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I just got back. What a hellish trip.

So to go back in time, I had vomiting and diarrhea on Monday, but was better by Tuesday. Thursday morning I had a cough. But it didn't bug me during the day.

So I called my friend, who was organizing the trip, whether he thought I should go or not. Basically if he would mind having me despite my mild cough. He said "fine, come." [warning #1]

So Friday morning at 3am we pull out in the other guy's RV. We arrive Friday afternoon. We went to the campsite near the Rio Grande river. It was beautiful there.

I slept on my cot outside. Stars were gorgeous. I had a rough night because I developed a fever. I woke up at midnight sweating up a storm. One of the longest nights of my life. [warning #2]

When I woke up I no longer had a fever, and decided I would be okay to go on our 13 mile dayhike.

So we drove about an hour to the Chisos mountain basin, which is at about 5400 feet. Our previous camp was at about 1500 feet. Did I mention, that like Archaea's son, I am prone to altitude sickness? Much more so than anyone I know.

So the initial part of the hike was the steepest. We began a rise to about 7000 feet. I felt fine, but as we went along, I was tiring quickly. My heart rate was out of control. I would stop, catch my breath, try to get my heart rate down. But as I would continue to climb, it would shoot up straight to 160 (a guess).

I started to develop a bad headache, my nose was running like crazy. I decided that I needed to cut off on a shortcut, that I couldn't do the full 13 miles.

I offered to go by myself, but my two friends insisted that we go together. So we took a cutoff route, all near 7000 feet. We got to a trailhead, where you can climb the highest peak. My one friend decided to take it, while me and the other guy would rest a while, and then head downhill. At this point we ran into a park ranger, Jason, who was really nice. We chatted a while, and after about 30 minutes, we started down, with the ranger joining us. At this point, I was feeling like pure hell. My head was hurting and my body was in shutdown mode. It took a lot of effort to just speak. Eventually the friend who had tried the summit trail joined us. He only made it 2/3 of the way up. We finally made it down. Even in the basin at 5400 feet, my head still hurt.

We drove out, and headed away from the mountains. We stopped at a crappy mexican restaurant a couple hours away, where I was served cold cheese enchiladas. I put most of it down (only my second meal on the trip).
In the restaurant, the fever hit me again. I got back in the RV and started putting on clothes including thermal underwear, because I was getting the chills. Downed some tylenol. At this point we decided to drive straight back. I slept, and woke up at 11pm sweating like crazy and very hot. Every time I would cough, my whole chest would burn. Tried my best not to cough.

Finally made it home at 4am. Took a shower for the first time since before the trip.

Lessons learned:
1) if you are sick, don't go on a trip like this
2) I can't do any sort of altitude without acclimatization.
3) if you had a fever the previous night, don't try to do a 13 mile mountainous hike.

Total mileage on the hike was about 10 miles.

I'll post pictures later.