Whenever I settled in for the night I sent out a satellite message on my Garmin Mini to let folks know how my day had been. The messages are limited to 160 characters and are delivered by email to followers who had signed up to receive them. One of my preset messages read “holy shit day. stopping while I’m still intact. “

This “holy shit” day began in the wee hours of the morning when a baby moose tripped over the lines holding up my tent. As I scrambled to get out I fell and took the skin off the palms of my hands.

I began hiking by 5:30 A.M. to hike the required by my permit 15 miles to the next campsite. If I failed to reach the designated site a ranger could order me to leave the park.

Along the way I was charged by moose 3 times on trail. I had to run like hell and get behind a tree. The third time, after waiting for nearly 20 minutes, I prepared to spray it with my bear spray. But the fellow with the huge rack finally backed down and I was able to get by.

Then I had an extremely cold river crossing that came up to my crotch. It was running so fast I had difficulty planting my plant poles as the water wanted to carry them down river. The water was so cold that my feet hurt for a long time afterwards.

Following that was a long climb on a steep slope covered with snow. And all the while I was climbing lightning and thunder were crashing nearby. I had no desire to stop in that weather for lunch so I hiked on as the rain turned to marble sized hail.

Crossing the ridge involved one self arrest which I was relieved to discover I was able to do. The downhill involved lots of postholing, more river crossings and then going through a section of really bad fallen over trees, referred to as blowdowns in hiker lingo.

By the time I reached camp ten hours later I was famished and chilled to the bone. But I had seen some spectacular scenery and even though it was difficult walking on an inch of marble sized hail, I enjoyed the interesting sounds it made underfoot. all in all it was not a bad day.

But the night was another story…I had over 30 mosquitoes in my tent and spent a long time swatting them in the dark.