Death? Sorta accomplished

Successful return from Bear Creek Spire! Did we climb it? Hell no - let's review the ironic death my friends have dubbed upon my soul:

Obi will die a horrible death on the APPROACH to a climb due to altitude

I didn't die, but I nearly made my ironic death come true - I got altutide sickness, and fairly bad by day 3. I'll break it down for you:

Fri night, arrived in Bishop and stayed at friend's house.
Sat morning, leisurely got up and drove to Mosquito Flats Trailhead and hiked into Dade Lake. Was feeling tired, headachy, and a little dizzy. Set up camp, ate some pasta, cheese, etc. and went to bed.
Sat night woke up with ringing headache.
Sun morning, alarm goes off at 5 am, I tell the party (there's 3 of us) that I don't think I can climb today with how weak and headachy I feel. We all decide to sleep in and play it by ear. A couple of hours later, some breakfast and some cheezits (thanks for the advice on that one Adam - saved me!), felt better so we all decided to take some gear and the ropes with us and try the approach to the base. If we still felt good, we'd do at least part of the climb that day. By noon, we reached the base and we were scoping out the 3rd/4th class approach to the bottom of the 1st pitch, etc etc. After looking around for a while, I felt the headache coming back, and fast - so I told the party and we started making our descent back to Dade Lake. But not before we hid our gear in case we felt good enough to come back tomorrow. The rest of the afternoon was spent with me cowering in the shade from the sun (too much UV too, despite a double application of sun screen), and just slumping over my backpack. That night, the headache was the worst I've ever had in my life - despite going to bed at 5 pm, I was tossing and turning from the pain till 1 am when I got up, took some ibuprofen and went to sleep - figured I needed rest somehow. At 4 am I sat up again and threw up (mind you, I haven't thrown up in 15 years... at least I have a good story to explain why I broke my streak). By 5 am I told the party my condition and we agreed we should descent when it got light.

So that was my weekend. I still had a blast :) It's an awesome view and a great place to be. Plus I enjoyed the experience of backpackign in - still only my 4th trip so far ever. And sort of havint the experience of altitude sickness to that level was sooo cool (yes, I'm weird that way). It was kinda cool taking notes as to how I felt physically and cognitively as the days worn on.

So did I die? Sorta - there were parts of my psyche that I left behind. In a sense, I was reincarnated. Also, I let myself believe that I was dying during the few hours after I threw up to really give myself a chance to realize if I regretted anything in this life or anything that I felt was unfinished business. Awesome opportunit for it too since I knew it wasn't a very significant probability.

As a side note, I find it funny that my friends believe that I have a death wish or that I harbor suicidal ideations. Not at all - I'm more interested in using the thought of death to give me the light to live my life fuller each day without regrets, fears or sadness :). To quote Tyler Durden: "we had a near-life experience!"