Date: 2004-08-01
From: Kidd Gore Shelter

To: Stratton Pond Shelter
Miles today: 15.1
Weather: light rain

It rained heavily during the night with some lightning. The trees were still dripping when I started hiking and within twenty minutes it was pouring again.I was starting to get a bit tired of the wet, when the sun broke through for a moment. That got me singing "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine..." which got me in a silly mood again and I sang it over and over as the sun came and went. It looked like it was going to be my first berry-less day when at the parking area before Stratton Mountain I found a nice patch of raspberries. Saved!It was a 1700 foot climb from the parking lot to the top of the mountain About 3/4 of the way up my right heel started to hurt. I stopped and found it had been too many miles in the damp and the skin was turning tender. I put on a patch of moleskin, which helped enough to let me limp to the top. There at the base of the fire-tower I took off my pack and threw myself on the ground in front of a tour group from Europe. While the caretaker chatted about how my hike was going and explained to the tourists what thruhiking is, I took off my shoes and tried to let my socks dry a little. I put a whole half sheet of moleskin on my heel, doused my foot and the inside of my shoe with powder and put my shoes back on. Then I climbed the tower for a look around, signed the register and started down.Up at the top the vegetation was very different than lower down. Sort of dwarf evergreens and small seedlings, moss, lichen and shamrock looking things so it looked like Christmas Tree Town. As I descended the pines got taller, the undergrowth changed to more normal and then rather abruptly broadleaf trees replaced the pines.I walked extra carefully, avoiding the mud as much as possible to try to let my shoes start drying out. Hopefully that would get them dry enough to avoid more foot trouble tomorrow. My feet took a beating yesterday and were sore all night. I feel like my physical and emotional reserves are starting to wear a bit thin and I need to start conserving them, avoiding high milage days unless conditions are quite good and possibly taking more zero days than in the past. Several times in the last two days I have found myself getting really really tired of falling down, of the wet and soreness and everything. I had to remind myself that I have felt worse in the past months and conditions have been harder. Like when I was coming down from Clingmans Dome with my boots full of icewater. I was REALLY grouchy then until my encounter with Louisiana Lou's Trail Magic and the Easter bunnies.Someone has said that by this point it is a head game, that anyone who gets this far can get the whole way as long as they keep the will to continue. That is all it takes, the refusal to stop until the very end. The trick is to keep that will. Quitting is easy, as Socks found, but going the whole way is an accomplishment worth working for. It is just like running a marathon which I have done dozens of times except when you hit the wall you have to hang on for six or seven weeks instead of six or seven miles.The Shelter was one of the busy ones where a $6 fee is charged to reduce usage and maintain things. For that, the water supply was very far away.Ponderer arrived a bit after me, having taken the gondola lift down to the foot of the mountain for a meal. Then Palm Tree, Boonie, and Tree Frog arrived too. They had given up their idea of camping in the woods and hiked over 19 miles to get to the shelter. Adam was having more foot trouble and decided to leave the Trail again, probably for good.