Day 28: Wind, Rain, Sleet, Sun and Snow

Date: May 7, 2017
Miles: 347.2 – 369.3

*Fair warning to the young and/or sensitive – there’s a bit of explicit language in this post. In my defense, the weather made me do it.*

My thinking this morning was that I would hang out in my tent for a couple hours and wait for the rain and wind to stop.  My first realization thereafter was that I hate hanging around in a tent.  It’s boring. My second realization was that the wind and rain was not going to stop.  The third was that I was going to have to hike through the crappy weather for about 20 miles in a skirt because my shorts were soaked and I didn’t plan on needing rain pants until Washington.  Awesome.

So I got dressed, stuffed my soaking wet tent and everything else into my pack and marched up into the hills toward Wrightwood in the hopes that fast walking would get the blood flowing to my fingers and toes again.  

Within a few minutes, the overgrown brush had soaked everything from my waist down and I just kept muttering at the plants, ‘Are you fucking serious??’ – because that was surely going to help.  A mile or so later, I came around a bend in time to hear someone yell, ‘Fuck this shit!!’ into the wind. That’s when I met Sugar Tits (Josh), and we decided that hiking in misery together sounded better than hiking in misery alone. 

We hiked from the canyon at 3500 feet up to about 8000 feet through rain, sleet, sun and snow. Our breaks were just long enough to put food in our faces. 

By the time we got to Wrightwood, a snowstorm had started.  The locals we talked to said they had never seen this kind of weather in May before. Lucky us! 

The first thing I did in town was find a hot cup of coffee, and then I reserved a room at The Rhinestone Rose Inn where Josh and his friends Emily and Urs were staying – in the Romance and Roses room, no less!

The Inn didn’t have laundry services so I soaked my clothes in the whirlpool tub. I thought the tub jets would move the clothes around like a washing machine, so I hit the button to start them and gallons of water shot straight out of the tub and hit the wall, flooding the room before I was able to stop yelling and find the off button. Awesome. 

I managed to dry out the bathroom, myself and my clothes, so I joined everyone else who was laying around in the huge hotel bathrobes watching a movie until no one could stay awake any longer.  It was a nice warm ending to a long cold day.