Hubris

September 22nd.

In the morning, the weather was no better.  It was misting and windy. I was basically walking in a cloud.  I would guess the winds gusted to 30 mph.

I later came down out of the clouds.  The trail went down to the Piedra River.  I managed to follow the horse-men’s trail, not the hiker’s.  It started raining consistently for an hour as I reconnected to the hiking trail via the Turkey Creek trail.

As I reached the top of the valley, I came across a beautiful little spring-fed lake.  The crystal clear water was gorgeous.

 

I  climbed up one side canyon and stopped to get my last water before I went above tree line.  I heard thunder and saw a clump of clouds.  To me, it seemed like a passing cloud.  I wanted to make miles.  I wanted to camp high. I had been through bad weather all day, what was a little thunder cloud to me?  I decided to go up.

Just as I was in the transition zone between trees and no trees, there is a stretch where there are clumps of short spruce.  they are spaced kind of far apart.  Kind of small pioneer forest outposts above treeline.  As it became clear the thundercloud was coming straight t for me, I looked for a clump where I could duck or crawl in for some temporary protection from the rain plus I would no longer be the tallest thing around.  So, I pushed aside some branches, popped open my umbrella, and pulled my knees up to my chin while the cloud passed.

It did not pass.  It stayed.  Or it was a lot longer than I suspected.  Regardless, after 45 minutes of huddling underneath my umbrella and getting colder and wetter, I knew I needed to do something.  This had all the makings of hypothermia.

I broke some branches and found an awkward configuration for my tent. I tried setting it up, but two forces were working against me.  The first was the wind that was gusting up the mountain.  The second was the decreasing dexterity of my fingers. The gloves were soaked.  I struggled to grab the lines and stakes.  After taking about twice as long as normal, my tent was up.  I gathered large rocks and put them on top of each tent stake to hold them in the ground.

 

I tucked inside the tent.  The wind had picked up.  The lightning was still going, and the rain was relentless.  I got my sleeping bag unfurled.  From my clothing sack I took out every piece of dry clothing.  I stripped off everything I had on.  The hardest were the wet socks.  They clung to my feet.  My fingers were useless.  And I was shivering like crazy.  Eventually I wriggled 0ut of them, put on my dry clothes and buried myself in the sleeping bag.

By now, I was shivering uncontrollably.  I pulled the bag around my head.  Through the bag I could see the lightning flash. One one thousand, two one thousand. Boom.  The next one was closer.  I told myself I was not going to die this kind of death: shivering cold and struck by lightning.

Somehow, I dozed off and woke up around six.  I was no longer shivering, but my hands and feet were a bit numb.  I struggled to eat with clumsy hands.  The lightning had stopped, but the wind had picked up.  I hoped the hope of all hopes my cuben fiber tent would stand up to the beating by the wind.

I ended up dozing off between wind gusts.  Many times during the night I found myself pushing on the side of the tent, a counter-force to the wind.  I was not sure what I would do if some of  the stakes came up.  I was sure I was going to make it through the night, just not with a lot of sleep.