Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Day 1 - Umbrellas are awesome

June 19th
10ish Miles
Elizabeth Lake Campground
 
Well today I started the CDT. I am currently sitting in my tent at quarter to 7pm with a river of water flowing underneath my tent and lightning shooting off everywhere around me. Sounds fun right?? 

This morning started off well with Spins myself and two other thruhikers Sky and Tim from Maine getting a ride up to the border from a wonderful woman named Beth who has lived up here for the past 20+ years. She drove us up to St. Mary's visitor center so we could pick up our permits and then onto the border where it was cloudy and fixin to rain. After a couple miles of hiking, the rain started and Spins and myself figured out a way to rig out umbrellas to our packs and we stayed dry the whole rest of the day....until we hit camp. During hiking though the umbrella situation is AWESOME!!!! I stay dry and warm and its oh so wonderful, if only I thought of that system for the AT.

It was raining when we got here to Elizabeth Lake so set-up was a bit messy and Sky and Tim already set up their tents at the site leaving us with two less then ideal sites for our tents but first come first serve. The lake would be quite beautiful on a clear day bur even in the clouds you can see te huge mountain and rock face to the right of the lake, caging in the water. I also past by (something) falls and it was raging from all the rainwater from the past two days.

 We both made dinner at thedesignated  cooking/food storage area and came back to our tents in puddles and it began to really come down something serious so we're now bunkered down wrapped in dry warm clothes while sitting in puddles. When the storm breaks (soon it's already slowing down) I can get out and reevaluate the situation and unpack everything else and hopefully get a good night sleep. Tomorrows forecast: rain, thunder, lightning, strong wind, hail and potentially snow over 6000' (aka the gap we have to go over). But luckily the weather is supposed to break the next day and I'll be able to dry everything out...hopefully. 

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