The Calling

It was July 2008, my good friend, a backpacking fanatic and a fellow outdoor enthusiast, called me up and asked me if I'd like to go on a backpacking expedition in the remote mountains in Washington state. Not knowing what I was fully getting myself into, I agreed. That expedition, or Expo'09 as we later named it, was set to go. Planning, training, more planning, more training and yes even more planning went into it for over a year.

3 days before I was to set sail on my amazing adventure, I decided to play in a pick-up soccer game. It could only help my fitness level of covering some 50+ miles of constant elevation gain upwards of 6000 feet, right? I've played soccer for 30+ years and never suffered a serious injury, nothing could go wrong, right?

Wrong! The phrase, "never say never" could not have been more true. The enevitable happened and 4 hours later in the Emergency Dept. at Scottsdale Healthcare-Osborn campus, I learned what I already knew in my heart. Diagnosis: Ruptured tendons in my left ankle, crutches for 4 weeks, stay off feet for 2 weeks. Alas, Expo'09 was put on hold for a later date.

Because of the snowmelt in this region affords such a small window of time, this extraordinary adventure hiking into the northern part of Washington and close to the Canadian border, could only be accomplished between mid-August to mid-September. We looked to the future for a better day, that day was the summer of 2010 and what was once known as Expo'09 was aptly renamed, Expo'10. The great backpacking adventure.