The clear skies didn’t last long. Not too long after we got in the tents, the monsoon started. By the time morning arrived, none of us had any interest in getting out of our tents. After a while, we felt George’s heat signature moving about outside. He called me out to talk with him a bit.
The original plan was to hike 8.1 miles to Hatchet Lake today to continue our way to Rock Harbor. George was glum and told me he didn’t think he could make it. It wasn’t the weight of his pack or physical conditioning, it was actually something worse (which I, too, have experienced while hiking—no, not hemorrhoids). With the rain all day yesterday and the trail diving, George’s pants had gotten totally soaked. Larger people can attest to this, when you’re a little gravity enhanced, your thighs sometimes rub together. Add wet pants to thigh rubbing, and you get a very irritated inflamed patch of skin on the inside of your thighs. This hot spot is painful every step. In the past, I’ve tried boxer briefs to keep my thighs covered and dry (didn’t work for me at the time). The only real solution I found was too just lose the weight. George had some gauze pads large enough to cover the inflamed area, but asked if I had anything else. All I could suggest was gold bond foot powder to dry it out or Vaseline to slick it up—he didn’t like either idea.
With the rain and George’s inflamed thighs, we decided to change our trip itinerary. No longer would we try to cross the island, but we’d go back to Windigo and set up base there. Also, since we were no longer time pressed, we would just chill today while it rained. Since we weren’t going to be leaving camp today, I decided to chill another bottle of wine (purely in the interests of lightening our pack weights overall).
Pam and I carry an REI Half Dome T3+ tent so we have plenty of room in the tent. We rearranged things and invited George to join us for a day of cards. Since there aren’t any bears on the island, we can be pretty slack with food storage, as in, we had all the food in our tent. We ate a cold breakfast of protein bars, PB crackers, and gorp and then started playing 3 handed hearts. Normally, I dominate at cards, but George is also a card counter so it was basically a 2 man contest (sorry, Pam, but it’s true). After several games with George coming out on top, I decided to introduce an air of apathy into my play. I unscrewed the second bag of wine—it was noon somewhere.
From this point on, I don’t know who won (or do I care). My strategy was working perfectly. Pam and George both declined the wine so I was forced (yes, forced) to kill the bag all by myself. The trials of leadership never end! We also ate a cold lunch in the tent. We had found some backpackers’ chicken salad that we just added cold water to and ate on tortilla wraps. I thought it was delicious, Pam and George were less than enthusiastic about it. I have no idea what could have influenced my taste buds so.
After about 8 hours of tent isolation, the rain let up enough for us to emerge to cook a hot supper of lasagna and apple crisp. While we were eating, a couple of young guys from Milwaukee came into camp. These were the first people we had actually seen since leaving Windigo 2 ½ days ago.
