Old Snowy Alternate to White Pass – 9-1

Last night was bad. It began to rain soon after I got in the tent, and the wind picked up soon after.

The rain fly on my tent sags a lot, and wind makes it flap. With rain, that drove some of the rain inside.

Down loses its warmth when it gets wet, so I unbuttoned my poncho, and laid it over my down quilt, to keep the rain off. That helped, but I faded in and out of sleep all night from the cold.

In the morning, my poncho was wet, my quilt was damp, and I was sleeping in a puddle. Most parts of the tent were soaked. Outside, the rain had taken a break, but it was around freezing, and there was a steady breeze to make everything that’s wet even colder.

The fog obscured everything.

Disassembling my wet tent, my hands got numb, which made everything take much longer, which made me get colder. By the time things were mostly packed, I was colder than I’d ever been in my life.

I started feeling dizzy, and seeing stars, so I sat down on a rock and waited. It didn’t seem to get better. Elizabeth kept commenting that I was breathing strangely and shaking, but I couldn’t tell.

I put on my poncho as an extra layer against the wind, and that seemed to help. Around the same time, the sun rose above the Knife’s Edge, and that may have helped too. Through the heavy clouds, it looked like the moon.

We started moving up the Knife’s Edge, at a snail’s pace. As the morning progressed, the fog burned off a little, but not too much.

The summit showed us small peeks at mountains, but not too much.

We started the descent, along the famously razor-sharp trail.

After the alternate ended, we continued along the ridge for a while.

Soon, we descended to more ordinary views.

At this point, we’d covered only about 3 miles in 2 hours. We needed to reach White Pass before it closed, if we wanted dinner. I’d be out of food, otherwise. Besides, all my gear needed to dry out, and there was supposed to be a motel near the resupply. The weather certainly wasn’t going to dry it for me today. So, we got going.

And, that continued all day. I started feeling better, and we began to make good time. I didn’t have a choice — if I didn’t get to the White Pass motel, my wet gear would make tonight awful, and that on no dinner, too.

Around 5, I made it to my destination.

We got a room, dried our gear, and got hot food. The only hot vegetarian food they had were bean and cheese burritos. So I had four of them. The only beer singles they sold were from a Washington brewery called Iron Horse, so we tried two of their beers. Both were good, or at least seemed that way after today.

After setting up my gear to dry, I took a shower. There was no hot water left. I finished my coldest day with a cold shower.

367 miles left.