Continued...Snow Turtle arrived at the site that I found and expressed some concern about being blown over the side of the mountain. I quickly let her know there was no way wind could blow 400+ pounds of hikers and gear over the mountain. She again said I'm not so sure about this. Pride goes before a fall. If you don't know Kristi, she is quite possibly the sweetest human on the planet. She has put up with me for over a month out here, she rarely complains, and she does not rock the boat. This was here way of saying are you @$%#&%@$ crazy? This is a bad idea. I can be stubborn from time to time. We proceeded to set up our tent.
This was quite an ordeal to say the least it involved Kristi laying on the ground cloth while I staked it down then Kristi laid on the tent while I staked it down. The entire time the wind roared over the ridge blowing up sand and debris. I saw our rain fly blowing away in the distance and ran to catch it just before it became a kite and flew off into the distance. Every few minutes you would hear a noise like a ship scraping into an iceberg followed by a gunshot which was our tent stakes shooting off into the horizon. This was not good.
After 30 minutes in the dark we assembled the poles to our tent and threw our loaded packs into to weight it down while we completes the final step fitting the rain fly for the approaching storm.
We both ran out of the tent and grabbed the fly careful not to lose an eye as the wind shook the fly violently in the wind. I attached half of the fly and was about to finish and then it happened. I don't know how to describe this next part it happened so fast. Kristi and I held the tent by the poles. The wind picked it up and threw it around almost all of the stakes were gone. The sand was striking our fail like hail and then a wind came from the sky with the force of an angered thousand pound gorilla and destroyed our tent. All of the poles were broken our packs were wrapped inside like an unlucky paratrooper in malfunctioning parachute. I will not repeat what I said because everyone, but it is very close to the profanity I have invented for when biting flies are feeding on me.
We dug into the tent and grabbed our packs. The fear and shock was owhelming. The facts were we were on top of a mountain. We were in the middle of a horrible wind/sand/rain storm. It was now pitch black outside and our shelter was just destroyed. We could now go back down into the valley which was now being digested by this storm or we could continue into the mountains. We moved forward up the switchbacks. We stopped every 5 minutes to stay near each other. The wind made it difficult to move. The moon was blazing orange in the distance and we continued up the mountain. There was no where flat in sight. We were on a steep ridge with only trail visible. We moved on until I found a tree that somewhat...
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