentle switchbacks up the mountain underneath woodland oak forests. The wildflowers are mostly gone now, though we saw plenty of spider webs.



The last mile or so of the Black Mountain trail is quite steep. But at last we reached Montebello Road and the antenna farm that sits next to the junction of the trail and road. We had planned to turn back, as before, when a couple of hikers told us that there was a nice place to sit down with 360 degree views a few hundred feet ahead. So we pressed on and were glad that we did.

We found an outcropping of jagged rocks, where we found a rock to sit on, ate our sandwiches and enjoyed the 360 degree views of the Santa Cruz Mountains and Santa Clara Valley. We also found the USGS summit marker in that outcropping of rocks. Oddly, it doesn't state the elevation as we would have expected, and uses the Latin word for Black - Niger - to name the mountain.

We also seem to keep bumping into people who are training for Half Dome. We met a couple of men who were training for Half Dome lower down on the trail, and then again at the summit, we met another couple who were also training.

After about a half an hour break at the summit, we headed back down the mountain. By the time we began our descent the temperature was quite a bit hotter, and on the unshaded portions of the trail I sometimes felt like a hot dog in a solar cooker. Still it was a beautiful day and the views from many parts of the trail as well as the summit are stupendous. We arrived at the bottom of the trail, nine plus miles later, feeling pretty good and not much worse for wear.

Black Mountain

Since I had a hike to make up, and because I am training for Half Dome, I decided to meet mentor Deb and teammate Matt for a Sunday morning hike up to the summit of Black Mountain.

We met at the trailhead, got ready and started off at about 8:00 am. There was almost no warm up period, perhaps only the first 100 feet or so. After that, the trail went sharply up for the next mile or so. After that, however, the trail wound around the ridge of the mountain at a more gentle incline with many switchbacks. Most of the trail had quite a bit of cover, which was good because it was a bright sunny day.

We did the other half of Black Mountain when we hiked up the PG&E trail at Rancho San Antonio Park. The Black Mountain Trail meets the PG&E Trail along the way.

The final half mile to the summit was quite steep, although not nearly as difficult as the Stanford Avenue side of Mission Peak. We hiked to the junction with Montebello Road, a fire road that goes up to the antenna installation at the peak. Apparently, there is a winery further down Montebello Road and we had some discussion about a wine tasting fundraiser being a great way to end a hike!

There were not as many wildflowers in evidence on this hike, although there was lots and lots of poison oak. Nevertheless, I have so far managed to avoid it.

Amazingly, I was not at all sore after this hike. Maybe just a tad, but definitely less sore than after finishing our Almaden Quicksilver hike yesterday.