October 12

The morning was brutal with how far below freezing the temperature dropped in the night. My shoes were soaking wet from hiking in the snow yesterday and putting them on this morning caused excruciating pain. It's like putting your feet in blocks of ice, then trying to walk around with them as shoes. I had to leave and start hiking to try to thaw them out while Louis struggled to get his boots on. After 20 minutes of pain my shoes started to soften even with hiking through snow, and after an hour they were warm and just wet. I had to wait for a half hour for Louis to catch up as he had to actually hold his boots over his cooking stove before they were flexible enough to put on. Then, it took 2 full hours of hiking before he said they were less like blocks of ice and more like wet boots.

I had waited for Louis about 7 miles from our campsite at a point where the trail was finally mostly clear of snow. Our progress the rest of the day has been back to normal hiking speed. We did pass the trail that would take us to the summit of Mt. Whitney, but there was no temptation to even attempt the climb after yesterday's battle at 13,200 ft. There is little snow at 10,000 ft. but we can see the higher elevations are still covered. It seems like we cover ground in a flash now that the snow is minimal, and we both agree there is the possibility of a 25 mile day tomorrow.