Date: 2005-08-01
From: Eliza Brooks Shelter

To: Eliza Brook Shelter
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: scattered clouds

Day 31. Night. Tonight was particularly eventful so I¢m making a separate entry for it. So as I said, when I got to the shelter it seemed to be full of sleeping hikers. I wasn¢t sure if there was room or not, but I didn¢t want to wake anyone up so I went to set up my tent. When I eventually heard that everyone was waking up, I brought my bed and cooking stuff over to the lean-to. There were 5 people there, all Sobos: Steiner, Bad Cheese, Canadian Looney, Bouie and Puck. Puck was the only person I knew there. He was the guy I met on my second day of hiking at Abol Bridge. He was pulling some big days and got 8 days ahead of me, so I thought I¢d never catch up. Then he broke his foot on the Mahoosic Arm. He rested for a few days though and got back on the Trail. Well, anyway I talked for a bit and then started boiling water for Ramen. As my water was boiling, a camp group stopped in for the night. Then, as we were sitting around, the thunder flared up again and it was pretty loud so I decided to bring my pack into the lean-to since it couldn¢t fit in the tent. Right before the rain started, we had one more guest for the night, this time a Nobo. Now when this rain came down, it came down hard. It created a little moat around the lean-to and little Eliza Brook was transformed into a raging river. This apparently was not enough because then it started to hail ice the size of golf balls. I was still safe in the lean-to, but I was still scared for my tent and everything in it. Finally, when the hail stopped and the rain let up a bit, I decided to go back to the tent and to bed. Well, upon close inspection it seemed the tent had held up, but a stake had been pulled up and so a big puddle of water had developed in the tent. So I grabbed my sleeping bag and went back to the shelter to sleep. As we were settling down, one of the counselors came over and asked for a lighter because they were having trouble with their stoves and their lighters weren¢t working. I lent them mine, but soon after he came back because my lighter was no longer working. We offered to have him cook in the lean-to where they still had a little trouble getting the stove fully functional. Eventually, Bouie got the stove working and the pasta cooking. As that was going on one of the kids from the group came over crying because he was so cold and wet. Bad Cheese offered her emergency blanket and Puck gave his fleece blanket in an effort to warm the kid. As he was warming up, the rest of the kids started trickling into the lean-to looking for their food, so pretty soon there were 8 kids, 2 counselors, 6 Sobos, and 1 Nobo in a 6-person lean-to; it was cozy. Well, we got to talking and we found out that their camp, Camp Penigewasset or ¢Peni¢ for short, was a 12 mile off the AT, about 27 mi. south of where we were and that¢s when we made plans to drop by and drop the two counselors¢ names for some food and maybe a place to stay. We were also invited to the staff parties they have at night. It wasn¢t long after that I found out a kid from school, Jeff Miller, was a counselor at this camp. So it was a fun night. The kids went back to their tents and we went to sleep.