The night turned out much better than I thought it would. The last time we had set our tent up without using stakes, we had winds so bad (natural ones, not Bunny winds) that our tent kept blowing down. Last night, I used a lot more rocks and even tied off a few lines to some manzanita bushes. The weather was very kind to us with just slight breezes and no rain (we had a fairly high percentage chance). It also helped that Bunny drug me heavily to calm me down. She pumped me full of Benadryl and Ativan. I slept like a baby. I’ll forgo the cliche of crying all night and wetting the bed, that’s Bunny’s department.
Bunny claims that she woke up at 6:20 but didn’t want to disturb me by making breakfast. She’s so thoughtful to wait for me to do the cooking. I tried her role and pretended to be asleep even though we were in full sun and the tent was heating up. By 8, I couldn’t play dead any longer. I had managed to go all night without peeing, but morning calls. I had melted a full pot of water last night while boiling water for the bottles. I got back in the tent and performed my husbandly duties.
There wasn’t any pretending, we put on our microspikes first thing. According to “mapsme” we have less than 5 miles to make it to the cabin today, but I think that’s a crows flight. We were very lucky to find these clear rocks yesterday. A big problem for us in deep snow is that our Z-packs tent is not freestanding (another reason we decided to skip the Sierra for now).
I got a big feeling of relief when we ran across another sobo hiker today. Sodi was hiking with Birthday Girl whom we met Wednesday evening. He knows he’s 2 days behind them. Sodi didn’t seem to mind the snow at all and even seemed to be enjoying it. We noticed he wasn’t wearing spikes, either. At our age and under these conditions, I’d like to have a better, 4 season tent and probably even snow shoes.
Our pace is drastically reduced with all the snow. If we’re going uphill, we only average about 3/4 mph. Downhill, we can get up to 1.5 mph if I can get Bunny to not try to stop every step and taking her forward momentum to zero. I tried, unsuccessfully, to get her to jump/slide down the shorter hills to get a feel for it. She ended up glissading on her ass so that was the end of any chance of her listening to me anymore.
The snow is easily 8’ deep on the mountain. Our comfort range is in the 2-6” range. To say that we are out of our comfort zone is a bit of an under statement. We did hear from Wolf, Blues Clues, and Daniel over night (we had halfway decent signal). They were checking on trail conditions and caught us at a bad time. Yesterday was zero fun for me between continually losing the trail, post-holing, falling, and panicking.
For the first time in 3 years, I really considered quitting. Bunny calmed me down until she started falling and post-holing today and then she switched to “I’m never hiking in the snow again.” Truth of the matter is that we have slightly overextended our comfort zones, but we are adjusting. When we make it to Mount Shasta, we’ll take a couple days off, pick up some snow shoes, and wait for more people to catch up with us so we don’t feel so alone on the trail.
Following the tracks wasn’t a problem at all today. It was overcast, but not terribly cold. We considered continuing on past the cabin to try and drop below the snow on the other side of the mountain. I didn’t want to waste fuel melting more snow to drink, so we kept walking until we found a good melt stream. We stopped for a late lunch and drank 3 liters of water between the two of us. Walking on the snow requires so much more energy and we really sweat out a lot. We were both slightly dehydrated which you don’t think of in cold conditions.
We were still almost a mile to the cabin and Bunny said she just wanted to stay at the cabin tonight rather than continue on. It had taken us almost 6 hours to cover the 7 miles to the cabin. I tried to gently convince her to continue on so she’d realize it was a concession from me to stay an extra night up here. I had to let her know how agreeable of a husband she has. She’s a lucky Bunny.
The final mile to the cabin took us longer because I insisted we carry enough water to make it through the night and get fully rehydrated. I was really bummed when I saw a stream flowing right beside the cabin. We had carried 7 liters of water between us for no real reason. Better safe than sorry. I don’t want to run out of fuel melting snow. I’d rather run out of fuel boiling water for hot water bottles.
If I were paying $100/night for a cabin, I’d be pissed with this dump, it’s 3 rooms with the third room having a caved in ceiling. That would have been the bathroom. The middle room looks like something out of chainsaw massacre. Who knows who or what is hiding in there. The first room is halfway livable as long as you stay away from what used to be a kitchen area. I refuse to open the refrigerator after just having watched a forensic files on Jeffrey Dahmer.
But we didn’t spend a penny for this place so we are in heaven. We have a dry, enclosed place to sleep in. We can hang our packs and food from the rafters so the mice can’t get to anything. There’s even a half door on the porch at the top of some rickety stairs. The combination of the two should give us notice if a bear tries to come in. We’ve seen lots of bear tracks the last few days. It’s a little disturbing to follow the tracks of hikers in front of us when a bear has clearly been walking in their footsteps. Do bears stalk people? I’ll bet Bunny doesn’t give me an Ativan tonight.
EFG