neels gap to low gap shelter

woke up after daybreak and the wind was still pummeling the tent. i lingered for a moment as it was close to freezing, but mustered the motivation to get going. i packed up in the tent and then very carefully unstaked the tent, holding on so it didn’t blow away. i saw a youtube video once of a tent over a mountain, miles from the person taking the video. yikes.

i walked back to mountain crossings to get out of the wind and make breakfast. i hunkered down where the trail actually passes under mountain crossings’ roof. to my surprise it was already open, so i took advantage of an open plug and charged up my phone. as i boiled my water, i watched the rest of the group wrangling their tents against the wind. shortly everyone showed up and we chatted about how far we were going to go. there was a lot of last minute purchases, and saying goodbye to sky but finally we got out of there just as ‘free’, the one man show, could be heard across the highway.

nico, toby, and i hike a bit faster than dan, but he generally showed up five minutes after we stopped anywhere. the hiking was cold and windy on the windward side of the ridge and blisteringly hot on the leeward side. both sides had enough sun to manage to burn my calves through my long underwear. i definitely didn’t anticipate that.

sometime after noon we hiked down into a gap and had lunch down a gully out of the wind. as we were leaving a couple asked if they could take our trash. yes please! they then offered us candy and bananas. i downed a banana and retook them up on their trash offer.

the climb out of the gap was steep, but once we got to the ridge it was pretty easy going. the rest of the day was hot and dry.

we even had some trail magic again at another gap. the guy giving the magic said a prayer for us.

we made it to low gap shelter sometime around five. i climbed back up to the top of the gap after dinner and had a nice chat with magz, and paid the electricity bill. this is life on the trail.