Day 18 – 3/31/16
?? map / 16.6 GPS miles
253.7 / 263.9 miles total

What a day. 
I had probably my coldest night ever on any trail. Water bottles froze, my feet never did get past the blocks of ice stage, even with down booties, and my damn Neoair leaked AGAIN. I got almost no sleep. 

We started out optimistic in the morning, opting to take the official route up the mountain. A low route alternative is mapped in case of high snow. But we got snowshoes, we’d better use them!
All was fine for the first few miles. Then we hit a few cute little patches of snow. We took pictures – isn’t this cool!

Then the snow got deeper. Deep, loose powder. Joey didn’t bring snowshoes, but kept going, sinking up to his crotch with each step. It wasn’t much better with snowshoes. Though we were only a mile or so from the pass over the mountain, we though about turning back. 

Oh, and remember how the forecast said today all the storm stuff would be cleared out? LIES. 

As we went up, the clouds rolled in. It was well below freezing. We decided shortly before the pass there was no way we were leaving the road and going another 1000′ up to the South summit and walking the ridge down, as per the guidebook. This would’ve been an awesome route on a clear day, but foolish in the weather we had. And with no view to be had from the top, there was really no point. 

  
  

  
  
 

 

Joey dropped further behind. We kinda figured he decided to turn around and take the low route. It was way too cold to wait for him, so we kept going, taking the road down the west side of the mountain.  

 

 
A few miles later things finally eased as we dropped elevation. The snow was crustier and we stopped sinking. Out of nowhere, Joey suddenly appeared! 

 

 
The rest of the day was better, though we were all exhausted from the snow. It had been way too cold to stop for a lunch break, so we’d been getting by on snacks. 
Thankfully there was a teensy trickle of water in Sweetwater creek, sparing us from drinking from the source labeled “intestinal distress spring” on our maps. We finally took a short break to get water and eat some food. We might’ve even had 4 minutes of sun. 

There was some cross country down ridges and in washes. Before connecting back to a road again. We saw more precipitation approaching and quickly picked out a spot to camp before it hit.