I like to hike.\u00a0 I hike whenever I can.\u00a0 I prefer the trails and paths and wilderness, but I’ll hike on the roads and streets when I have no other option.\u00a0 There is not much real wilderness around where I live anymore, but there are a lot of places that are remote enough that they seem wild.\u00a0 Good enough for me.<\/p>\n
I was out hiking today on the Coast to Crest Trail with my wife and our dog.\u00a0 I’ll call him Rex, but that is not his real name (he’s asked me not to use his real name). \u00a0Rex is a great hiker, and at 9 years old he is still anxious to get out on the trail and can out-hike most.<\/p>\n
We got about a mile up a pretty steep trail and Rex started favoring his left hind leg.\u00a0 We’re not sure what happened, and he wouldn’t tell us. \u00a0We suspect he was bitten by a red ant since\u00a0we\u00a0couldn’t find a thorn or a cut or any other obvious issue – but we did notice a bunch of\u00a0red ants\u00a0on the trail.\u00a0 Whatever it was, we decided to turn back and call off the hike while Rex was still in good enough shape to hike himself out of there.\u00a0 Rex weighs about 45 pounds, and if he couldn’t make it under his own power I’d have to carry him.\u00a0 I could probably handle it – but it would be very slow going.\u00a0 Also, the whining and complaining is something neither my wife nor Rex would care to put up with.<\/p>\n
As we headed back down the trail, I was thinking of other hiking I have done, and the risks and possible trouble you can get into out on a hike,\u00a0 which eventually reminded me of\u00a0a saying they have at the Grand Canyon:<\/p>\n
I’ve hiked in the Grand Canyon to the Colorado River and back out four times, including a “rim to rim” from the North Rim down to the Phantom Ranch and the River then up to the South Rim.\u00a0\u00a0It is a lot of fun, and even though there are a lot of hikers out on those trails, it’s not hard to get a sense of wildenerss in that spectacular setting.\u00a0 Some trails are lightly traveled and you can get very remote and lonely if you like.<\/p>\n
These Grand Canyon hikes are\u00a0“backwards” compared to most I’ve done – typically, we start at the bottom of some mountain and hike up – and once all the hard uphill work is done, we can come back in a relatively easier downhill mode.\u00a0 At the Grand Canyon, we start at the top and hike down and take pride in our tremendous pace. \u00a0When it is time to return, it is all uphill and we start to remember how “pride cometh before a long trudge up”.\u00a0\u00a0That is the way they built the place.<\/p>\n
From the top of the Bright Angel Trail\u00a0on the South Rim you can see many of the fabled\u00a0milestones and exotic destinations\u00a0such as the Mile-and-a-half Rest House, the Three Mile Rest House, Indian Gardens, Plateau Point, and the Colorado River itself – you can even see the Phantom Ranch from some viewing areas.<\/p>\n
All these interesting and enticing places\u00a0don’t look all that far away. They seem very close, and they are if you are a crow.\u00a0\u00a0But this is deceptive – the distance\u00a0for the non-crow hiker is greatly extended due to the long grades and\u00a0switchbacks necessary to make the trail possible to hike.\u00a0 Things that look close are many trail miles away.<\/p>\n
I’ve seen a lot of casual hikers sprightly scamper down the first two or three miles (or more)\u00a0thinking it’s an easy hike, only to find it takes a great deal more time and effort to hike back out again once they turn around and head back to the rim.\u00a0 Especailly if you are wearing flip-flops or other inappropriate footwear.\u00a0 And worse things can happen.\u00a0 On one trip I met a man near the river (met is a bit of a lie.\u00a0 He was lying on his back in the middle of the trail almost unconscious.\u00a0 It was more like “stumbled upon” than “met”).\u00a0 He was suffering from euvolemic hyponatremia (look it up).\u00a0 At least that is what I think he was suffering from.\u00a0 Anyway – he was suffering.\u00a0 He should not have been down there.\u00a0\u00a0We helped him with some electrolytes and salty snacks and then helped\u00a0him slowly\u00a0make the couple of remaining miles to the Phantom Ranch.\u00a0He recovered, but had a hard several days.\u00a0 As a side note he was hiking with his ex-wife.\u00a0 Now THAT is interesting.<\/p>\n
Another trick of the Canyon is that as you hike down, the temperature increases.\u00a0 At the rim where it might be 65 degrees on the very same day it can be 100+ degrees at the river.\u00a0 (On one day I was there it was 120f at the river and 70f at the rim.\u00a0 Dang!\u00a0).\u00a0\u00a0 What starts out as a pleasant,\u00a0cool, and easy down-hill\u00a0hike turns into a stressful, hot,\u00a0dry, and very lengthy\u00a0up-hill trudge.\u00a0 Once you have used up your water, water starts to seem more important to you.\u00a0 And don’t forget the electrolytes (remember the euvolemic hyponatremia?)<\/p>\n
There are\u00a0about 400 rescues per year in the Canyon (not all are hikers, but a lot are), and they only do rescues for the really critical cases such as heat stroke, serious injuries, and other medical emergencies – a lot of hikers get rescued by other hikers who share their water, food, gear, time ,\u00a0and electrolytes.<\/p>\n
The “backwards” nature of the hike (Down then Up, Cool then Hot, Seemingly Short,\u00a0Actually Long, Easy then Hard)\u00a0lulls hikers into going too far down the trail.\u00a0 It\u00a0all seems so easy and fun\u00a0at first.\u00a0 By the time you discover how HARD hiking back out is, you’ve already\u00a0used up all your food, water,\u00a0energy, happiness, and other resources.\u00a0 You’ve spent everything and now comes the real work – hiking up and out of the Canyon in the heat.\u00a0 And oddly, the distances are even longer hiking up than hiking down.\u00a0 Funny how that works.<\/p>\n
The reason to hike in the Grand Canyon (or anywhere) is slightly different for each hiker: Recreation, fitness, adventure, or whatever – [Note:\u00a0in the world I live in we rarely hike\u00a0out of necessity anymore.]\u00a0 In the Canyon, a lot of people also have a goal to get to one or more of the milestones or well known points of interest, or all the way to the river.\u00a0 But the real goal for every hiker has to be to get out alive and in reasonably good condition (aches and pains are acceptable, I suppose, but dehydration, heat exhaustion, heat stroke, and\u00a0alarming leg swelling\u00a0aren’t so nice) .\u00a0 Getting out is Mandatory\u00a0– All other goals are optional.\u00a0 They have warning signs all over the place at the Canyon about the risk of misjuding your skill, ability, and the difficulty of the environment.\u00a0 Still, many hikers end up in trouble.<\/p>\n
You probably hoped I would forget to\u00a0drag Software Development into this post, but…sorry.\u00a0 Here goes.<\/p>\n
I’ve seen this same basic scenario in\u00a0Software Development.\u00a0 The goal, the abilities\u00a0of the organization, the apparent short distance to enticing and desirable “points of interest”, and\u00a0the risks are all often misunderstood.\u00a0 All the available\u00a0money, time, and effort have often been expended by the time the real work of coding\/testing\/deploying begins and we realize how difficult everything is and how far we’ve gone down a winding, narrow trail we can no longer get back up.\u00a0 And even worse,\u00a0we have nothing useful to show for it except documents, diagrams, designs, and some code that can’t climb out of the test-and-fix cycle.\u00a0 Whew.\u00a0 Glad that is over.\u00a0 Now – your assignment – go back over this post and equate all that stuff about hiking to some software development effort you have worked on.<\/p>\n
I’ve seen and heard about a LOT of backwards, risky, hot, long, painful, death march trudges – Lucky for me I have worked on only a few of them.\u00a0 Just remember – there is a way to work that isn’t backwards.\u00a0 Let’s do that instead.<\/p>\n
This turned into a long post. I think the corollaries are obvious.\u00a0 Maybe they aren’t.\u00a0 Maybe I am just full of it.<\/p>\n
So, have a good night.\u00a0 Tomorrow go do something fun – and stop wasting your time reading stuff on the Internet.\u00a0 Go out hiking instead.\u00a0 And by the way – hiking the Grand Canyon is FANTASTIC.\u00a0 I recommend it to anyone still healthy enough to get out and hike – thousands of people hike the Canyon each year without problem.\u00a0 Bring some electrolytes or at least some salty peanuts and cheese crackers or something.<\/p>\n
Cheers!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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