Rain Day

At 4:00 the next morning, a brisk gust of wind blew our pot off of our kitchen rock.  The sound either woke or caught the attention of all three of us.  Fearing a bear was rummaging through camp, I got out of bed to investigate.  As I was out of the tent, I looked up and saw that the stars were obscured by a layer of cloud.

The weather forecast for this day had been for a chance of afternoon thundershowers, so we had been watching the weather the day before.  A few bands of storm-like clouds had scudded over the ridges and the wind had been constant and stiff on North Glacier Pass, but the wind was calmer by evening and the sky was perfectly clear when we went to bed.

Now, things had changed.  Libby asked if everything was OK, and I assured her that while there was no bear, it had clouded up.  She immediately got up to use the restroom, just in case, and Dad pulled his rain fly over his sleeping bag.  As I stood there in the blustery wind, a few scattered drops started to fall.  I quickly sought the shelter of our tent and listened as the wind blew drops faster and faster against the tent.

Of course, it never rains in the morning during the summer in the Sierras, so I settled down to get some more sleep and to wait for a dry sunrise.  That never came.  The rain just continued.  Around 5:30, Dad dropped his sleeping bag off in our vestibule and tried to set up his rain fly.  By 8:00, a few puddles had formed in the corners of our tent and Dad joined us: shivering from exposure.  I got up and grabbed the bear cans so we could have something to eat for breakfast.  Dad distributed some of his granola bars, and we decided not to start up the stove in the rain.  Then we settled in to wait it out.  As we waited, the rain - in a sense- stopped, but we were socked in by the storm's clouds.  They were blown right through our camp, soaking everything they came in contact with by their heavy mist.

They didn't lift until 12:30, and then they only lifted a few dozen feet above our camp.  Up the lake, there was a low gray ceiling for the remainder of the day, sometimes lifting, and sometimes lowering, but never again settling into our midst.

 

Across the valley, we watched the clouds dance around the base of the minarets, coyly lifting their curtain occasionally to show a light dusting of new snow on their craggy buttresses.

 

  Dad's thermometer never read higher than 43 that day.  It just stayed cold and dark until the sun set.  While there were a few weak patches of sun here and there, we never got to enjoy any real warmth until the next day.

We made the best of it, reading, photographing, and exploring the area that afternoon.  The outlet stream of Twin Island Lake is really the nascent North Fork San Joaquin River.  It is pretty enormous, and it was fun to see it roaring down cataracts below the lake.

 

So, it ended up being an unplanned lay-over day.  We got some nice rest and were able to prepare for the next day's adventure.