Miles 11.6
PCT Mile 146.4
The wind grabbed my tent and shook it in its teeth. I was a ragdoll. FLAPFLAPFLAPFLAP said my tent. The rain smacked it around and I Cowered a little bit.
It was barely midnight.
A long six more hours of that ensued and it was finally time to try to get out of the tents. We put together a whole plan. Anji packed up her tent, leaving the rain fly up. I passed my gear over to her, she laid it out where it was still dry, and we ate breakfast together over some delicious coffee.
Then we tackled The Taking-Down of My Tent. It had a full inch of standing water down by my foot area. We poured the water out of my tent and shook it really hard. While it was raining. To get the water out.
Anyway, everything was eventually packed up as dry as we could get it and we were off on another day of elevation gain. Anji climbs faster than me, but I love keeping up with her because it makes me warm. And being warm in the rain is so much nicer than being cold. Admittedly, it was a Slog for a while and we were a little bummed out about the cold and wet until BAM some sunlight came out just in time to pick up our spirits and the world was a good place again after all.
We saw other hikers throughout the day and said our goodbyes to them. They were going to wait until San Jacinto opened and were going to try to move forward north toward Canada, and we were not going to make it to the cafe tonight with them.
Well that sucks, Double Wide said. Guess I won’t see YOU guys again.
Nope, we said, and laughed.
We made it to Angel Mary’s Oasis, where there was a barrel of water for hikers to drink. We took just what we’d use for dinner and breakfast and had a nice 30 minute break in what turned out to be the only real sunlight of the day.
The skies turned sour on us once again as we moved on and nestled into the bushes for camp.
We tried to dry the tents in the wind. They flapped and flapped and just got rained on instead.
FLAPFLAPFLAPFLAPFLAP