March 04

The rain continued through most of the night. My mind was so accustomed to hearing the loud slapping of the rain on the tent that when it suddenly stopped in the early morning, I woke up immediately. There wasn't complete silence...what used to be rain had now turned into snow. I could hear the light sprinkling of the flakes on the tent. After falling back asleep, we woke up a few hours later, only to find that there was a puddle in our vestibule and at least a 2 in. puddle of water in our tent. My sleeping pad was soaked and my sleeping bag was mostly wet. A lake had formed over night beside us and with a stroke of bad luck, it was draining right underneath our tent. I was frustrated until we zipped open the vestibule and saw that it had snowed several inches in the past few hours. We fell asleep on a lunar landscape and awoke to a winter wonderland. Lenga, our expedition dog (he tagged along after passing a campo a few days ago), had spent the night in the instructors vestibule and was out walking around, shivering wildly. As breakfast was cooking, the sun finally broke through the clouds and everyone was out of their tents, happy as can be.