Another freezing day in the desert

Miles: 14.8
Start time: 8:32am
End time: 2:05pm
High / Avg / Low temp: 49.5F / 46.0F / 39.5F
Relative Humidity Avg: 67.8%
Injuries: none to report

Here I sit writing in the tent, shivering and freezing half to death at 4pm, hardly the desert experience I was told about, life is certainly full unexpected surprises

The huge upside however is no scorching sun to slowly murder us during the day, so we've been able to walk further with less water, less sunburn and less sweat, so it's worth the cost of cold, also helps with motivation.. Resting means freezing..so you just keep walking..

We caved at about mile 15 and setup camp so we could retreat to our glorious down sleeping bags

So that aside, today started with 4 other tents in our camp site that arrived last night after we called it a day, not a big surprise given or was the first site after a 5 mile stretch uphill, people were generally quiet by 8pm, so no murdering was needed, hiker midnight is a sacred tradition after all, we decided to add a hiker glossary to the blog to help explain some of the gibberish in hiker land

Also to list any funny trail names we come across, like the hiker called jackpot, named for his uncanny ability to dig up other people's poop when digging his own catholes.. Jackpot!! Apparently his rate is about one in three ..clearly poor decisions have been made, existing catholes aren't that hard to spot..

After five miles we hit the next water source, and after humping down a quarter mile to this tule spring..which was rusty colors and barely an inch deep, we decided that we'd take a leap of faith and wait it out to a water cache 6 miles ahead, which thankfully paid off, the water report is a life saver out here and is based on hikers sending in data as they find the water, so it's always a bit of a crapshoot, the trail angels who maintain water caches are the real MVPs out here, definitely humbles us the amount of generosity we've experienced so far in the first 146 miles.

But we got water, enough to last out the night and the next five miles to paradise cafe, which by all reports is going to be awesome, and will be tomorrow's adventure

It was so cold and windy, windy more than anything was brutal all day, so we didn't really see any animals out today besides the occasional bird riding wind like a boss

So we'll call it a blog entry here and catch you tomorrow