Ugh. That about sums up today. When I got up it was a nice cold morning. As soon as I got my bag and tent packed up it started snowing/hailing/whateverthiswhitecrapiscalled hard. By that point it was too late to get back in bed so I finished packing and started hiking.
It wasn't bad at first since the ground was cold and the snow hadn't started accumulating yet. Then I got about a mile up the "low" route, it took me over 9600 ft. At that point it started to snow in ernest and was sticking. The entire rest of the morning I was hiking in 3 inches of snow. That wasn't so bad. In the afternoon I was hiking in a half inch of snow mixed with a half inch of mud. That was unpleasant. A bit later I was hiking in mud. Cold mud. That sucked.
I should have stayed in my tent and waited. The snow and mud did a number on my shin splints. Normally I hike in a way that minimizes the strain on the muscle while slowly increasing my use of it throughout the day. With all the slipping and sliding I did in the snow and mud it got stressed pretty bad and started hurting like our did when I restated hiking. I'm worried I just wasted 2 weeks of recovery due to snow and mud. I'll see how it feels in the morning. I was hoping it'd be better by the time I hit Colorado, less than 2 weeks away now.
Once I got lower in altitude the snow and mud went away and the Jeep tracks came back. I know I was bitching about the forest rangers yesterday but whoever did the stretch of CDT I hiked today did a great job. It was better signed and marked than the AT. The tread was in good shape and I didn't get lost once, even with the snow and mud.
One other thing, for those of you tracking my hike via the spot I used it's 10 minute interval thing today. So you can see exactly where I hiked, how slow I hiked, and how few stops I made (it was too cold for breaks).
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