Day 233: The Third Day

We got up nice and early around 4am on the third day of the trek. After piling on some warm clothes we started the night climb up a few hundred meters, along with all the other people who came for the sunrise. As we climbed the wind brought the first (and presumably last) few flakes of snowfall I've had to deal with on my trip (I have been through 3 hail storms, however). We got to the summit with time to spare, but things were looking pretty ominous. In the gathering light we could see that the mountains were almost completely covered in clouds, and at times the clouds would come right over us so that we couldn't even see each other, let alone the mountains. Ultimately the wind picked up and blew most of the clouds away before the sun had risen.

We climbed back down to our tea house for breakfast, then it was off again. I'd known since the start that the third day of the trek was the killer, and it didn't disappoint. We first climbed down into the valley then immediately had to climb back up to over 3200m, then back down, then back up... Often people do the Poon Hill Trek as a 5 day one, and this was the day where we had to make up most of that lost day. We also ran into some drizzle, and kept pushing the pace to try to keep ahead of any major rain which would make the path muddy and horrible for hiking. There were beautiful transitions in scenery as we started off in cold pine forests then moved our way almost to tropical jungle as we continued to descend and things got hotter and more humid.

By the time we finally stopped for the day we'd covered a lot of ground and were at the last real town before getting back to where we had started. This would leave us about 5 more hours of trekking to go on the last day.