We were up today at 5am, trying to put some miles behind us before the heat of the day arrived. It had rained through much of the night so everything was soaked and I was extremely and expressively grumpy while trying to deal with the wet, grimy tent with my wet, grimy fingers. From here on out, it was to be a wet and grimy day. The heat never arrived and the sun barely peeped out from behind the swift, speeding cloud force overhead.
I've never experienced weather like we walked through today. The cold whisps of wet mountan mist would roll east up and over the ridge line that we walked, dropping a haze of bitter droplets as they went and then just launch out over the great, golden expanse of the Anza-Borrego desert, 4000 ft down in the canyon below, where they would rise to join some picturesque and benevolent parade of cumulous and drift out peacefully into Arizona. From 6am until 10am, we were a little ways back and up from the edge of the canyon, still ascending Mt. Laguna from the south, concluding yesterday's climb, but we still saw a good deal of wind and rain. We came up over 5000ft and passed through a pretty transitional ecosystem of Jeffrey Pine and Black Oak, but were too wet to pay it much mind. Hurrying onward, we made the Mt. Laguna general store by 10:30 and were able to spend some time attending to our wet-weary selves: airing out our wet socks and camping gear, cooking the daily oat!
s, drinking hot chocolate. There was a hiker box in the store full of items which other hikers have left for the taking and we were happy to grab a bag of seed and fruit trail mix (not that we don't eat this stuff every day anyway, but I can really put away) and some honey for our oats. These things are great, these hiker boxes. We will be sure to check them out before doing our own shopping every week.
After eating and tidying our stuff up a bit, we set out again at 12pm. The day had cleared considerably and we had a very nice few hours walking along the aforementioned rim overlooking the sunny desert valley of the Anza-Borrego. At some point, the clouds became relentless and really started letting loose on us. It wasn't so much that there was all that much rain, but the wind, the wind was outrageous.
My umbrella is probably shot, but Eliza and I were fine. While I felt pretty freaked out at the time (and for much of the next 4 hours until we finally found a decent spot for a campsite) I think that we actually handled the weather pretty well. There was a time not too far back when the mere thought of having to set up camp and sleep through a night in the rain would have practically made me sick, but here today, I think we did pretty darn good--and it really wasn't all that bad. Then again, it better be nice out here tomorrow. If we liked hiking in the rain we would have stayed home and hiked tha AT.
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