AZT 39 – Jacob Lake

Daily Miles: 25
Total Miles: 770

Super cold night last night! By far our coldest night yet. The strong wind last night made it even colder. It was hard to get the motivation to get out of our sleeping bags, since it always seems like the time packing up makes us so cold.

We packed up in twenty minutes and headed off without eating anything… It was too cold to sit and eat.

As soon as we got out walking, the icy wind hit us pretty strong. We figured that with the wind chill, it was probably around zero degrees.

We were wearing all of our clothes and even improvised with some extra wind protection. We tied our bandanas around our faces like bandits to protect from cold burn. Beardoh even wrapped his z-rest sleeping pad around his waist to keep his lower half warmer.

All the standing water was frozen over so we had to break the ice in order to get more water in the morning.

We had 24 miles to get to Jacob Lake, and we tried to keep up a steady pace. We stopped a few times for SweetPea to roll out her hip or stretch, once for a late breakfast, and once for lunch. Since it was so cold, we didn’t really dawdle.

Arriving at Jacob Lake around 5pm we we’re greeted with a fire burning in the fireplace and warmth which felt so relieving. We were so thankful to have made it in out of the cold.

We ordered dinner at the cafe and ate it still wearing all of our clothes. It took us quite a while before we felt completely warm. The warm food and drink was good and the other patrons in the cafe were so friendly.

After checking into our room, we took showers and headed to bed. We are all wiped out from the walk and the cold. Surely we will sleep soundly tonight. Tomorrow we get a zero day as we wait for our friends, Purple and Carnivore, to arrive. We are looking forward to hiking with them for our final thirty miles of the trip.