As luck would have it I didn’t sleep well on the flat, soft ground. My body must have become accustomed to sleeping in awkward positions on granite. I just can’t win. I slipped out of the tent unnoticed and headed for the Ritz Carlton.

Breakfast was yoghurt on cereal. Again, I had been lied to my entire life. When it comes to cereal, milk is yoghurt’s poor, ugly, disenfranchised, runny, less significant, bland, boring brother. I was also introduced to Vector. Vector is cereal for totally extreme people; in fact it’s not even really a cereal. It’s branded as “meal replacement”. Replacing breakfast with it didn’t seem as exciting as replacing other traditionally non cereal based meals such as lunch or dinner.

We spent the morning re-supplying our gear and restocking our food. CLEAN CLOTHES! Whoop! Strangely, I was more excited about a new long sleeve shirt and a long undershirt than new underwear. Go figure. We packed up, re-divided the group gear and climbed in the crummy for a long drive to the trail head. The drive made yesterday’s rough road seem like a salt plain. We drove for over two on very rough logging roads. At one point I seriously thought I hurt my back.

The crummy, driven by Christina, dropped us off at the end of a logging road, two hours from anywhere. We were again, all alone in the middle of the mountains. This time the mountains were bigger, it was colder, and just a few hundred feet up we could see the white gold, snow. It was going to be a cold day.

We started to prep our packs to leave…then Matt and Jasmin seemed to sense tension in the group. Within a few minutes we were standing around in a circle talking about the tension, two hours from anywhere, in the middle of the mountains. We were a wilderness self help group of sorts. The issues of cultural divide between the French and English were brought up. The English half of the group (all strangers) felt a little controlled by the French half (all friends). These issues were brought up and discussing in a surprisingly mature way. We agreed to work on them and we headed out into the very damp and very cold woods.

About 15 minutes into the trek we stumbled into the snow. There was about 2 inches on the ground, just enough to make it slippery and miserable. Matt and Jasmin sensed the growing discomfort in the group and said we should set up camp just forty minutes into the hiking. It was late afternoon and the going was only going to be tougher up higher. We split up looking for tent sites.

Tent sites here were going to be messy. The snow and rain before it had turned the entire hillside into a muddy mess. Add in the fact that our tents had no floors and it was shaping up to be a poor night. We scraped off what snow we could and set up tents. It was getting cold. Really cold. Matt kept saying that he’s never seen snow this early in the season.

We had a quick, short, and freezing supper. Bed was calling my name loudly. Adding to the volume of bed’s call was the fact that I was on for preparing breakfast. I walked up through the bog-like field to the tent. I crawled into bed. I had everything on. Long underwear, fleece pants, wind pants, two pairs of socks, a fleece shirt, another fleece shirt, my large jacket, mitts, and my toque. I still shook I was so cold. I eventually fell asleep to the sound of wind and snow blowing around the tent. Snow in September, who would have thought.

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