| September 18: Middle Fork Trail near Rainbow Lake | |
The rain/snow continued all night long. Several times, the pitter-patter on the roof of my tent would slow to almost nothing and I would breathe a sigh of relief only to have it pick right back up again five minutes later. This continued right up until sunrise, at which point all the noise stopped and I peeked cautiously out of my tent to see a bright blue sky beckoning to me. I got out of my tent and there was the most beautiful, deep blue sky without a cloud to be seen. From my vantage point near the lake, I looked west to see that the mountains, several thousand feet up, were covered in snow. It was a beautiful surprise to start the day.
Anyway, the sun was out so the first order of business was to find a large rock that was facing the sun and to lie all of my gear out to dry. True, things don’t dry nearly as well in the morning, but all of my gear was wet to some degree, so I waited a bit longer than usual, but I was sure that I wanted to get all of my stuff dry before heading out on the trail for the day. Finally, around 9 AM, everything but the tent was completely dry, and the tent was acceptably wet, no more than usually accumulates on a cold but dry night. I packed everything up and headed out on a side trail to climb back up to the Fremont Trail, the higher route that I bailed off of yesterday.
While the sun had been out for a while, I found that higher up not much of the snow had started to melt. As I was making my way to the top of Hat Pass, I found myself walking through up to a foot of snow and keeping myself on the trail became increasingly difficult. Since this is a wilderness area, they don’t believing in marking the trail… at all. I had to carefully look for the indent of snow where I thought the trail was, and even then I got off the path several times.
As I was climbing and sweating under the hot morning sun, I glanced back north and noticed some less than friendly clouds building up on the ridge. This was the first of many battles between two weather systems that I had a knack for following. As I stepped across Hat Pass, it was LITERALLY like I stepped from my dad’s kitchen and right into the walk-in cooler. Clouds rolled in quickly and obscured the sun, the temperature dropped a solid 20 degrees and it immediately started to hail. I was stunned that just two minutes ago I was sweating on a hard climb under a beautifully clear sky, but now I was freezing cold and in a cloud. I actually put my sunglasses on for a few minutes to act as goggles because it was hailing so hard.
The hail was actually OK with me, but as I headed down the hail turned into wet snow and at this point I was getting discouraged. Cold and wet again? I didn’t know if I was up to spending another 14 hours in my sleeping bag and talking to myself. I was thinking about bailing out of the mountains in favor of the comforts of town. When I arrived at North Fork Lake, I again had a choice between the Freemont Trail and the (lower) Highline Trail. I had all but decided on the Highline Trail, since I couldn’t see the point of taking a more exposed route in a storm, but at the trail junction, just when I was about to leave, a small hole of blue sky opened up directly over my head. Again, I couldn’t believe what was happening! I hung around the intersection for about 30 minutes to see if the clouds were going to break. The mountain peaks broke out of the clouds for about five minutes but that didn’t last long and soon I was back in the wet snow.
Now, at this point, I had pretty much decided to bail. The hiking was comfortable enough, but I just couldn’t justify living in my sleeping bag again when I could bail out, head into town and be nice and comfy. Well, about halfway down the Highline Trail, only a few miles from my bailout trail, the sky once again cleared out, but this time most of the sky was blue! I looked north to the Fremont Trail and things were still looking iffy up there, but I didn’t care since the sun was shining on me and hiking on the Highline Trail was really nice. I hiked right on past the bailout trail and continued on towards the next Highline/Fremont junction.
After some very pleasant walking, the Highline Trail pops out into an enormous field with excellent views of the divide. Even though many of the mountains were obscured by the clouds, I was amazed at just how ragged all the mountains are and how overwhelming they look. I couldn’t look long, however, since my friend the sun was now being flanked on all sides by the dark, ugly storm clouds. When I felt the raindrops, I started to panic - I was not going to set up in the rain again.
In the field, the sun was fighting several battles so I headed up towards the divide. There were clouds there as well, but there was a wooded ridgeline that offered some protection. I quickly found a nice spot near the top of the ridge and hurried to set up my gear before anything got wet. However, things changed once again – the sun had taken total control over the field while all the nasty, dark clouds had converged on the divide. My tent site was RIGHT on the line, and while the sun was shining on my face, the dark clouds were directly overhead.
After some battling, the dark clouds took solid control of the area over my campsite. The sky opened up and marble-sized hail started to fall. This hail, with some really strong winds, tested my little tent and nearly ruined my dinner. After a good 40 minutes of getting pounded, the storm stopped as quickly as it started. It apparently emptied itself out since my friendly sun wasted little time in claiming most of the sky back for itself. After being treated to a brilliant sunset, my friend departed for the night to hopefully return to full strength tomorrow. It is going to be a very cold night tonight, but hopefully tomorrow will make it all worth it.
-Chomp