37. Intensive Hiking before the Volcanoes

I leave in three weeks to fly to Guatemala to embark on the mission of conquering three different volcanoes.  I have been diligently training with intensive hiking treks, core exercises, and jogging for cardiac building.  

The first weekend of October, I had a mini reunion with 3 other women who hiked Mt. Kilimanjaro with me.  One of those is Jo Simmons who was my tent mate on Kilimanjaro and will be my partner on the Guatemala challenge. Another woman is Connie Qian who came along to hike with us and cheer us on.   We hiked three days straight.  The first was immediately after picking Connie and Jo up from the airport and heading straight to DuPont State Park to hike the three waterfalls trail – High Falls, Triple Falls and Hooker Falls.  It wasn’t a terribly challenging hike but did get my heart rate going and produced some sweat.  Then on Friday we took on Raven’s Cliff Falls at Ceasar Head State Park in South Carolina.  This was a 5.8-mile hike with 1320 ft. elevation gain.  We put out some energy on this one.  The hint of fall color showing off and the beautiful views were gorgeous.  The third day, Laura Aldridge joined us for an arduous hike up the 535 stairs at Catawba Falls.  We logged 3.8 miles and 853 ft. elevation gain for this one.  The upper and lower falls were spectacular.  It was a great reunion, an invigorating hiking retreat, and another event where fond memories were imbedded into our history.  

This week, I went on another hiking extravaganza.  A few of my hiking friends stayed in a cabin at Roan Mountain State Park in Tennessee right on the North Carolina-Tennessee state line.  We hiked three days and put in some good miles with elevation gains up to 1,090 ft.  Collectively for the three days we did about 11.5 miles and 2,600 ft. elevation gain. When I consider that we will be hiking over 5,000 ft. elevation gain with 8 miles in just one day of the volcano challenge, it seems like a herculean undertaking.  Hopefully, we will go slowly and have a lot of time to cover the distance.  I’m sure we will be starting our climbs on the difficult days at sunrise, and we will have headlamps if we are on the trail before daylight or after sunset.  

I have been deeply moved by the show of support given to me with my Parkinson’s journey and my efforts to make a difference to others with this fight.  I hope that I offer hope to those facing the rest of their life with PD.  I want to show that there is much life to be lived after hearing the words “you have Parkinson’s Disease.”  I will continue to advocate for the PD community by fundraising for research, reaching out to legislators and being engaged with my local PD community. 

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