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The first night of camping in the High Sierras was a chilling experience.

Anyone who's lived through a North Texas winter has been cold. They've suffered through bone-chilling winds and gray days.
Snow and ice -- maybe not so much.
Parts of the High Sierras pack snow and ice even on a sunny day in August.
The first night of true overnight camping during a six-day, 50-mile hiking trip last August taught me things I hadn't known before about cold.
When my group reached the other side of Kearsage Pass, we went about setting up camp and eating supper. The crazy, cruel efforts of the day were catching up with me.
I've never, ever before been so tired. I could barely stay awake long enough to eat.
Christina and another trailmate, Chris, were joking and laughing.
My main goal was just to remain sitting upright.
After the meal, Chris assigned me the task of refilling Lon's water bag. Suffering a bit from the altitude, he'd already turned in.
Refilling the bag turned out to be sort of like filling a balloon up with water -- without a faucet. Between finding my way to the pool in the dark, struggling with the ornery water bag, wondering if snakes lived that high up and feeling exhausted, a two-minute job took about 20.
In the process, my fingers turned ice cold. I was surprised the pool, itself, wasn't solid ice because the water's temperature was so glacial.
I staggered back up the path in the dark, put down the water bottle and crawled into my tent.
There followed several minutes of wrestling with boots, clothing and sleeping bag.
And then, I thought, that surely I would fall into a coma until the next afternoon.
Instead, I felt terribly awake.
I tossed, turned, put on more clothes and tossed some more.
Sleep was elusive because it was cold and getting colder, the ground was no mattress and I was worried about surviving the next five days.
Sure, it was awesome to be among beautiful scenery, pushing myself to -- literally -- reach new heights physically.
But could I really take five more days of this insanity?
What kind of an idiot goes on backpacking trips anyway? This was stupid. Civilization was calling. I was going to turn right back around, climb back up to the top of Kearsage Pass and ...
Wait a minute. Oh Lord, No!
My plans were to avoid Kearsage Pass for the rest of my life. I wasn't going back there.
That left no way to go but forward.
Meanwhile, I was freezing my Texas toes off. Around 5:30 a.m., I dropped off into a fitful sleep.
At 5:31 a.m., I thought I heard people stirring around and talking in our campsite.
For criminey's sake, couldn't my trailmates sleep late like any sane person would do after the Herculean efforts of yesterday?
No.
Not at all.
I crawled out of my tent at around 7 a.m. after more tossing, turning and shivering.
It occurred to me that I was colder than I'd ever been in my life, even when I lived in New Mexico and snow was a regular feature. It was a different kind of cold, the kind that sinks through your skin, into your bones and rewrites your DNA.
I knew one thing: Whatever happened no this trip for good or ill, I'd be a different person when it was all over.

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