I woke up feeling much wiser today. It is like we are living in a video game and somewhere through the night, I picked up another year of experience. I guess if I have to choose between wisdom and youth, I go with youth (not that it’s ever done me any good). Bunny did something she rarely does. She asked me for the food bag as soon as she woke up. I usually handle everything food related. I stepped out to pee and when I returned, Bunny gave me a surprise birthday bag of M&Ms which I had been carrying. She even went so far as saying I didn’t even have to share this bag which I had unknowingly been carrying.
It started out as a crappy weather day and continued that way. As soon as we got out of our tents, it started misting. We all ran our packs down to the shelter to try to keep them dry while we were packing up. Bear and I took care of the tents whilst we allowed our women folk to go on bowel patrol. I was the last to get my privy time (happy birthday to me). This was one of the worst privies we have run across. There was brown liquid oozing out of the box on to the floor and soaking the ground all around it. I didn’t verify by taste testing, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t chocolate.
Bear and Sassy took off while I was gagging my way through my morning quiet time. I got back to the lean-to just as they came back in. Bear had found the missing gasket from the water filter that had caused the meltdown on our arrival last night. The hiker in question now had a fully functional filter once again and he sheepishly apologized for his outburst last night. He said five months on the trail is too long implying, that we section hikers wouldn’t understand. Once again, our smell betrays us. I said I remembered having a few bad days around the 5 month mark, but now, as we near the 8 month mark, nothing bothers us (except little weedlings throwing temper tantrums that don’t think non-stinking old people are thru-hikers).
It was much colder today with the rain. We just put up our hoods, lowered our heads, put away our cameras, and pushed on. There was more climbing than descending but nothing that would be bad if the weather were nice. We crossed several streams, walked by beaver ponds where the beavers have obviously been in residence for years. At one point, the trail skirted a beaver pond that was almost a quarter mile long and a couple of feet higher that the trail. These little guys are hard working mechanical engineers (demonstrating that anyone or any animal is capable of earning an ME, I’ve never seen a rodent electrical engineer…come to think of it, I have worked with a couple of weasels. Are weasels rodents?)
I was getting chilled by the time we reached the top of Barren Mountain. As usual, I was bringing up the rear (so much for the benefits of youth). Less than a mile after the fire tower on the summit, we caught up with GCN, Bear, and Sassy having a discussion at the junction of a side trail leading to Cloud Pond Lean-to. The situation was this: it’s almost 7 miles to the next lean-to. There might be some stealth sites along the way, but no guarantees. Everyone is cold and a little miserable. If we push on, we run the chance of hiking in the rain after dark. It is a 0.3 mile steep side trail to the CLOUD pond Lean-to.
We all agreed we didn’t want to keep hiking today. We chose to drop down to the lean-to. Things were looking up. On the bright side, the trail started out very steeply down. I mean that in a good way. But even more astoundingly, GCN started to sing as we began hiking again. Most thru-hikers are basically lazy about putting in extra miles. If a shelter is more than one or two tenths of a mile off the trail, they won’t go to it. With an immediate challenge, that would deter those that were on the fence. I thought this would bode well for us having the shelter to ourselves.
It was a very long 3 tenths of a mile to the shelter, but it was empty. Sassy and Bunny still wanted to set up tents, but I was wanting the shelter because of the rain. In the end, we decided to set our tents up in the shelter (a no-no in normal circumstances). Chip, as usual, chose to still hang his hammock. The rain intensified and the temperature dropped, and we stayed warm and dry in our tents in the shelter. We had left plenty of space between us just in case anyone else showed up, but by 4:30, we felt confident no one was coming.
In between showers and thunderstorms (yes, Bunny May be a bad ass, but she is still a chicken about lightening) we could hear sounds coming from Chips fly behind the shelter. It wasn’t the snoring we were expecting, but a strange sound that we thought we’d never hear from those quarters. Good Chip Norris was still singing. Not perfect pitch like the four of us, but still singing. Chip is one of us!
EFG