Partly reunited

Day 29

Date: 30.05.2022

CDT Mile: 815 Mile

Miles hiked: 8.8 miles / 14 km

Camping at: 11'507 feet / 3'507 m

After the crazy snowstorm and lightening of last night, Patches and me woke up by wind and sunshine. The snow was mostly gone already, carried away by the wind, some of it into the tent. I am strongly considering about swapping out my tent to a big agnes tiger wall UL2, however this tent is more than twice as heavy as my duplex. But I think I would feel much safer and warmer in a double wall tent.

I got up, drying out my damp sleeping back (which was covered this morning with ice and snow!), just holding it up into the sun. There is no dry spot on the ground. Also I took out my shoes, insoles and socks to dry them out. I cleaned all the snow from my tent and the ice from condensation inside the tent and got more water. We decided to wait for our group (PlusOne, Dogbite, the K2's and Longstride), even if that takes all day. If they don't show up by tonight, we will hike out the next morning. By ten am we got up, hiked to the trail (our tent was a little off trail, at the other side of the lake) to leave a big message next to the trail made out of woodsticks saying 'Freeze waiting' and then big arrows leading the way to our tentside. Half an hour later our friends turned up! What a big relief! We didn't expect them that early. Glad we made the signs jus in time! We were so worried if they found a suitable camp spot save from wind and snow and how far back they camped. But only the K2's and Longstride turned up. Where is PlusOne and Dogbite? PlusOne wasn't feeling well since hitting higher altitude. We all can feel the high altitude a little and I didn't worry too much. But apparently it became much worse after yesterday, PlusOne is worried it might be even Covid, and so Dogbite and PlusOne decided to bail out at one of the trail heads, leading to a road in about 14+ miles. We hope they made it safe to the road and have reached, or are about to reach, a town in a day.

So we packed up and left around 11am. The goal is 8.7 miles from here, which seems like a cup of tea. But it wasn't. The trail was nonexistent for about 80% of the time. The snow, the heavy and freezing wind again!, all the blowdowns (trees) and finding the trail makes it much harder to hike. At the end of the day my watch told me we hiked more than 2 miles more than the trail was supposed to be and probably many more high meters as well by climbing over all the snow and blowdowns. That's an add on of 25%! The weather was very cloudy, cold and super strong windy. Hiking uphills in wind sucks! We crossed soo many snowfields, like the whole trail was nearly one snowfield. And looking back we should have put on our microscopes too. But the views very stunning all day and made up for the shitty weather. We reached our campsite around 6.30 pm, all totally done of this day and cold to our bones. Quick dinner and into our tent and sleepingbags to warm up. Tomorrow the weather is supposed to become better, finger's crossed!