What I found most disturbing was how much worse it could have been. We had ideal weather -- even rain would have made the latrine trips totally miserable (think of frequent slips and falls on the hill between tent and latrine), while heavy snow would have closed the trail home *and* burned through our firewood stash while we were too weak to gather and cut more. The flip side, I guess, is that we have a good air ambulance system up there and we were probably just a phone call away from having paramedics drop in if we had felt like loading down the ol' health care system.
Then again, since none of us are willing to even ask for directions unless someone is spurting blood, I guess the chances of actually using a medevac were pretty slim
