May 29 Day 35 Welcome to Snow - En Route to Chama

Another leisurely day.  We woke up late, ate breakfast, and wrote in our journals still in our sleeping bags. Got on trail by 9!  That's the latest for me so far.  What was the rush?  

There was a lot of snow and it seemed to be melting substantially. There was water everywhere!  Springs flowing, marshy areas, trail flooding, water everywhere!

 It was a chill 19 miles today with a couple of wrong turns and the discovery of what the snow was going to be looking like up ahead. 

We first came across small patches of snow that became larger and larger, eventually becoming a constant post-holing situation.  We would step onto the snow and it would give way and our legs would fall through. Over and over and over again. 

We saw that across the river there was practically no snow, so we crossed the river and made our way onto the snowless banks.  That was much faster travel.

We found a nice camp spot up on a pass, surrounded by trees.  There was even a fire ring!  First things first, make fire and set up tarp.  I got dinner going and checked mileage for the day, noticing, casually, that we were camping at 10,440 ft!  Nice!  We hadn't even realized we were that high up, which was a good sign. It meant we were acclimatizing. The more snowy the areas are, the harder it is to find dry ground.  Generally the snow is in large patches, so avoidable when camping.  This is what life was going to be like from now on I guess.  But even more intense!

Dinner and hot chocolate for the night.  It was setting up to be a cold night, so I hoped my Pashmina would do the trick!