Confusion and campfire stories
Saturday’s night sleep was much easier than Friday nights. Even though the temperature dropped down to 18 F, the lack of wind and a few tricks I learned from my fellow hikers helped keep me warm throughout the night. I had always heard that the best way to stay warm was to sleep without your clothes on. This way all your body heat is radiated back to you. However, one of the things I didn’t know was that although the radiant heat is what you want to keep you warm, the inside of the bag is rather cold. I threw on a pair of dry socks, a clean shirt, and thin pants in hopes of keeping my warm body away from the cold inside of the bag. To my surprise it worked rather well. I also learned that it isn’t wise to get up in the middle of the night to take a whiz. Instead, just keep a bottle inside your bag and then use it as a foot warmer after you begin to fill it up. 
It kept my feet toasty for the rest of the night.
After waking Sunday morning we packed up our gear and headed out early. Luckily our gear was much dryer than it was the night before, but there was still a bit of condensation on the bag and sides of the tent. Our group spread out quite considerably for Sunday’s walk. I kept up with the initial party for about 45 minutes till I dropped back to refill my water supply. After that I was pretty much on a solo hike for the rest of the day. It was the most peaceful five hours of walking that I have ever had.
When we got to camp, most of us set out our tent, sleeping bag, and other stuff that was soaking wet from the previous two nights out to dry. Our campsite that evening was on the northern rim of the gulf, and with the air currents coming out of the valley and directly through our site it wasn’t long before everything that had gotten wet the previous two nights dried out. We gathered a boatload of firewood, setup our tents, and prepared our meals.
The second group made it to camp later on that evening after a bit of confusion. There were two ways into the campsite. The trail head was the main way into the site, but there was a shortcut just before the main trail head by about thirty yards. One of the guys in the second group got to the trail head about 10 minutes before the rest of the group did. Unfortunately, the rest of the group took the shortcut into the camp, so the guy waiting at the trail head decided to hike back down the hill to look for them. The only problem was the fact that this hill was extremely steep. It was one of those hills that you are only able to take 10 steps up before you have to take a break to catch your breath. He finally arrived back at camp about 2 hours after the rest of his companions.
All in all, the second day of hiking was much nicer. The weather was a lot more cooperative, the peace and quiet was wonderful, and although the hill at the end of the trip was a back breaker, it was quite a nice trek.
