Hiking in The Rain

April 11th, 2012
Day 11
Today's Miles: 14.7

We woke up to rain this morning after listening to it off and on all night. We packed as best we could to keep our gear dry and set out to try and make it to trail angel Mike's place for the evening (we heard he had a bunk house).

It rained pretty much all morning as we climbed up from Agua Caliente creek.

As we neared the end of our climb, the rain broke for a bit allowing us to get some dramatic views of the valley below.

Part of a rainbow.

It was wet, but the rain was warm as it stayed at about 46 degrees, until the break came when the temp fell to about 35 degrees. The wind came up in the afternoon and it even hailed for a brief period. But we finally made it to Mike's place and found 3 other hikers.

Mike wasn't around so two of the hikers (Hawk, and Fred) were camped above the driveway in the wind and rain. They told us another hiker had gone down to seek shelter on the porch so Twist and I went down to check things out around the house. On our way down we read on the water tower that the shelter 50yds down the driveway was ok to use. So, we set off for shelter. Shortly after laying our packs in the hiker bunk house, Alex (who we now know as The Orange Ranger) came up from the house to say hello when he heard our voices.

After deciding we would stay in the hiker bunk for the night, I went back up to tell Hawk and Fred everyone was staying down at Mike's if they wanted to join us and get out of the weather; they came down. Oddball and Copernicus soon showed up and we had a total of 7 hikers there for the night.

Left to right: Copernicus, Oddball, Me, Fred, Alex (Orange Ranger), and Twist in front. Hawk was behind the camera.

Twist and I slept in the shelter pictured above, Orange Ranger slept on the porch of Mike's house (he had a very cold night) and everyone else slept in the R.V.

It's a little drafty in the shelter and the temps are dropping but we're happy to be out of the weather for now. With a bigger storm supposed to be coming in on Friday we'll have to decide if we want to try to make it all the way to Highway 74 or wait it out here until the storm passes. But that's a decision for the morning.

-Seth

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