So this is what it's like to be altitude-sick, part 2

I dejectedly sat on a rock as Billy handed me a piece of beef jerky. He had probably waited 15 minutes at that spot. I should have had more to eat, which would have prevented bouts of vertigo later, but he had packed everything up and started to move again. At least the trail is all level from here, I thought.

I crossed the half-mile ridge called Mills Moraine with a steep drop to my left ending in that unnamed valley below. In front of me was Longs Peak, its summit shrouded in low, feathery gray clouds; to my left was Mt. Meeker, to my right, Mt. Lady Washington. I was surrounded by peaks three thousand feet high.

I walked along the ridge, thankful it was downhill. At the far end of the trail was Columbine Falls, draining water from unseen Chasm Lake and tumbling hundreds of feet down into Peacock Pool below. I crossed the falls and headed inward toward Longs Peak. My eyes followed the trail up ahead of me, behind a ranger cabin, across a field of meadows… and stopped abruptly in front of a wall of boulders fifty feet high. I realized with dismay that I’d have to climb that wall. I was at 11,700 feet, exhausted and nauseous. Yet I’d have to do some scrambling – fifty vertical feet’s worth -- to get to Chasm Lake.

I can’t do it, I thought. I don’t even want to try.

The clouds had started to roll in, though they didn’t seem dangerous. If it started to pour, we had our rain gear and were ready.

I rested for two minutes, and started my way up, my weary legs lifting up my entire weight a foot or two at a time. Each exertion caused a pounding sensation in my head and chest. Every time I bent down to maneuver, my nausea would seem worse, and a bubble would want to come up my esophagus. I went up ten feet, and rested. Another ten feet, and rested again. I was breathing hard and felt ill. I had never felt so out of whack.

Billy had disappeared somewhere at the top. Of course he had made it.

Somewhere close to where the boulders topped out above my head, I felt so sick that I decided to quit. I was dead-tired, gasping for air, and felt like I had a water balloon in my chest. Resigned, I waited for Billy, and the ensuing ten minutes turned out to be a rejuvenating break. I started moving up again, and realized that I had only been ten feet from the top!

I cleared the ledge and, finally, laid my eyes on Chasm Lake, nestled in a basin beneath Longs Peak and guarded by icy glaciers. I weakly jumped from boulder to boulder towards the gray-green water, surveying the towering walls of rock that surrounded it.

I was at 11,760 feet (3584 m), the highest I’d ever hiked, feeling the worst I’d ever felt, and the trailhead four miles away, 2,300 feet below.
[To be concluded]