Spring Vacation Part 4, Trip, Day 2

Our Camp

The next morning we woke up to lightly falling snow. About half an inch had fallen over night and temperatures were in the mid twenties. We had gone to bed at around 6:30PM and got up at 7:30 this morning. Needless to say, we were well rested.

Charlotte being guarded by the snow shoes

After telling the story from last night to Raf, we looked through our food, and found that the banana chips were missing. I, being serious, suggested we go scouting for them. Nate immediately started laughing, joking and putting his hand over his eyes, stared mock-seriously around. I quickly put him to shame however, when I found them ten feet from the tarp, lightly covered by snow. They were un-tampered with, so we put them with the rest of the food. We slowly ate breakfast and broke camp. Among the preparations to break camp, we noticed that our half eaten block of Monterey Jack cheese was missing. Again I suggested we go look for it. This time, although they did not make fun of me, the other two still did not join me in my decision to search. Undeterred, I set off in the direction that I had found the wheat thins the night before. I had gone about thirty feet before I spotted them about fifteen feet away under a tree. The animal had dragged it that far, and nibbled at one corner. Elated at having found our cheese, I retrieved it and returned to camp. Nate Mori-0, Nate Josephs-2.

Cheese Nibbled by something

Planning the day, Raf is actually 8 feet tall,
 I forgot to mention that

Overall, we were well recovered from the trek the day before. I, for one, was surprised that I was not sore at all. However, we did have one problem, though minor, it had the potential to grow into a bigger one. The day before, when we had gotten into camp, Nate had mentioned that his feet were cold. We had put water bottles, filled with boiling water at our feet to keep them warm during the night. This failed to fully warm his toes up. When we were breaking camp, he kept mentioning how cold his toes were. Raf’s toes were also cold, but not to the degree that Nate was experiencing. Nate had gotten some water in his boots from rain and snow getting inside his gaiters and running into his boots. This caused his feet to get colder than they should have.

However, at the moment, there was not much we could do, so we decided when we got to the road, we would check them. We slowly finished packing up and headed out. Today travel was slightly easier than yesterday. The snow was not quite so sloppy and wet; it having frozen some over the night. Even though we were breaking trail, we were soon headed on a slight downhill that helped immensely. We easily covered the two miles to Ausable Rd by noon.

Natural Snoballs

When we got there, Raf pulled lunch out of his pack, I pulled out my Leatherman, and Nate pulled out his feet. I ended up pulling out the only thing that was without fault. We realized the reason why the animal had seemed content with a couple wheat thins and a nibble of the cheese was because it had taken both of our peanut butter/honey/oatmeal roll. Now we were angry at the little bugger. We though up horrible deaths for it. Among some of the better ideas were that its mouth would get stuck by the peanut butter, causing it to starve with a full mouth. Another was that it would eat so much and become so fat, that it would not be able to fit in its hole and freeze to death.

Looking at options and feet

Besides hypothesizing different ways for the rodent to die, over lunch we discussed our options. One was to continue our trip as planned, while the other one boiled down to us bailing on this trip in order to make sure we would be able to look back on it with fond memories. Frostbite is not a cheery companion, so we decided to head out. My pick-up was parked about five miles away by road, so we decided to drop our packs behind a snow bank, grab a couple layers of clothing and, along with Charlotte, quickly cover the distance.

We set off the car speedometer

This part of the walk was smooth, flat and easy. It contrasted dramatically with the kind of terrain that we had encountered the day before. We pounded pavement at about four miles an hour and arrived at the parking lot excited to head out. However, when we got there I suddenly realized that I had put my keys in my rain jacket, and we had left our gear five miles back at the trail head. Two guys who had just arrived at the parking lot kindly offered to give us a ride to our gear. We accepted right before I realized how stupid I was. The keys were in my rain jacket, but my rain jacket was the warm layer that I had packed to bring along. Feeling foolish and apologizing to the nice guys, we found my keys, unlocked the truck and tumbled in. Quickly arriving back at our gear, we picked it up, and said goodbye to the Adirondacks.

You had better be careful

Me and Charlotte Hanging out.

We made it back home in time for Dad’s wonderful pizza and to start planning for the morrow.