Day 149 - 3 Days Remaining

(Originally written on Wednesday, September 30)

Prior to today, I had never hiked in freshly fallen snow during the month of September. At least not that I can recall. It's for moments like these that I'm very uncomfortable with the well-intentioned congratulations directed to me for "finishing" the trail. There are still a lot of things that can keep me from getting to Canada, despite my close proximity. Chief of these is the weather. As you know from my previous post, it began raining last night as I was setting up camp. That rain at about 3300' was snow at about 4500'. So at any given point today, I could have been walking in up to 4" of snow. That much snow isn't a problem. But if the notoriously-difficult-to-predict weather of the North Cascades keeps dropping precipitation, then who knows what can happen. Why I DO know is that it is very cold tonight. It is 33 degrees as of about 30 minutes ago here at about 4500'. We are 47 miles from the U.S.-Canada border and 55 miles from Manning Park. Unfortunately, when we climb up and over 6000' tomorrow, we'll stay there for the majority of the distance remaining on the trail. That means more cold temperatures unless there is a change in weather.

Anyway, I have only three more nights on the trail before I reach my destination and that is a very cool thing to think about.