The next morning (October 5) I awoke ready for a nice sunny day. Overnight the rain pitter patter had stopped sounding on the tent and so I thought "Great, the rain has stopped, maybe it'll be perfect tomorrow and I can waltz down the trail in dry clothes instead of freezing anymore. Well the sound stopped but the precipitation did not. The silence was because it was now snowing and I awoke to the sight of my tent ceiling about four inches above my face, heavy with several inches of snow. I knocked it off and went outside to survey the damage. Oh man, this is gonna be nuts. I look happy here but how else COULD I have been, I was scared as hell that since all of my clothes were wet after three days of cold rain I was very vulnerable to hypothermia. Figuring that I only had 20 miles to go, the plan (God laughs) was to just gear up as fast as I could and get moving so I could warm up. My shoes were frozen solid, even the laces. My gloves were drenched through and through. So were my rain jacket and rainpants. This was exciting, but only in the sense that it was clearly going to be a survival situation, and I had a wedding to get to in Puerto Rico.


Tarptent: Not for snow. repeat. NOT FOR SNOW.


I'm c-c-c-c-COOOOLD.


All creatures, great and small.


This is the trail, no joke. Often the visibility was worse than this. I only took the camera out of my pocket when I was pretty sure it wouldn't get soaked by the constant snow.