Date: 2015-09-10
From: Rt 15 mile 2074.7

To: Long Pond Stream
Miles today: 14.3
Weather: moderate rain

The problem with town days is that you're always on someone else's schedule. And so it was today, when we were both up before six and yet we didn't start hiking until just before nine. And that turned out to be significant for the end of the day.First though, there was breakfast. The breakfast at Shaw's is very nice, with eggs cooked to order, bacon, excellent home fries and all you can eat blueberry pancakes. We chatted with Pace Car and Wye Knot, who is also on TrailJournals.The start of the hike was quite benign, though the trail was much muddier and sloppier than before because of yesterday's rainstorm. Still, we made it to Little Wilson Falls not too long after noon, the sun was shining and we had a nice lunch break. I almost forgot my spork on the rocks but fortunately Gary noticed before we left. We also tried to recreate a selfie we took two years ago when we were vacationing here and hiked to Little Wilson Falls from our vacation rental. I'm hoping we look exactly the same with no more grey hair than two years ago. The afternoon though was pretty tough. There were fairly minor ups and downs but there were lots of rocks, roots and mud to slow us down. Oh, and fords, which are time consuming also, what with the shoes off, crocs on, cross, dry off, shoes back on routine. We had planned to go to Long Pond Shelter but at 3:20 we still had 4.6 miles to go. I thought it would take about 2.5 hours, maybe a bit more, but by 5 o'clock we had only covered another 2 miles. If I had been by myself, I probably would have gotten water at one of the many many streams we crossed today, and found myself a stealth site. But Sasquatch was ahead and when we met up at one of the streams I just suggested he'd hurry on so he could start setting up his hammock with lots of daylight left.Not too long after this, I came to Long Pond Stream, which is a raging river, really, and our most challenging ford to date. I crossed a little bit upstream from where the rope was. I hadn't found the rope helpful at Big Wilson ford and the water looked much calmer where I crossed than right at the rope. Advil was there at the same time and did cross there and we made it across in exactly the same time so it probably would have been fine.Two minutes after I resumed hiking (shoes back on, etc), I saw Pace Car, a section hiker named Breathless and Goatsbeard (last seen in Massachusetts!) who were all camped at the river, and Gary was in the process of joining them. The first night at camp has been a little rough, in large part because we got here so late and ran out of daylight pretty quickly. Gary discovered he somehow didn't bring the under quilt for the hammock, we couldn't finish our food so have to carry some out, and it started spitting rain a little bit. Oh, and his reading glasses are missing, possibly in the river. I'm still holding out hope we'll find them in camp tomorrow morning though. With all that, I don't think Gary found camp very relaxing or pleasant. I had trouble with the bear rope so I resorted to putting all the food bags in my empty pack and setting it a fair distance away from my tent. I don't think anyone else hung a bear bag either, but I've always been pretty good about it.The profile for tomorrow looks much harder than today's, with a number of bumps to get over, so let's hope the trail is at least well behaved! And that we find those damned reading glasses...Open map in new windowWant to add a map to your journal?