Thursday, June 20th.

Thursday, June 20th. Day 2.

Today's miles = 10.2 Total CDT miles = 19.9

The storm continued for most of the night. Monkey ended up getting up at some point in the night to build trenches around his tent in attempt to stop the river flowing beneath his tent because when I got up in the morning we had a waterway system flowing through our camp. I had given up on stopping the rain and just made sure not to let my down sleeping bag stray off of my sleeping pad. There are a few spots where my sleeping bag got wet but I did do a rather impressive job at keeping it dry despite every corner of my tent being soaked through.

I could tell this morning that no one wanted to get up. There was a break in the rain for a little while around 6:45 this morning so Tim, Sky, Monkey, and I took the opportunity to get out of our tents. I wanted to get hiking early today because the storms here seem to begin shortly after dinner. I wanted to be at the next camp spot tonight and be all set up before the rain started again. It was a few moments after we all got out of our tents that it started to sprinkle again. At that point I couldn't care. I just stood there looking at all my gear getting rained on. Everything except for a few items of my most preciously warm clothing was soaked, and covered in mud and earthworms. I didn't want to pack my things, I didn't want to strap on my pack, and I didn't want to climb up and over a snowy pass. But of course, I did. At some point climbing up the pass the rain turned into snow and the wind became fierce. We were hiking over snow fields while being snowed on and beaten with wind. And then all signs of trail disappeared. We ended up bushwacking down a somewhat steep snow field through the thick pine trees looking for the trail. The maps gave us the direction to walk in and it wasn't more than 10 minutes until we came out of the brush right onto a snow free trail!

From that point on it was mostly downhill for the rest of the day and the sky cleared up a little. It was still raining a little but compared to yesterday and this morning it felt like nothing. The sun even dared to come out for about 15 minutes. There were a few swift rivers we had to ford and even a butt deep flood in the valley that we had no choice but to trudge through. But at that point I could see Poia Lake in the distance which I knew was my camp spot for tonight. I made it here before the heavy rain and got to set up camp relatively dry. Oh, what a difference that makes!

My cold came back full force due to the wet and cold conditions of last night. But I'm dry-ish in my tent surrounded by many down feathers. And tomorrow I get to eat Italian food at Many Glacier!! Two days of trail food and I've already had enough.

Tim and Sky hiked on and got a hotel room for the night at Many Glacier (I'm guessing. They left us a note on trail saying they were hiking on and theres no point of hiking on unless your going to get dry or eat somewhere). They will have to take a zero there tomorrow because their permit for the next camp is not until the following day. I have a feeling they didn't care; they just wanted to be dry after all the snow and water crossings today.

I should roll into Many Glacier tomorrow around noon hopefully. Many Glacier is a camp store and there is also an Italian restaurant and a motel there. Other than that there is nothing. Monkey and I are going to camp there, as per our permit.

Tonight I'm camped with Baboon. Just down the way are three kids who are just out here for a few days. I could smell them making camp popcorn earlier. Popcorn!! Maybe I can buy a bag at Many Glacier and hope they will let me use their microwave. :-)