Thursday, October 11, 2018 Awoke to snow, ice and bitter cold, but it was beautiful. My CCS tart was frozen but handled the load like a champ. My Hilleberg tent did even better as none of the snow or freezing rain stuck to it. The tarp I had to scrape off with my trowel and it was still frozen stiff and difficult to get in it's stuff sack. Note:Sorry I did get a video of my tent and tarp but no pics for the report. I seemed to have done a lot more videoing than Picture taking these last few day. If I can get some advise on how to add the video, I will edit that in later. I am not very tech savvy. My Chota boots were chunks of frozen ice and when I put them on to travel my feet were screaming at me even though I had two pair of wool socks and my hippies on. I do not recommend this set up for sub freezing conditions. Not sure what time I got on water as I accidentally packed my watch. The water was rough across Thomas with a pretty good wind out of the west and bitterly cold. with snow coming down. Made it to the 240r Portage to Cacabic lake, my whole body ready for a nice long walk out of the wind and through the woods. The portage had 2 blowdowns to maneuver around and 3 or 4 flooded area. I also saw two more grouse on this portage, one near each end. The last flooded area had a nice new boardwalk it's entire length. The freshly fallen snow made it hard to know what you were stepping on. It was a challenging portage but warmed me up and I felt great by it's end. Paddled weedy little Cacabic lake and then a short 10r portage to Alice. My cold weather paddle gloves unfortunately wetted out on me and my hands started to get cold so I switched to my thinner pair. Within 5 minutes of paddling thru the narrows of Alice my hands were frozen and my feet were not much warmer. I paddled up to check the main body of Alice lake, and saw it was windy and a no go. I decided to hit the camp site in the narrows and get my hands warm and eat lunch and hope the winds would die out. So I stopped at site#1172, it was out of the wind but I needed to get warm. So I decided to set up camp and get my dry stuff on asap. Amazingly after I did the snow stopped and I started to see spot of blue in the sky and then it happened. The sun poked through and hit me. Then I notice more blue sky coming, and it would snow on and off with the sun shining. I grabbed my for days uselessly dead Luci lamps and set them in the sunshine. Oh I can't tell you how good it felt. My froze tarp thawed. I basket in it. It was the warmest I had felt in a week, except while portaging. And it was short lived maybe 30-40 minutes total and it was gone. But it was enough to thaw me out and lift my spirits. It was the first time I had seen the sun since last thursday on Alpine and it was glorious. Then it snowed some more and got cold. I retreated to my tent and the warmth of my bag.