Up early enough, but day one of trips are always a little disorganized, no matter how much planning you do. Our goal this morning is 11 miles, which may be a bit overzealous, considering we had 2 extra miles of road walking tacked onto the start of this trip.

Like clockwork, the moment we stepped out of the cars to be dropped off, it began to rain. Now per the weather man this was not supposed to happen till between 3 and 5 pm. Oh to have a job where I get paid even if I’m wrong. All assembled we post for a team photo, ready for the weather. Paul has decided to call our team “2 by 4” (2 guys and 4 gals…get it?)

At least it wasn’t a hard rain.

Soon we we’re to the PCT northbound trailhead at Agnew Meadows, and so began the climb with fully loaded packs for five nights in the Sierras, with a finish in Yosemite valley.

Eventually the rain stopped and the sun shined brightly, allowing us to burn off the chill, but it did no good for our sopping wet feet. At some point early on there was no use trying to keep our feet “dry”, as last night’s torrential downpour, which we are told was a record rainfall for the area, seemed to want to use the trail as it’s canal.

Squish, plod, squish went the day, accented by patches and outright fields of postholio snow. WTF!? It is only now that I remember how much work trompsing through the snow was. I swear it was easier 4 years ago. But then, by this time we were in fabulous PCT thru-hiker shape.

Amazingly we made it a mile short of our goal, which was okay, cause we were all gassed, and needed to get a fire going so that we could thaw out before night fall, and another predicted bout of rain/hail… possibly snow. We did our best to dry out our stuff, knowing full well we would be putting perfectly warm and dry feet/socks into damp and practically frozen shoes the next morning. Handfuls of Advil for all and off to our respective beds for the night in the hope that it wouldn’t rain too hard, and that we would reach the set up for Donahue pass for the next morning.