Day 19 4.12.2018

Well…. it happened. The tent blew over last night. I wish I had a photo of it but it was hard enough packing up with one side collapsed. I felt kinda silly trying to stake it back up in the middle of the night a few times. But when the sun came up and I saw how miserable Laura was, I learned it wasn’t just mine that blew over. Hers too. It happens. I actually slept threw mine falling over each time. My trekking pole that keeps it up is pretty darn light so I didn’t feel a thing as my head was covered by my sleeping bag. The only thing that made me wake up was the noise of the tent ruffling in the wind and the draft that was now coming through. It was so windy you heard the trees make noise before the wind scurried down by us. I wish I could tell you what the mph were up there but I didn’t have service at the time to look it up.

The wind carried on throughout the day. It was so cold Laura and I hiked in our rainpants all day. It’s the only longer layer we both carry other than our sleep clothes. At times it felt like we’d be blown off the side of the hill. We saw some gnarly looking clouds early on in the day that graciously burned off as the sun burned them off. We were so thankful for that.

We were pretty much the last ones to leave camp today, even with our hike beginning around 715. With the temperatures being much colder today the water situation worked perfectly. We all had about 3 liters on us to last the 16 miles that we covered today. We arrived at the Arraste Camp site just after 4. We quickly went down to the water access, filtered and set up our tents. Justin was savvy enough to get a fire started for us. So we were warm through dinner and conversation after. 2 other hikers joined in on the fire and shortly after we all bugged out to our tents.

Tomorrow it’s 10 miles all downhill into Big Bear. We will stay the night there and get a few chores done. Until then, goodnight.