It was a cold night of camping. I did not get cold in the sleeping bag but I certainly had to have a long talk with myself to get out of it, pack up, and start walking. Eventually I managed to convince myself that there was not alternative and once I got started it was not bad…. for awhile… but then the storm moved in and the rest of day was really quite miserable. Cold and in the clouds with the strong wind. This should have been a very scenic walk approaching Big Bear but very little could be seen. I was in the cloud layer and could not see much. About two hours into the day it started to snow and I put on my rain gear. My rain gear is really quite good and I was not cold while I was walking but just got tired with the up and down and battling the wind. At one point there was trail magic that I missed. Apparently someone has set up a bon fire and was roasting hot dogs for the hikers and those that noticed (everyone but me I think) had a pretty good time that night eating hot dogs and talking around the fire. I missed the whole thing and when I set up my camp there was a freezing rain. I got the tent set up with minimal water getting into the tent and once in the tent and the sleeping bag was pretty comfortable. Getting up in the morning, my tent was covered with a thin layer of ice and the water in my water bottle was frozen. I again had to battle myself to get going. I should have been in Big Bear at this time has I kept my schedule and would have missed this storm. As it was, I was either going to just spend Sunday out on the trail as a day of rest or I was going to spend Sunday walking towards Big Bear. Most of the time the wind was strong enough to blow ice off of the trees so that it came raining down on my head. So really not a great day of hiking but strangely a satisfying day. Only bad thing that happened was the wind was so strong at one point it blew my hat off my head and down the mountain. Not sure why I can’t just have things fall on the trail but why they have to go somewhere down the mountain There will probably be more NOT PERFECT days I will face so this was a great opportunity to know that I could.
