Occasionally I would have to unwind my mummy wrappings and climb down to pick out the ice balls that packed our horses hooves. I had tried applying a layer of bacon fat to make the snow slip, but this treatment only lasted a few minutes. If I ignored the problem too long, our horses ended up walking on stilts, and each additional pound per hoof was equal to five on his back.

If this book had been written as we traveled along, this day would have filled two or three chapters alone. The title would have had the word "misery" included. We didn't make it to a suitable place to camp until well after dark. We went to bed stiff, frozen, and hungry.

Looking back on it now, I shouldn't complain. We survived. It was one pass, after another, up, and then down. Switchbacks were hard to find. We had to shovel out drifts. We had to walk our horses past dangerous drop-offs where one slip—either man or horse—would have been the end. There was wind, snow, then freezing rain.

I think we made it through the afternoon by mental gymnastics alone. I tried to remember what the desert had been like. Hot. Yes, that was it. So hot that the metal cap on the canteen had been too sizzling hot to hold. Remember Barry? I wiggled my toes and thought about the burning sand at our oasis at Cabazon, and the relief of jumping into the ice cold stream. Ice? NO. THINK WARM.