15.1 Miles
Two Medicine Campground
The Atlantic Creek campground was full of hikers, a couple out for a few days, Panama Beth and the dogs, and Steve who has done the CDT before who lives about 40 minutes from where I grew up. It was quite reassuring to have so many people there after the bear thing, safety in numbers. It rained almost all night but I stayed dry and slept like a baby. We anticipated leaving early but with the rain we ended up leaving around 7:30ish because the rain stopped at 7ish letting us pack up dry.
The start of the day was blustery with intermittent showers and I had a nice likely graded ridge walk for the first few miles. I went in and out of grassy meadows and up to morning star lake where others were camping. The rain started to pick up and so did the uphill. Some really small patchy snow fields appeared after a while which were easy to cross. Then snow took over everywhere in the trees as the wind began to howl faster and louder. Navigating on the snowfield was alright because we used the maps and also followed footprints.
Up at Pitamakan Lake at the base of Pitamakin Pass we saw snow chunks blowing around freely in the lake from the increasing winds. The wind made conditions really cold. The rain had stopped at this point as we made our way up the snow out of the trees towards the pass. After breaking free from the snow into dry trail is when it started to get really difficult. The wind really picked up and gusts were hitting us so strong that it literally pushed us back and over and close to the edge of some of the ridges. It got to such a strong point that Spins and I had to hold onto each other and walk with our feet wide to stabilize ourselves while climbing the switchbacks. The wind made it bitterly cold and I was getting frustrated. After walking through this strong craptastic wind I was really angry so much so that when we went to take a break a threw my ice axe ahead and slammed my pack off me. I hardly ever lose my cool especially when hiking; I'm more prone to laughing off miserableness but after all the stuff this week I hit my breaking point. I cooled off quick (thanks to the wind) and we hunkered down behind a boulder looking at the next ridiculous challenge uphill ahead, a seemingly steep snow field up towards the top of the pass. We both thought, how the hell are we going to walk across slippery snow with winds like these when we can't even keep our footing on land? We decided to figure it out when we got up there and thankfully when approaching the snow field we realized it wasn't very steep and footsteps were already made in it. Additionally the ice axe added extra stability when walking across so it looked worse than it was.
Coming over the pass and heading down the ridge we ran into a few smaller snowfields and some steep bushwhacking down to the trail. I accidentally glissaded (sliding down snowfields on your feet or butt, in this instance my butt) down a small snow field and almost slid past the trail onto the edge of the hill which was momentarily frightening but funny as well. The snow broke as we lost elevation and we hustled down to Two Medicine Campground which is similar to Many Glacier in that is has a campstore with tasty microwaveable food and beer. We got in at 5 and it started to rain right as we were setting up. We get no breaks on this trail and it is really testing my patience haha. But after setting up we walked over to the campstore in the rain and I ate superhuman amounts of food until I could fit in no more (except another 14oz of huckleberry ice cream). We went to sleep with the wind howling still and intermittent rain yet again. The campsite was really rocky so instead of staking my tent in I had to weight the side down with big rocks, I hope it holds for the night.
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