I can't feel my face! Or why Aaron Groth should be your babysitter.

Here's an article that I wrote with my buddy Aaron for our volunteer newsletter, Pasa la Voz.


3,700 meters is ridiculously high and frankly, just existing up there will really set you back, much less hiking around and climbing rocks. But, we’re hardcore. We hike, we camp, and we do so while living better through chemistry. So, when a troupe of Peru 8ers (those of us who arrived together in Sept. 2006) decided to do up Peruvian independence day 2007 at the Way Inn Lodge above Huaraz and the truly hardcore decided to don crampons and hammer their ice picks into the top of Ishinca, we called up the Peace Corps docs, Jorge and Suni to usurp the soroche (altitude sickness) with those magical altitude pills everyone talks about. After all, Ishinca is at 5,550 m, definitely up in a space where the air is thin enough that us costal folk are sloshed on one Cuzqueña beer and even the mountain dwellers among us are breathing extra hard.

The Peru 8 contingent has since learned that the magic pills, packaged by the Peace Corps office in the ubiquitous brown paper bag with Your Name in magic marker, in fact have a proper name, acetomephaline. We’re hardcore. We’re not fine print people. What directions? We get a pill, we take it and we call it a day. Sitting around the Way Inn at dinner no one noticed Aaron watching the storm clouds cover the glaciers of the Cordillera Blanca while carefully cutting his pill in two with his pocket knife. We just assumed he was sitting over there sipping scotch and spacing out. We chowed down on an approximation of gringo granola natural foods store fare, hung out on the front porch telling lies, and then with a budding headache bid all good night and turned in.

Most of us slept down in a charming room often referred to as “the cave” that night. The two gringo friends of Melissa whimpered from their down comforters, “Can anyone hear me? I can’t feel my legs.” “Anybody? I cannot feel the area between my shins and thighs.” Meanwhile I was just hoping that they would shut up because my ears were ringing so loudly that I thought my alarm clock was going off. Every word just made the ringing louder and the pain behind my eyeballs more excruciating. Not being able to feel my legs or hands was the least of my problems.

Meanwhile, in a tent outside snug in his zero degree sleeping bag, Aaron prepared for hibernation. Kevin and Brian soon followed and commented on their general state of wellbeing.

Brian: I cannot feel my face. No really, my face, I can’t feel it.
Kevin: S#@! I can’t feel my face either!
Brian: I can’t take it any more.

Aaron’s not sure what Brian did when he couldn’t take it anymore, because he fell right to sleep. Aaron awoke at 5:30 a.m. and saw freshly fallen snow blanketing the Cordillera Negra and tumbled into breakfast ranting about the beauty of nature, blah, blah, blah.

Breakfast was coffee and the dull roar of complaints as we commiserated over the questionable presence of various seemingly essential body parts. Promises to never again take the altitude pills followed shortly. At this point Aaron asked, “How much of that stuff were you guys taking?” We all retorted, “Just one freaking pill!” Aaron suggested label reading and kindly offered to lend us his pocket knife to cut those pesky 500 mg pills in half.