Saturday, March 13
5 miles.
I woke up way too early as usual. That thru hiking hotel/hostel anxiety kicked in hard. I spent some time online catching up on posts and writing though and reading up on the next section. We’ll mostly be on roads/trails for the next day or so it should be easy hiking for a sec.
We (by which I mean I) spent too much time in the morning getting everything ready to go. In my defense Jordan is a savage who flooded the bathroom and got my quilt wet so I had to wait until it dried off.
We also spent some time in town doing some gear swaps (new socks for Jordan, new smaller bottle for me) and mailing out some postcards. By the time we were done, the weather came in and it started to pour on us. We (again, mostly me) were hungry and cranky so we decided to head to a little cafe and get lunch and coffee and wait out the rain.
After a bit of more dawdling we headed out. The road walk out of town wasn’t bad, the rain had mostly died down though we were still getting pretty wet.
A few miles out though it started to dump on us hard. We both got completely drenched which couple with the small windy road made for a not fun section. It was very beautiful and I imagine when it’s not raining and you can actually see the nature around it might be actually pretty nice.
We stopped at a pullout and discussed whether or not to keep going or head back to town. The wet road walk was a little sketchy in the rain and since both our weather apps seemed to be wrong, we weren’t sure if it was going to let up or not. The weather in town often varies from the weather in mountains and canyons since storms can get “stuck” in them and we figured it might not let up anytime soon. Even if it did, there was no way we’d be able to dry everything off before making camp and sleeping at near freezing temps with soaked clothes and gear didn’t sound like a good idea.
We got a short ride to a trailhead where we sat under a little sign board and debated whether or not to keep hiking. It started snowing at that point and we settled on heading back to town and getting an early hitch back to the trailhead to start dry and early the next day.
A van pulled in right when we decided to hitch and offered us a ride back into town. We got a cheap hotel room, dried off stuff, watched Jurassic Park, and ate burritos. Compared to the idea of trying to pitch in freezing rain and snow, yeah we made the right decision.
It’s still hard to shake the feeling that we should be hiking now despite what a shitty time it would and trying to get some miles in but the good thing about not caring too much about a hike is that I can choose to take an extra hotel night and actually enjoy my hike.
Plants Outside 