It Shouldn’t Rain In California, Right?

There’s the saying “it never rains in Southern California,” but it looks like our friend Albert Hammond lied.

But I guess he was right when he said “man it pours…”

To preface this story, just a few days ago I had been planning on posting a blog the night before but had ended up deleting my own draft. In this blog I talked about how California had been so cruisy, well graded and the only thing that was annoying was having to carry so much water. I had talked about the idea of being “humbled” and was just waiting for something to happen.

I finally had the urge to write a blog, everything was oh so peachy until all of that changed overnight. I deleted the draft of my completed blog and fell asleep shortly after.

In the middle of the night, I awoke to some of the worst wind I’ve ever seen and had one of my tent stakes pulled out of the ground. We were one day out of Julian and the trail had turned into something that I thought was impossible. Whipping winds, freezing rain and one of the most uncomfortable days I’ve ever had backpacking.

Cimbing out of our campsite, we were tasked with going up the side of an open face with the wind whipping on our side. Rain blew my hood down and pelted in my ears like little frozen beads banging on my eardrum. It was one of those days that felt like it was going on forever and wouldn’t end.

We ended up pushing over 20 miles that day, the sun kept almost coming out before being obscured by clouds again. Even in the early morning the skies even taunted us with a little rainbow. It’s the coldest I’ve been in recent memory. Call that survivors guilt or something but I could not put myself in the headspace and believe that I once trodged through multiple days of similar circumstance on the Appalachian Trail. I guess I respect my former self more than I do now.

It was one of those days that really tests your patience, but in a way, I guess I asked for it. I probably put some bad juju on me by saying I wanted to be humbled the night before, and well, it happened. Like I’ve said before it can’t all be sunshine and rainbows but persevering and hiking through is something eventually all of us will have to do. I know the saying on the AT is “no rain, no Maine” but it’s easy to be blindsided by the what is supposedly “perfect” weather of California.

New challenges await in the San Jacinto range with the snow this coming week and I’m hoping to ease some fears about snow and just embrace it all.

http://instagram.com/logan.laliberte

to keep more up to date with myself, follow my IG it’s a little easier for me to post on there!