The plan today was to have all of us hike from the beginning of the closure end at Onyx Summit to hwy 18. Lisa, Rusty and Sean would head back to the cabin because her family was coming into town and Kristen and I would hike on. We left the house around 8am and dropped Matt's car off at hwy 18 and the six of us squished into Sean's truck to Onyx Summit. We started the hike a little chilly but sun spots were coming in and out. Within a few miles, we got hailed on (tiny ones). The next thing we know, it starts dumping snow for the rest of the 15 miles.
We stopped for a quick lunch break and it was just too cold to stand there. My feet were turning pretty numb and frost bitten. All of us were pretty wet already, but thankfully I had my poncho. My feet were probably the most painful. I could feel water starting to puddle inside of my shoes and my toes were just frozen. They started to hurt really bad and I just booked it as fast I could. I started to feel like we were all getting trench foot. The snow flakes were SO huge and every time we hit a ridge, it got pretty windy. I barely ate and drank the whole time, so bad.
The only pic of the snowfall taken by Kristen. This doesn't do any justice on how frozen I was.
When we finally made it back to Matt's car, I turned and looked at Kristen and I'm pretty sure we were thinking the same thing. I would've tried to tough it out trying to camp somewhere but I was SOAKED! I have no clue how I would've warmed up, especially my feet. And our shoes would've frozen overnight as well. It's just interesting because I've been in worse conditions. It's just that I don't have the right gear because we're all going ultralight and everything is super minimal. We decided we could try to hitch into town and just get a room because we didn't want to intrude back at the cabin since Lisa's family was coming in. We walked across the street to hitch while the others packed into the car. Then the others called us over and said we could probably fit into the car and come to the cabin again. So once again, we all squished inside a Honda Accord and grabbed Sean's truck and headed home.
When we got back, we were all frozen and soaked. My feet felt SO weird and soggy. My heels were completely numb and I couldn't walk still. We were also all starving since I barely ate anything for lunch, just a few snacks so we all ate random things from our food bags. We took off our wet clothes and socks and tried to dry them by the heater/fireplace. The rest of the afternoon we zombied out figuring out what to order for dinner. We agreed on getting Thai and had them deliver. When the food arrived, we all ate in silence overstuffing our bellies. We played a fun card game for the rest of the night. After that, we helped clean up the cabin since we probably wouldn't be back after tomorrow.
I was just thinking how grateful I am to have a warm shelter tonight. We would've been stuck in a cold tent with possible hypothermia. I guess for future reference, if you sense the weather getting colder and worse, you should just set up camp and wait it out because if you get soaked, you won't be able to get dry since there was no break in the snow today. We've really been blessed these last few days at Sean's family cabin. Seriously, we don't deserve to stay here! But he has been so hospitable to us and it's been really fun hanging out with everyone and feeling like we are a trail family.
Our cute little trail family. Me, Kristen, Rusty, Lisa and Sean/GB.
Everyone is in the living room writing a blog and I am doing the same in the other room. We're all ready to camp again. It's weird to sleep on a bed for three consecutive days.