Astrogirl

I hiked from Mt. Wilcox South to UGPC, 14.8 miles. I hiked another .75 miles or so on the approach trails for Mt. Wilcox and UGPC, but I did make pretty good time. There was a lovely pond between the two Wilcox shelters. Benedict Pond was much bigger and more dramatic, but when I passed by, it was raining.

Today was warm and muggy with lots of mud, rocks and roots. I feel like I rock hopped for 15 miles, trying to stay out of the deep mud. Often, there’s evidence of someone else going ankle deep in the mire, so you can often see where the deep parts are. Other times, it looks firm and you step in and…yuck. I don’t really mind getting wet or having wet feet (though days of it generally causes blisters because it softens the skin so much), but when I took my shoes off, my feet were black from the mud.

The think about rock hopping is that sometimes, it seems to not be worth it. You’re doing the extra work to keep your feet out of the mud, but taking the risk of winding up on your ass in the mud, something that did happen to me this day.

When I got to UGPC, I immediately went for a swim. The pond was definitely cold, but not extremely so. I was a lot cleaner and the cold water is great for the muscles and feet after the long work out. Looking at my clothes, it occurred to me that putting them on in the morning would really, really suck. I hung them in the bunkhouse hoping for mostly dry clothes.

I’ve learned that generally, when I think my clothes are as wet as they can get, I’m wrong. You learn this when you decide that rinsing them out is a good idea, only to find them a clammy horror in the morning.

The cabin itself has a terrific porch facing the pond, though you can’t see much of it from there. In the bunkhouse, people were paranoid about getting wet from blowing rain, so all the bunks near the windows (which were just screens) were empty. Awesome — that’s where I’d want to be anyway. I had my tarp handy, and I figured that if rain blew in, I’d throw it over me.

I was pretty wiped out, so I put off taking pictures until morning. This was not a good plan, as in the morning, the rain was just pissing down. The caretaker had an Irish Wolfhound (cream colored, not grey), who was pretty awesome. She also had a smaller dog that looked like some kind of whippet cross. There were the legendary endless pancakes in the morning, and that was nice, especially with the idea that we’d have to trudge off into the rain, first completing the .5 mile trail BACK to the AT, but without butter…not as tempting as I’d thought.

I met several SOBO thruhikers, Boulder, Plank, Detour (I think) and Caveman. There were other long distance hikers completing a big section to finish their through: Second Chance and DC Turtle. They were hiking with a former thru, Late Start. I also met someone from Whiteblaze here, Wysteria and her two hiking companions…and I didn’t write down their names.

I was planning to get to Dalton on the 14th which is 20 miles, so I really didn’t hang around much in the morning.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 27th, 2008 at 8:56 am and is filed under backpacking, Massachusetts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.