Day 49 - Tent Day

I opened my eyes to the cold temperature of the morning (3degrees) and rain still beating away at my tent above me. It was dark out when it should have been light, so I decided to stay in my tent a little while longer to wait out the weather. I eventually made my mind up to just spend the day in my tent as I had more than sufficient food to last me until Wanaka, and I was in no mood to accent 700 meters into the hills cloaked in wet weather gear to then make my way through the valley to another campspot of choice. I had a spectacular view of the surrounding mountains from my tent, and I could see a new layer of white snow had set down on all the mountains at some point in the evening.

At some point yesterday I noticed a problem with my camera. The shutter button stopped functioning properly, preventing me from taking any pictures. My best guess is that the weather sealing is wore out and failed, and some water got in at some point during yesterdays rain. This made a dark rainy day in my tent very depressing. My camera is the one thing I cannot live without, and the realization that I will have to finish this last month of hiking without it has broken my heart. I really hope the sun will come out soon, but I know it's not due for a few more days at least. The cold weather has also infected my camera with condinsation to make matters even worse. It's currently sealed in a airtight zip lock bag with silicon moisture absorbers. And it seems that lots of other pieces of gear are falling apart. My shoes are in shambles, one of the laces doesn't even lace anymore. My stove burner has been shutting off randomly while I'm cooking, and my last pair of injiji toe socks are just days away from getting a hole in my big toe. Everything is damp, including my mood at the moment, and I'm starting to realize that I'm still quite far from the finish line. With winter moving in much faster than normal I'm beginning to realize that this next month will be by far the hardest part of my whole journey.