Mr G,

A warning! Listen to these folks, but beware, altitude sickness can hit you after you come out of the mountains.

This is what happened to me in 2003, after my mule deer hunt near Craig, Co. My buddy and I was hunting on a private ranch, about 6500 ft., I believe. We got there 2 days early and drove up to 10,000 ft. in the Rout Nat'l forest to look around for a future hunt (I talked to a forest Ranger and he told me we was at 10,000 ft. Kind of funny now, but he asked, "Your not from around here are you", I was thinking he figured that out because of the way I talk. I asked how do you know, he said your out of breath and didn't walk 50 yards to me. I didn't realize I was breathing so hard.

Now, the Rest of the story. I got my deer two days before my buddy and I could drive my atv (private ranch) to the deer. On the last day, my buddy got his deer, the catch, it ran about 50 yards and fell down in a ravine, about 50 ft down, and I mean straight down. It took us quiet a while to get that deer out of there. My buddy is or was 63 at the time and I was 54, he had just that year got over a broken back, so we was whipped when we got to the motel that day. We was to leave the next day. My buddy went to sleep and got about 6 hrs sleep, I couldn't go to sleep to save my life, tried several times, just to wired.

Our first mistake, he woke up around 9 pm that night and wanted to leave, and I agreed, should have waited til the next morning, at some point I'm sure I would have gone to sleep. He drove to I70 below Meeker, and said he was to sleepy to drive more.

Second Mistake. I started driving from there, drove all the way to the East side of St. Louis, Mo. Don't remember how many miles that was, but take my word, it's a long way. Then he started to drive again, and he made it about 100 miles, then wanted me to drive. (I forgot to add, I stoped several times in road side parks and tried to sleep and couldn't do it.) Anyway, I took over again. Some where in either Kentucky or Tenn., I got to the point I couldn't tell if I was going up or down a hill, it looked like I was driving in a funnel, and I thought I was going about 75 mph. I knew that Tractor trailer trucks, etc. was passing us, when I looked at the speedometer, I was only doing about 25 mph. I got the truck off the road and woke my buddy up, he had to drive us till I could get some sleep. All the time he was driving, I swear I thought he was going about 80 mph and kept telling him to slow down. I couldn't tell up from down and as I said earlier, it looked like we was in a funnel.

Still in Tenn., not far north of Atlanta, there was a wreck on the Interstate and we had to stop for about 2 hrs. I finally went to sleep during this time. When I woke up and they let the traffic go, I was fine.

When I got home, I got me a doctor appointment to see what was wrong or had happened to me. He said it was a combination of things, fatique, no sleep, and most of all, lack of oxygen or altitude sickness. He also said, that had this happened to me in the mountains I could have died.

So my friend, heed these warnings from these folks, and don't be dumb like I was. I might add, this was an 1800 mile trip for us, one way.

dog1