The storm intensified through the night and I had my first opportunity to enjoy a thunderstorm while sleeping in a hammock. The lightning was about ten seconds away, but that’s enough to make quite a bit of noise and light up the sky dramatically. I had set my hammock up with the fly a bit high and I was worried that water was dripping onto my feet. A bit was splashing on the ground and then up under the tarp, but most of what I was feeling was the drops of water vibrating the tie out lines for the hammock. It was a cold night and I didn’t want to risk getting my sleeping bag wet so I experimented with putting my feet up on the high side of the hammock, but that was too uncomfortable. I was starting to be jealous of Alex in his tent, but when he got up the next morning I found out that he was even more wet thanks to a leaky fly.
Normally I read quite a bit while camping, but we’d been staying up pretty late and I’d been sleeping uncharacteristically well, so this was the first night of the trip that I did much reading. I eventually drifted off to sleep, but was woken by thunderbolts several times.
The rain seemed to have stopped by dawn, but the clouds weren’t letting the sun through at all. It sprinkled rain a couple of times while I made pancakes for breakfast, but it did seem to be clearing up by the time we headed out to do some ridge running. There are inviting hills all around Grace Lake, but we decided to visit Carmichael’s Rock first and then see how time and the weather left us.
The climb up to the rock was a bit more difficult than I remembered, particularly with the rocks so wet. I managed to find the rock without having to rely much on my GRSr even though I didn’t have a printout of the photo to guide me this year. (Just like last year I’ve deleted the actual location of the rock from my GPS track logs).
We climbed to the top of a nearby peak to see the view and decide what to do next. From the peak Grace Lake stands out against the hills even further below, highlighting the fact that it’s perched high up in the hills. When we turned to look south we could see the hills and islands of McGregor Bay receding into the mist below and a dark storm cloud heading our way from above! There was no time to find any shelter better than some trees, and within minutes the storm was upon us, beating down with torrential rain. We tried to wait the rain out but it showed no signs of letting up after a few minutes, and we decided to head downhill when we heard a warning rumble from the sky.
We had to proceed very carefully down the hill on the wet rocks. Normally I’m very diligent about turning the canoe over, but this time I forgot, and when we found it the back end was already full of water. There had been no more thunder so we dumped out the boat and paddled back to our campsite in the torrential rain. By the time we got back to our tarp we were thoroughly soaked and there was no sun to dry out our clothes.
We changed into the driest stuff we had, and then began a long wait for the rain to stop. I had hoped that we could do some more exploring later in the day, but the threat of rain never passed for long enough for us to venture out again, so we just watched the clouds and talked.
Cloud watching on Grace Lake is an interesting experience because at times the hills, and even the lake, are in the clouds. Sometimes the east end of the lake would disappear entirely, and then the large mounds of rock surrounding the lake would slowly begin to reappear, at first as dim shadows which slowly resolved themselves into white hills, until finally we could watch tendrils of fog and mist wrap themselves around the peaks and through the valleys. When the water came down hard the sheets of rain would curl and twist across the landscape.
We did finally get enough of a dry spell to get a fire going, and we were able to emerge from the tarp for long enough to cook dinner in the open, but then the rain came again and put out our fire. We decided to call it a day and go to bed early when Alex was bitten by one of the carpenter ants that were infesting our refuge. I had hoped to read a bit before going to sleep, but as soon as I got settled in my hammock the batteries in my flashlight died, so after a bit of tossing and turning I finally went to sleep.