The scout motto, Be Prepared, has importance to anyone planning a trip into the wilderness. The higher you get the more unpredictable the weather can be and the further from civilization you are the more severe the consequences of poor decisions can be. During the transition seasons, for us in Oregon means Fall and Spring conditions change rapidly.
I am going to use a trip this fall into the Cascade Mountains as an example. Before making any trip into a Wilderness Area there are some important steps you should take. Anytime of year in forests there is the potential for forest fires, and it is even more the case later in the summer and fall. As I was planning our trip I took note of potential routes out of the wilderness in the event a fire was to start and block our planned route.
During final week of planning I checked the long range weather forecast for the area that we were going into. I could see that there was a potential for a weather front to move through the area, but the timing was not clear.
The last step is to let people know what you itinerary is and to sign in at the trail head.
On the first day of our hike the weather was spectacular, there was not a cloud in the sky and the temperature was perfect. As we set our camp that afternoon I decided that I was only going to put up my mosquito netting and not the full tarp.

As the day went on we began to see clouds pilling onto the mountains to the west, the moisture level was climbing and the temperature was beginning drop. As a precaution I decided to put up my tarp, although I didn’t fully tie it down thinking that I was really just protecting myself from heavy dew.
During the night a significant weather shift occur and in the morning it was completely socked in. It wasn’t really raining yet, in Oregon heavy dew just seems to fall from the sky, anything that was exposed was quickly getting wet.
My first mistake was not to tie down the tarp. In this case I didn’t pay much of a price, but if it had actually started raining and if the wind had come up I would have likely been very wet.
We did carry full rain gear, jacket, pants and hat. After packing up our wet gear we headed out. As the morning progressed it did start to rain, never very hard, but plenty to get things wet. My second mistake was not to put my pack cover on. Fortunately I have waterproof bags on anything that I must keep dry, but the pack cover would have kept things dryer.

Our afternoon was spent with a campfire getting things dry. We were lucky to have this luxury. Another area that needs improvement for me is my footwear. I like Smartwool socks and will continue to use them. The downside is that once they absorb water it takes a long time to dry them. I am going to add a pair of high tech socks that will dry quickly to my cloths; they will be a part of my normal rotation so one of the pairs of Smartwool will stay at home.
By late it the afternoon the weather was changing again, so by morning we were back to Bluebird weather.

It could have been a lot worse; we really never had any real discomfort. The key is to stay dry.