Day 77

Day 77 (CDT day 2): 25 miles

I got to the first water cache early in the morning but after that the trail rough. There were infrequent wooden posts to mark it but they were mostly blown over. Even with them it would’ve been difficult to follow, so I bushwhacked across the desert for a 10 mile stretch which was slow moving.

I think I drank too much water. My stomach felt weird all day and I didn’t want to eat anything.

The winds picked up in the afternoon and the clouds began to form around 6pm with the winds increasing. I thought it was a bad sign so I got my rain coat out and pack cover on. It ended up not raining by 8:30 when I set up camp for the night. I got everything settled in for the night and laid down for about 5 minutes before it started raining. I laid in denial for a couple minutes then it poured.

*I cannot currently setup my tent because it requires trekking poles and mine have not arrived yet because Amazon is taking 4 days to deliver them for some reason. I didn’t think this would be a big deal because there was a 0% chance of rain all week so sleeping out in the open would be fine*

I packed up all my stuff and got moving again even though I was pretty tired. After about an hour it stopped but there were still about 40mph winds. I found a shield from the wind around some short bushes in a wash and laid down there. After getting everything setup again, it started raining.

I decided that although I’d get wet here it would be better than going out in the 40 mph winds and being much colder. Also, it’s a storm in the desert. It shouldn’t last long right?🙃

To help protect myself I put a garbage bag around the foot of my sleeping bag and I laid my tent over top of the rest of my sleeping bag to protect it a little from the rain. The rain didn’t stop until nearly 4am so everything was soaked through. My jacket and sleeping bag were both down insulated so they lost their insulating power. I just stayed in my wet sleeping bag under my soaked tent and tried to stay warm all night. It was around 35 degrees too. I got about 45 minutes of sleep total and would repeatedly wake up to water hitting my face.