Last night was one of the craziest nights I’ve ever had camping. Wind, snow, thunder and lightning, it had it all. I don’t know if I slept at all until the morning when it calmed down and the sun came out.
Throughout the night I had to bang on the walls of my tent to keep the snow off. When the wind would blow, frozen condensation in my tent would fall on me.
The day before, the trail was easy to follow. Any section of snow had a set of dirty footprints and the rest was pretty well marked. Today that was all buried under a few inches of fresh snow.
The snow wasn’t too bad. Yes it made my feet wet, but I can manage that. The wind was the real issue. Hiking in the wind is incredibly draining. It makes things colder and harder. I was literally blown off the trail a few times today.
At one point we were all hiking in almost all of our layers. The wind was that cold and relentless. When we made it to a lake only 11 miles from where we started, we decided to call it a day. This was a bit of a tough decision for me, but as soon as I set up my tent and laid down, I fell right asleep for an hour. It was the right choice.
The wind and temperatures here are so extreme that just a few hundred feet of elevation can make a big difference. To go any further required committing to a pretty major climb and then getting back down. The wind is supposed to be better tomorrow so hopefully we can make some more progress.
We’re “only” 40 miles from town so it should still be doable in the two more days we were planning on.