Day 2 - Miserably Awesome Snowyness

June 20th

10.4 Miles 

Poia Lake

After the intense shitstorm of last night, I woke up relatively early to the sound of light  rain only to fall back asleep for another few hours until the rain mostly stopped. It was cold out and everything was damp which does not make for a good start to the morning. On top of that the wind was pretty fierce which made it even colder but did help in drying out some of my gear. After a hot breakfast we took off for the day to tackle Red Gap Pass.

The uphill started immediately and my lack of conditioning sure shone brightly huffing and puffing the cold air as I slowly made it uphill. The rain picked up again to a steady beat and as I rose in elevation the rain turned to an ice/sleet/snow mixture and then strait snow. The forcast predictions I got when I received my permit came true...near white out conditions as I headed up to the pass. Small snow fields became more prevalent and the wind was howling the snow around as I made it up to the top of the pass. The way down proved to be less windy thankfully. 

After switch backing down and crossing a few lengthy snow fields, Spins and I came to the tree line which was completely snow covered. I proceeded to follow the footsteps in front of me instead of consulting my maps and sure enough after headed strait down the snow I heard someone holler "the trails not down here!!" A group of three out for a couple days who were hiking ahead of us must have ran into the same fate and were now misplaced. Before heading down I checked out the maps and realized as long as I headed across and down the ridge I would be able to hit a stream the trail intersects which I could then find the trail from. So we hiked down to the other three and all agreed on heading that way and after 20 minutes of bushwhacking we found the trail. 

Soon after finding the trail something miraculous happened...the sun came out !!! Granted it was still drizzling but it was a sign of better weather which was exciting. After making it down the ridge we had a number of limb numbingly cold water crossings until we reached camp for the afternoon. The clouds are still in the mountains and the wind is blowing this direction, hopefully the rain stays up there. Tomorrows weather is supposed to be promising.