3/26/01
Whew! what a day! Woke up this morning and it was 22 degrees inside the tent. To top it off, the wind was blowing so it felt like an icebox. It was slow getting out of the tent, but the sound of the Boy Scouts stirring got us going. I stayed inside the tent as long as possible, eating breakfast inside and then scrambling to get packed up quickly to start hiking ASAP to get warm. We had two fairly short but steep climbs, then a long beautiful stretch of trail through the snow that was fairly level. Then we began the ascent of Mt. Albert, our second 5,000 ft. peak. The last 4 miles was literally straight up with a near vertical scramble over rocks. The view from the top was outstanding and worth the work to get there! We decided to hike on even though we had covered 10 miles. The balance of the day was fairly easy hiking.
We reached Rock Gap around 4 p.m., but there was no place to set up a tent and the shelter was already frigid. A quick decision was made to hike to Wallace Gap then hike down the road 1 mile to Rainbow Springs Campground. We arrived by 5 p.m., checked in to stay in the bunkhouse which sleeps 12, ate a tasty bowl of homemade chili, took a hot shower in a cold bathhouse, and are now in the bunkhouse with a wood stove which we will continue to stoke through the night. Dave and Kelly are here as well as "Doodlebug", so there are 5 of us here tonight. Beautiful day but extremely cold. Stats: Low 18 degrees, high 32, sunny and breezy. Today's mileage: 16.0 (plus 1 mile to campground), cumulative mileage 103.7. Oh yes, we celebrated crossing the 100 mile mark today! Only 2,065 mile to go! Yipee! My feet hurt but I'm in shape and going up those 1000 feet climbs without stopping. We're reworking the schedule for the rest of the week as severe thunderstorms are predicted Thursday and our current schedule has us at 6,000 ft. on a ridge ... NOT! We'll devise another plan to get us lower for the cold front's approach. Still having a blast! Rabbit
