Three days, two passes, one bottle.

Carla Hwang packs like someone who's run out of food at altitude before. Every gram is argued for. So when she planned three days across two passes in Anza-Borrego, the supplements were the first things on the chopping block.

She kept the omega-3 — one softgel a day, easy math. The magnesium she cut in half. "I figured I'd take it when I remembered," she told us. "Save the weight." Fourteen capsules for what should've been eighteen.

Day one felt fine. Day one always does.

The first climb went clean. Good sleep at camp, legs felt springy on the second morning. This is the trap — the body coasts on what you packed in before the trip. The deficit shows up late, and it shows up all at once.

By the afternoon of day two, climbing the second pass, her calves started locking. Not the sharp twang of a single cramp — the slow, full-belly seize that doesn't let go. She stopped, stretched, drank, waited. Took a magnesium. Took another an hour later, off-schedule, rationing logic out the window.

"I rationed the magnesium. Bad call."

Here's the part worth printing: magnesium isn't a painkiller you take when it hurts. It's a level you maintain. Cramping at hour 30 is a deficit you created on day one — by the time you feel it, you're catching up, not fixing it. The capsule she took on the pass didn't rescue the climb. It started rebuilding a level she'd let slide for two days.

What she'd carry next time

Not more. The same eighteen capsules she started with — but taken on schedule, two a night, no heroics. The weight she "saved" by rationing was four capsules. The cost was a pass she had to walk.

The omega-3, for what it's worth, she didn't touch the ration on. "One a day, no thinking. That's the one I never skip." We'll take the endorsement — but the lesson stands for both: the supplement that works is the one you actually take, on schedule, before you feel the gap.