Day 9
It's not looking too bad
I started the day early. It was really nice having a break from the desert heat. It meant not having to get up very early and hiking later in the night. The rain brought cooler weather which also meant carrying less water.
As I was leaving, people were looking at me like I was crazy. It's wet and it's cold. But more and more people were starting to show up at the community center, and it was getting a little crowded. I came on this trail to hike, and with 5 months of hiking, it's not gonna be always fair weather.
After 11 miles, as the trail startign to gain some elevation, the snow started picking up. At a distance I see a thru hiker named Carolyn, from Canada, running down the mountain going the opposite direction towards us and said she turned back 2 miles ahead because she could not see the trail in front of her. It played a mental game on us that perhaps we should not go through.
And seeing there was no place to camp where we were at that moment, we backtracked a mile below snow line and the five of us decided to set camp early and wait out the storm till morning. It was a wise decision. I made a warm meal inside my tent, rested my body, and surprisingly fell asleep in that afternoon as rain poured over my tent and all around us.
The snow does look very pretty