...but it's time for a change.

Looking at the footprints headed to the glorious pizza-and-beer-filled wonderland, I felt a surge of jealous... panic, almost. We were standing eight miles from rest. Eight miles from warmth. Eight miles from endless food. Eight miles from Melanie. We could be sitting down in a heated truck in five hours...

Were we really going to continue?

As I continued to lower myself further and further, moving past the point of return, I prayed my foot would find the rock before the prow of snow broke off... sending me into the dark hole under the ice that had been carved by the forceful stream above.

Fighting the pushing force of the water at my back, I lowered and lowered... but my foot wasn't making contact with the rock yet! I felt panic flood my brain. I was too far over the edge to get back onto the platform, but I couldn't find the damn boulder I'd spotted from the side! Had I overestimated the distance down to the rock?!

Black water swirled angrily around my legs, removing every shred of warmth from my skin under my rain gear. As I stood perched in the middle of the creek, feeling in my legs almost immediately disappeared. I looked across the creek at Amped and muttered, "Dammit. This is absolutely NOT safe."

An ominous thought drifted into the forefront of my mind, 'This isn't going to end well.'

Sure enough, I watched in horrified shock for the second time that day as Thor wobbled, slipped... and went into the black, rolling mass of water.

"NOOOOOO!!!" Amped yelled in dismay, "SWIM THOR, SWIM!!"

The silhouette of the large, grey lion stood out against the white backdrop of the snow-covered mountainside behind it. The cat was slowly walking high on a ridge above us about 200 yards away. It was going in the same direction we were... it was walking what appeared to be the same speed that we were...

It's head was low, looking down toward the valley where we were. Was it... watching us?

At 2 a.m., my eyes shot open at the sound of my muffled alarm.

Yesterday had taught us a borderline traumatic lesson: do whatever it takes to walk on hard snow. We couldn't mentally afford another day of miserable postholing. 

As we sat in the comfortable lower elevation at Woods Creek, sipping coffee by headlamp, and slowly breaking down camp in the still morning, we had no idea what was coming.

There was an ungodly hard day ahead of us.

I had spent the entire trip trying to keep up with Amped, but now I found myself waiting for him. Every time I'd stop and wait, I'd reach the point of concern right when he'd appear from the snow-choked trees with a heavy limp, and an even heavier look in his eyes.

This wasn't good.

Surprisingly, it wasn't much easier to get up after the next alarm... but grumpiness aside; it was time to go. The snow was hard again, the weather was still, and we were five miles from the highest point on the Pacific Crest Trail, Forester Pass (13,200 ft).

But we needed to get there before the sun.