The Rain

Last night was cold.

A few days ago I hatched the idea of creating a wilderness cache. In this box would be all I would need to stay the night in the wild. Hidden away behind tree and bush, I would be able to just hike out to the box with the appearance of going for a hike, and stay for the night. This is an important little bit of deception, as camping in this particular wilderness is not looked highly upon by the law.

Here's the deal. The gates up to the legal camping spots in these mountains close at 8:00 pm. I am so rarely done working/talking to loved ones by 8:00 that I just never make it up there. Honestly the hours between 8:00 and 11:00 are my most productive. Anyhow, there is no camping in Eaton. Now, that's only kind of a problem. If I hike out into the bush a few hundred meters, no one would ever catch on. The problem lies in the fact that I have to walk passed the ranger station every time I hike out there with all my stuff in tow. This makes my wilderness cache appealing, as it makes me look like every other early morning walker.

Last night I created my cache. I got a plastic tub and a tarp from Target, and filled the tub with the tarp, two blankets, a pillow, and my cozy socks. I also decided to bring my tent, as it sorta looked like rain. Good thing, too.

Rain it did. The ground was all soft and moist from the earlier rains, and the creek coming out of the canyon was running for the first time since the end of last summer. Usually I love that little river, but carrying a giant tub in with only the moon to light my path made the rocky crossing a bit more stressful. I found easily the spot I had scouted out a few days ago, and I set up camp.

Everything was damp by the time I settled down for the night, but is was more... annoying than uncomfortable. The actual suffering came later, around 3:00 am when the rain kicked in. See, tents keep the rain off you, but for some damn reason, if you touch the side of the tent, the water can come in. My little porta-tent is basically a mummy bag with a spacious bit for your head, which means that your lower section is basically touching the sides. If you aren't directly, your pad and blankets are. The only way to avoid this is to stake out the sides of the tent. I hadn't.

So starting at 3:00 in the morning the half hour wake ups began. I would wake up, vaguely aware of my soggy condition, roll over, and try to sleep. This worked well enough, but as I got wetter, the attempted rest offered diminishing returns.

The lesson here is not terribly surprising. Getting wet is not fun in the cold. Now, it probably didn't even dip much below 50 degrees, but the wet can really make that miserable. Not much chance of hypothermia and that temp... but upon my sluggish unrested rise today, I really missed home.