We milked the check out time for all it was worth, as usual. Hitching out of town didn't go so well. We decided to split up to improve the odds. Apache, Slims, and I walked a for a while, and ended up getting a ride after about half and hour. We didn't see the others at the trail head, so we waited for 15 minutes or so, then started hiking on. We had more flat trail along the Housatonic for a while, then we started climbing back up into the mountains. We paused at the Tom Leonard shelter, and we didn't see any note from our friends there. Just past the shelter, the trail went along a really pretty ravine at Ice Gulch. Throughout the day, we were treated with nice cool temperatures. Between the leaf cover, and the huge, white clouds in the sky, the sun was kept in check all day. We're running into more and more southbounders now. I don't know if I've just been in the woods for too long, but it seems like all of the southbound girls are really cute. It seems I picked the wrong way to hike. Next time, next time. We took a snack and water break at Benedict Pond, with beautiful views looking out over the swampy pond, mountains rising up on either side. We walked another mile or so to Mt Wilcox, stopping at the "South" shelters. There were two shelters at this site, one was really old, but another 0.1 mile farther was the newer one, where we stayed for the night. We were able to get water from a small trickle of a spring there. We had heard that the water source at the North Wilcox shelter, a mile and a half north, was dry. We set up for the night, and ate dinner. We still hadn't seen the others, so we turned on our phones. We all had several texts from Tink and Rainbow Eyes. Apparently, they were 6 miles ahead of us at a campsite. When they hitched out of town, the driver took them to a different road crossing. They didn't want to be rude, so they just hiked on from there, skipping the section that we had covered this afternoon. We replied back that we wanted to meet up tomorrow at Upper Goose Pond. We were wondering how they managed to get to the wrong trailhead. Rainbow Eyes had stashed his hiking stick, the one he started the hike with, the one he had since he was a kid, back at the trailhead before Great Barrington. They didn't hitch back there after the errant hitch, nor did they just hike southbound, and re-hitch back up. Weird. Oh well. What's done is done. We had the shelter to ourselves, plus one other northbounder. Apache still strung his hammock up, under the porch beams of the shelter.
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| Standing above Ice Gultch |
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