Date: 2011-08-16
From: Piazza Rock Lean-To

To: Piazza Rock Lean-To, day 2
Miles today: 0.0

(In which I take my first zero in a shelter)As we go to bed with the sounds of rain drumming overhead, Guinea Pig groans at the prospect of having to hike the next day in the rain. "If the weather's like this, I'm not going anywhere tomorrow," I declare from my sleeping bag.I wake at 6am to the sounds of Cheshire packing up and of continued rain on the shelter roof. "OK, we're all up now," Cheshire observes, and I want to point out the difference between our stirring in response to his noise and our actually getting up but I am too tired for the conversation. Luckily most of the others seem to feel the same way, and we stay bundled up in our sleeping bags until Cheshire and Cheese leave and we can fall back asleep."Are you guys really staying here?" Trashcan asks after some further period of sleep, and Doc Boom and I shrug, not feeling much urge to go anywhere as long as the rain keeps up. Trashcan shakes his head, and not being able to bear delaying the completion of the journey another day, says goodbye for now and heads north into the rain. And then more sleep, more glorious sleep.The shelter is down to Doc Boom, Guinea Pig, Owl and me, and we drift through various stages of warm, downy unconsciousness until 11am, occasionally hopping over in our sleeping bags to retrieve our food bags from the mouse hangers and eat a snack before taking another nap. Guinea Pig asks what our plans for the day are, and I reply that all I see is a futures market in my head in which the price for any shelter other than the current one is rapidly approaching zero.Guinea Pig, whose initial plans of reaching the second shelter turn into fantasy somewhere around the second or third nap, still plans to make the next shelter until 10:30, when even a nine mile day begins looking unlikely. "The only place I'm considering going is back to town for more food and a book," Doc says, and with this Guinea Pig's projected miles for the day flatline and we all give up any pretension of moving forward.Doc leaves his gear in the shelter and collects our trash from last night's banquet to take back to town. Guinea Pig, Owl and I laze about the shelter in our sleeping bags, working up the energy for the occasional dash through the rain to the privy. The caretaker Rocky comes by, and while I had worried that she might not like our zeroing in her shelter, she turns out to be totally cool with it. "You guys definitely did the right thing," she tells us while she sits and chats. "The weather should be much better tomorrow and you'll get to enjoy the views." A pair of southbounders comes by on their way to town, wet and freezing from the hike along the ridgeline with high winds, and their misery makes it hard to regret the decision to zero.When the rain eventually dies off around 2pm, after more than 24 hours of falling at various intensities, we go to explore the Piazza Rock from which the shelter took its name. Just a hundred or so yards off trail, the rock loom over the surrounding boulder field, and provides a large dry area safe from the rain. Owl scrambles up the steep slick path to the top of the rock, but Guinea Pig and I content ourselves with the views from the bottom.Doc returns with cheese, crackers, cookies and books, including two paperback romance novels at Guinea Pig's request. She immediately starts flipping through for the good parts and bursts into laughter, reading aloud the choice quotes about "his turgid member". After selecting one of the books to actually read, "Wicked All Day", Doc takes the other, "Conquer the Night". With Owl's Fellowship of the Ring (the single most read book on the trail) and my Magician King on my Kindle we have a book reading party in the shelter.After a few chapters Owl and I get up to explore the nearby caves, but Doc and Guinea Pig, engrossed in their romance novels, decide to stay put. The caves turn out to be more of a jumbled collection of rocks with some neat open areas underneath, kind of like a smaller and more vertical Mahoosuc Notch. Being an optional blue blaze from which I can turn back at any time, I enjoy the caves much more than the notch, and hang out with Owl at the top before heading back to the shelter.Other than two section hikers who tent away from the shelter and stick to themselves, nobody else shows up, meaning that we miss out on one of the advantages of zeroing, seeing the people who had been a day behind us. We speculate that the days of rain probably drove the hikers a day behind us to pay for the relatively expensive lodging in town, the same way that it kept us from hiking on.When it gets dark we read by headlamps in our sleeping bags. Both romance novels are nearly finished already, and all of us are surprised, though not unpleasantly, by how quickly the day slipped by. It's my first time zeroing in a shelter, and while it wasn't on my list of experiences to try before summiting, I'm glad that it ended up happening and would heartily recommend it to others. What would doubtlessly been one of my least favorite days on the trail instead turned into one of my favorites, and leaves me feeling better than I have since entering Maine.