Twas a dark and rainy night. And rainy. And rainy. Somehow, the rain cover wasn’t quite right on my tent, and the foot part of my sleeping bag got wet – luckily I am small enough to scrunch up so it didn’t bother me much. But the rain drumming incessantly on the tent did. It drowned out my pleasantly bubbling brook, which turned into ye old ragin’ river by daybreak, but did not flood the tent as I was half afraid it would. A restless night!
The day was full of mental “I don’t want to do x”, followed by “you’ll do x anyway”. The first x was getting up. Didn’t want to. Stalled. Finally had to take care of business, so I got up and stuffed up a wet tent, wet sleeping bag, and picked up wet poles, after a quick breakfast of two Clif bars. So much for a huge breakfast! (The second x was “I don’t want to hike”.)
All the same, the first part of the day was a pleasant walk in the woods at a slight uphill angle, very enjoyable. I reached Surplus Pond, 1.9 miles in, in decent time; my energy level finally kicked in at that point, I think.
The amount of water dropped last night was quite impressive, and very annoying. Climbing Mt. Wyman was an exercise in patience and wet boots. The trail was all mud, or streams flowing over and along the path, or both. A lot of slipping and sliding. Some very colorful language when a boot unexpectedly slipped into the mud. It slowed me down, but I was at Hall Mountain Shelter, 6 point something miles in, by 1 pm.
There I took a good sized break, because the remaining miles contained Moody Mountain; not high on the scale of difficulty compared to the other mountains I have recently climbed, but it would not be a cakewalk either. It was a mixture of rock scrambles, rock steps, some muddy/watery trail, and the truly annoying trait of being seemingly topless. Eventually summited though, and started down.
I am at a hostel in Andover tonight – not the same one, because that would feel like going backwards. I decided to hostel up so that my boots, tent, and sleeping bag could dry; because I was seriously craving a cheeseburger; because the nearest shelter was another six miles on; and because I wanted clean socks. Tomorrow will not be a zero, and today was not a nearo, since I covered 10 miles today as planned.
Tomorrow, the terrain looks much easier on the map, and I plan to – hope to – cover more miles than 10! I need to start increasing my mileage again now that I am nearly through the tough area of southern Maine.
Oh! Almost forgot! I forded my first stream today! The rains raised the water level at Black Brook high enough that a lot of the usual rockhopping stones were underwater, so I ended up wading across. That water was /cold/.
The wind was blowing like crazy today as well, but did not threaten my cap this time.
I hike on!
TRAILS, TRIALS, AND TRAVAILS 