Day 42

If we’ve learned anything on this trip it is as follows: the snow is not over yet.

It’s always bitter sweet leaving a town, but the calming trees and gentle creek made it easier… for about five miles. Here, we hit our longest continuous blanket of snow yet. There’s typically patches of bare ground amongst the snow, but not today. 

We stopped at a small, half frozen lake on a wide plain into which all the snow melt was pouring. Splashing through boggy and windy marshland to get water, we really hit a low point of the day. 

To further our dismay, the snow made for slow and frustrating navigation. We tried following others footsteps, but these kept disappearing on us. Hidden logs also made for a treacherous crossing, as we would continuously and unexpectedly and plummet through the thin snow around them. Lucy managed to get stuck under one particularly mean log, and was genuinely worried she wouldn’t be able to get her tired legs out. 

Even though there was snow as far as the eye could see (literally), some amazing white aspens lightened the mood (see pictures!). 

Towards the end of the day, tiny patches of snow became visible. It was on one of these tiny islands that we made our worst pitch yet. The space was so small that Lucy’s door opened into a tree and Anna’s door opened into a foot of snow. Furthermore, said pitch was so slanted that we spent half the night wriggling ourselves back up to the top of our mats. All worth it for pictures.