The first thing that happened this morning was it was still raining. I didn't sleep good. When me and John got up we found out we were stuck in a very wet tent the front pile fell down and gathered water causing us to be stuck in the tent. We screamed for Nate. After about ten minutes of that he finally got us out and we assesed the damages. I was in my skivies in the cold rain trying to gather all my wet gear. It was awful. John's sleeping bag and clothes were soaked. My pad and clothes were soaked. The tents were unusable for today there is no way they will go back up they are to wet. Luckily we got a break.
We left at 8:00 latest soo far. Everything was so heavy I could sware mine weighed 100 pounds. At first we made a real wrong turn of about one mile into dense foliage due to a broken sign. We finally found our way and took Comanche Pass over Comanche Peak. The terrain was difficult over 20 stream crossings that were overflowing and very fast. Here is where we used the stream crossing method.
It was 2 1/2 miles up comanche pass. It is an 800' gain in elevation: we stopped every 100 yards to catch our breath. Max elevation on the trail was 10,050. This made it much colder like almost 20 degrees colder. During this whole time we were hiking in the rain. No break in the showers. It was 3 1/2 miles down and 1 mile into camp. Before that one mile mark John fell and gash up his knee real bad. Blood was everywhere. We put a bandana around it and kept going. We didn't have time. We were too wet and two cold. Hypothermia was setting in. The rain just got stronger as we got into camp. It was an awful hike.
We pulled up into camp soaked to the skin and then some. We showed early signs of hypothermia. Good thing Jeff Schneider wasn't there or we would have all hurt him. His advice before leaving was, "dont bring your rain pants it hasn't rained in weeks and they will just make your pack weigh more." Many of us listened.
Our break had arived. We had adirondack shelters at this camp. Thanks be to God. Ours was a newer one. We had to share clothes. I had no shirts, so I borrowed Nathan's and he is much smaller than me, but I was cold. We layed out all of our dry things. We hovered over backpacking stoves for warmth. By this time hypothermia had set in to many of us. John and Me especially. I thank god had a dry sleeping bag he didn't. We got out emergency blankets and shared my sleeping bag. It was horrible. The worst thing was the staff could do nothing for us. All they could do was give us hot cocoa. Howard was upset. He argued with them for a while.
We did not do todays program. Getting warm was the priority.
Some of the scouts went to the stomp. All except some of the leaders, me, Nate, and Ryan. We were cold and we slept. I left my boots by the stove to dry. They finally did. I could wear wet clothes, but not wet boots in the morning. That is exactly what I did.
