Jen and Juice, at mile 277 on the Pacific Crest Trail:

What a night it was. I slept fairly soundly, Jenny on the other hand, was up most of the night conviced that the next huge gust was going to wisk away our tent. Thanks to her ingenuity the tent held firm. As the gusts were strengthening the night before Jenny had the brilliant idea to place large rocks on top of all 12 of the stakes that hold down our tarp-tent. These rocks, I am convinced, held the tent in terra firma instead of going up like a tattered balloon.

This is just the beginning. When we did finally awaken in the morning, then tent was just a half-inch from our faces. When we had gone to sleep we had at least a foot above us. What gives you ask. After a few groggy moments we saw that snow was actively falling on us and had weighed down the tent to such a point that it was almost totally laying on top of us. We pushed all of the snow off we could from the inside, and discussed our strategy. We finally put our heads together and got a game plan. While still under the tent we fully dressed, filled our packs, and got ready for the day. Once this was done, we got out and immediatly extended our umbrellas which kept us out of the snow. One inch had already accumulated and looked to be coming down at about 3/4″ per hour. We took our packs and leaned them under a large tree that was blocking the snow and went back to collapse the tarp-tent. This being done we walked away, with all of our gear dry, and our bodies ready to face the day. It was brisk, as you can imagine, so we had to walk briskly to generate the heat necessary to keep our appendages warm. After about an hour the snow subsided, and we were able to put away the umbrellas. I cannot describe how beautiful it was when the blue sky came out and the snow was covering all of the high desert landscape.

Bonus link: Haiku’s PCT blog.