5-6-14 Tuesday. Waffles for Breakfast & Snow for Dinner!

Last night we pitched our tents in the yard of Papa Smurf, a trail angel & family. They host lots of hikers & for a few months are really busy picking up hikers from the trail,  delivering back to the trail & feeding them. We all make sure to generously donate because these folks love to help out & we are so very appreciative.  He fixed waffles, eggs, sausage & potatoes for breakfast !  Papa Smurf then delivered Peggy & I to the trail  picking up 3 others who were at the road  needing a ride to the trailhead. We recognized Poet from a short conversation under the bridge near Julien, he'd taken some days off due to a foot problem & it was good to see he was better now, a nice kid taking leave from the Coast Guard to hike the trail. 

There's a 30% chance of rain today but  the next day should be clear again. It's cold out & our packs are heavy but we need to get going.  A short time later we came to an overlook and could see Big Bear Lake and clouds piling up beyond the mountains. Hope they're covering some other territory than where we're going!

After about 10 miles we passed through a burn area that looked stark and desolate, we called it Mordor. 

By now we can see threat those clouds will be in our immediate future for the day at least, these are the 30% rain clouds we'd heard about.  It's cold, Peggy is wearing her gloves but I have my new sun proof gloves on that do double duty.  Thanks Carrie for my gloves!

See the trail through the trees.

We found water and met one of our hiker friends, Liverpool Paul, nearby, we discussed the possibility of snow & he moved on. We were trying to find a camp spot 15 miles in but it started lightly snowing, then more, then really just coming down!  We put on our Packas which cover both ourselves and packs and kept going.  Finally we just stopped and threw everything down and put up our tents, dragging most everything we had inside. Wet shoes, pack cover, hat etc. stayed outside in the tent vestibule. 

Once inside I journaled, kept checking the snow which was still coming down.  I was cold so decided to cook dinner and once I'd eaten I slowly warned up. Nothing else to do but go to sleep, it was 7pm,  I checked outside once during the night & half the sky was cloudy, the other half clear.  The odd thing was seeing the moon, which was 1/2 full but colored dark red.