Oct 1

Here comes the sun

It's incredibly cold this morning.  No snow fell last night, but it must be just above freezing.  A light rain is coming down intermittently, and the ground in front of the shelter is full of cold puddles and mud.  I have to keep moving, but the motivation to do so is hard to come by.  That requires getting out of my warm sleeping bag, changing out of my dry long underwear and putting on my cold wet hiking clothes from yesterday.  Everyone in the shelter is up and moving around, so I guess it's about that time again.  Apache is up for breakfast, but Rainbow hasn't gotten out of his tent yet.  The rest of the group headed out from the shelter, I was soon to follow, and Apache is staying back for a while to make sure Rainbow is holding up okay.  Back on the trail, I headed down from the ridge, into a boggy area at the base of Fourth Mountain.  The split wood bridges through the bog were slick.  A cold fog blew through.  The entire area felt really creepy.  The climb up Fourth Mountain was short, but steep.  Rain was now falling steadily, making for a miserable hike.  I came down from Fourth, then headed right back up Third Mountain.  I came to a flat rock, where I sat down to eat a snack.  The sisyphean task of hiking up and down these mountains, along the waterlogged trail, in the cold, rain, and fog, has been totally demoralizing these past few days.  For a brief moment, a strange dull yellow disc of light broke through the clouds.  Instantly, a smile came across my face, as I begged the sun to stay.  I sat on the rock enjoying the marginal bit of warmth it provided.  A few birds flitted around in the trees, making all kinds of racket.  One of them must have really done something wrong, because it was being assaulted by this other bird, in a high speed aerial chase.  Between the amusement of the fighting birds and the warmth of the sun, my mood started to improve.  But it would only be a short-lived moment of contentment.  The sun disappeared behind the clouds again, so I zipped my rain jacket back up and kept on hiking.  It was astounding how much difference just a little bit of sunlight can make.  The terrain so far in the Wilderness hasn't been awful at all, but the cold and wet has made it seem so much worse.  Just after Third Mountain, the trail crossed a stream.  Usually this would have been no problem, but with all this rain, the stream was nothing but raging whitewater.  I could see the white blazes of the trail just on the other side of the water.  This was definitely a "you've got to be kidding me" kind of moment.  There was no way to just rock hop across.  My shoes and socks were soaked anyway, so I said screw it, and plodded through the rapids.  It was actually kind of fun.  The rain trailed off to a few drops here and there, and by early in the afternoon, I made it to the Chairback Gap lean-to.  I sat my pack down, and began to have lunch.  The rest of the group was waiting there too.  There's another river ford coming up in a few miles.  Slims had moved on, trying to make it there by the end of the day.  The rest of us weren't looking forward to the idea of another ford in our current condition.  On top of that, we hadn't seen Apache and Rainbow yet.  The area around the shelter here was really nice, with lots of evergreens and birch trees.  We decided to call it a day.  Red squirrels were running around in the trees near the shelter.  They are funny, but incredibly annoying little critters.  I've been seeing them throughout New England, and I've dubbed them the 'security alarm' of the forest.  Before you ever see them, they know you're walking under their trees, and call out in a high pitched chatter, alerting everything in the vicinity to your presence.  Sometimes it can be quite startling when they go off as you are walking along in the still and quiet forest.  Walking out behind the shelter to gather firewood, they started back up at me.  "Yeah, yeah.  I hear you."  It was the same for the rest of the group as they were gathering wood too.  At least the rain had stopped.  All of the wood we gathered was wet, but we managed to get a roaring fire going.  I was on fan duty, furiously waving a plastic disc at the coals, until the largest logs were hot enough to burn through on their own.  Big campfire equals instant morale boost.  Nightfall came, but no sign of Apache and Rainbow.  We had only hiked 7 miles from Cloud Pond today.  I guess they stayed there to wait out the weather.  Not a bad idea considering what a slog today was.  I hope they're doing okay.

The trail over Third Mountain in the Hundred-Mile Wilderness.