Did I mention it's cold in the desert?

Woke up this morning to overcast skies, so put our pack covers on just in case. After a few miles, it started sprinkling, so put on rain jackets. Then it started pouring which quickly turned to hail. A group of us huddled under a tree to try to stay a little dry. 

We had two pretty good sized climbs and as we were ascending the second one, there was a huge clap of thunder and lightning. Obviously don't want to be on top with lightning, so we just sort of lingered where we were. Freezing our butts off!!! No where to take cover and didn't want to climb any higher. Fortunately, the really dark clouds passed over quickly, and we charged up and over the top so that we could start down before the next round came through.

There were some pretty cool, dark clouds today.

The last four miles were downhill, so made quick work of them, but the rain started up again with about 1.5 miles to go. Got to our camp spot, threw up our tents, heaved everything inside and dove in. Grateful to be in out of the rain, even though we were pretty soaked and very cold. Thank goodness for dry sacks. Everything in my pack was still dry, so I peeled off the wet, put on warm dry clothes, blew up my air mattress which kept my sleeping bag up off the wet. And then the ☀️ came out. Just for a little bit before it dropped below the mountain, but long enough to get out and have dinner and dry a few things out.

And as for my tent...THANK YOU EMILY!

Good timing for tent buying at REI because they have a big sale on (it goes until the 30th so if you need gear, check it out!) Bad timing for REI because their website went down. I have very limited windows of service out here, and I couldn't get s call to go out, but thank goodness for texting. Emily got my tent ordered and it should (fingers crossed) be at Kennedy Meadows on Friday. 21 more miles of desert!