We awoke on Sunday morning to the sound of a steady rain beating down on our tents. We tried to wait it out for a while, but it did not want to subside so eventually we decided to get up and see what we were dealing with. Although the rain was steady, visibility was good, so we slowly began the process of getting going for the day. After a quick breakfast we took down our wet tents in the rain. We took great care to minimize the amount of water transferred from the tents to the rest of our equipment by separating as much as we could with garbage bags and/or stuff sacks. Eventually we wanted to get the tents back up in a decent breeze to help dry them out.

The rain continued to come down, but we decided to bash on anyway at about 1100 hours. There was a well worn trail leading out of camp in the direction we were heading so we put our heads down and began trudging on through the mud and swampy ground that was everywhere. We tried to walk on the least worn, less muddy portions of the trail, but there was clearly a fair amount of rain in the weeks preceding our arrival and this, coupled with the active weather system made for some very soupy ground.

Shortly after setting out we ran into our first large mammal of the trip in the form of a moose that was grazing about 50 m off the trail. We stopped and watched her for a while before she wandered off and we resumed our hike. Amidst the steady rain we occasionally hit brief pockets of sunshine that would usually last for less than a minute. Our morale would rise and fall with the sun, but once you are wet, you are wet, so there was no point in stopping before putting a bit of ground behind us. Navigation was not a major concern for the first part of the days trek as we were walking down a valley of sorts with high features on either side, and a river running between them.

About a kilometer and a half after we left camp we began to cross more open, marshy terrain and the trail began to split into series of trails. We stuck to the one with the most obvious signs of recent human footprints as it was heading in the right direction. We soon realized that this had led us close to 500 m off course in a slow but steady tangent to the left of the recommended direction of travel. By the time we corrected this seemingly minor detour, we had probably added a full kilometer to our day’s travel. We spent some time trying to locate the primitive camp site at Mark’s Pond but eventually we were rewarded with the sight of the open air toilet which let us know we were there. Unlike the previous campsite at Little Island Pond, there were no pallets/tent pads, so we set up on the most level ground we could find.

We resisted the temptation to keep hiking to the next campsite as we had left later in the day, and the next bound was a little bit longer. We didn’t want to risk a long hike that might leave us looking for our campsite in the dark, especially considering the rain and the muddy condition of the ground which made the going a little bit slower. We pitched our two tents close together and made a porch between them with an extra tarp we had brought along with us.

This camp site was right by the ponds edge and was quite exposed. We had arrived in camp around mid-afternoon so we had to kill a few hours of time before eating supper, or we would have been wide awake in the middle of the night. We got into the tents, but didn’t completely strip down at this point. Nobody really wanted to get out of their hiking boots too early since the camp site was so wet, but by this time most of us had a least damp if not wet footwear. The few hours we spent reading and killing time were made somewhat less pleasant by the persistent and steady winds blowing through the camp.

We set up a makeshift clothes drying area and got some supper into us before getting into the tents for the night. The rain had stopped later in the afternoon and we were hoping for better weather the next day. Once we were out of our wet clothes our overall comfort levels increased dramatically and we had a nice evening of reading before calling it a day. Overall, day two felt unproductive, but the relative short hike provided us an oportunity to adjust our kit and work through some aches and pains. You have to be prepared for at least one if not two additional days while doing the Long Range Traverse, as the weather and overall condition of the ground can change quickly.