Day 31

It was a rough night. The rain never stopped but instead turned to snow during the night. And with as wet as the air was, along with some of my wet stuff in my sleeping bag, I woke up in the middle of the night shivering. When down (the insulation in sleeping bags) gets wet it becomes totally useless. Thankfully it wasn’t too wet yet, just starting to get cold. I removed some clothes from inside the sleeping bag and just hoped it wouldn’t be frozen in the morning since I had to wear it.

The combination of freezing rain and snow made the trail pretty tough to manage today. It was very icy and slippery especially around Dragon’s Tooth and while walking over massive boulders which were just sheets of ice. My heart sank when I was trying to carefully cross one of these and my trekking pole slipped out of my hand and slid 50 feet down. I took a deep sigh, yelled some expletives, and navigated a roundabout way to get down to retrieve it.

Today was bittersweet. Thankfully it was not raining. But it was overcast and foggy all day and I was missing some really spectacular views. I passed Mcafee Knob today which is probably the second most iconic spot on the trail, but with the fog it wasn’t super enjoyable. I was kind of expecting this since I haven’t seen the sun since Tuesday. The best part about the fog was that I was coming up on this ledge with trees below it and as I approached 2 menacing looking birds took off and faded into the mist. It just felt like something out of a dark movie scene.

It wasn’t raining today but my clothes were wet from waking in the mist all day.

After driving past probably 5,000 gas stations in my life advertising Hunt Brother’s Pizza, I finally had some today. Not too bad although my tastebuds and appetite are altered. 5.8/10

Song of the day: Shadow of the day-Linkin park