One of my least favorite things are chronic, nagging injuries that just don’t seem to go away. I’d almost rather be legitimately broken off than have some pesky annoying tweaked muscle somewhere that just won’t heal. After a good long while with no issues, I’ve been fighting a wrist injury for a little over a month. I think I initially injured it throwing a gear bag over my shoulder to bring it up from the basement. What a stupid way to hurt yourself. Anyway, every trip is about the same. I sleep on it strange on Friday night, and it hurts Saturday while we ride or climb. Then I do it again Saturday night and it hurts even worse on Sunday. It gets better as the week goes on, and by the next weekend I’m back to square one. It hurt in the Creek, and last weekend in the Swell, and this weekend in Zion it finally crapped out on me.
Let’s back up a bit. On Saturday it was just fine. Mostly because we didn’t do much. After meeting up with a few friends to ride Little Creek, we were joined by our friend’s friend who runs a local shop. He, in turn, was joined by about 40 other people along for the shop ride, and what should have been a fun loop with a few buddies turned into a complete and total shit show. Granted, we did check out a pretty cool zone and ride some pretty fun lines, but in retrospect we should have gone and done something else. Sunday was climbing day, so Jen and I headed up past the tunnel and climbed the Headache for what would be my third time. I still think this is one of the best multi-pitch 5.10s around, and I didn’t mind taking another lap up it. But by the time we got down my wrist was pretty pissed at me.
On Monday we took our friend Andy’s advice and hiked out to get on a four pitch 5.11 called Smashmouth. From the ground it looked like it could be the best finger crack that ever existed, but I never got to find out. After scrambling up a short section below the first real piece of climbing, I mantled onto a ledge, weighed my left wrist, and heard an audible “pop” that came with a pain similar to smashing your own wrist with a hammer as hard as you could. It was unpleasant. I vacillated on the ledge for a bit as the pain settled down and then decided to finish the pitch and see how it felt. It was a stupid thing to do, but I really wanted to finish the route. I brought Jen up to the top of the first pitch and then made the decision to bail instead of risking really hurting it and going into ice season with a wrist injury, which would not put me in my happy place at all. Then I drove Jen to the top of the Jem trail so she could at least get something out of the day.
So, now it’s time for ice packs and scotch on the couch for a while until I’m sure this thing is good to go.
