Date: 2012-08-05
From: Rutland

To: Cooper Lodge Shelter
Miles today: 13.6
Weather: overcast clouds

I heard what I assumed was Cheese Water and Towely coming back into the hotel room around 5:00am. Sometime between then and when I got up at 6:30am I heard a loud thud. I got up and looked. Towely was asleep in the bed, but I didn't see Cheesewater. I thought maybe he had a really good time and stayed out all night. When I finally got up to go to the bathroom I found Cheese Water and realized what that "thud" was. He had fallen off the bed and was asleep on the floor between the bed and the wall. These guys partied hard last night. When I went into the bathroom I discovered the lower portion of a broken wine bottle on the counter. Since I used to drink myself, all I could think of was that they must not have had a corkscrew.OWF woke up and used the bathroom after me and said W.T.F. were they doing last night? We decided to go down to the lobby and have breakfast. Then we went down to the market and back up to the room. Those guys were out cold. At about 10:00am OWF and I figured that we'd better wake them up in order to make 11:00am check out. I turned the TV all the way up and OWF started jumping on the bed....it worked. We packed up our gear and met Muck and Gypsy outside. We decided to get lunch at Wendy's. Most of us got "The Baconator", Muck and I got ours with chili cheese fries. Towely didn't look so good after finishing his Baconator. His eyes were bloodshot and he said he felt sick. Cheesewater and Towely aren't going back to the trail with us today, they said they needed more time in town to resupply. After Wendy's, Muck, Gypsy, OWF, and I stuck our thumbs out and got a ride with the wife of a trail maintainer within 15 minutes.There was a steep up when we got back on the trail. I got ahead of the pack but then the Baconator started talking to me and I stopped to use the privy at the first shelter. I caught back up with the group and we stopped for a snack at the second shelter. There were a couple detours today, we didn't take any of them. Hurricane Irene washed out some bridges last year. Thru-hikers don't need bridges, only blazes. It was a long strenuous climb up to the last shelter with a total gain for the day of 3,100 ft. Muck is a strong hiker and stayed right on my heels on the way up. I tried to hike faster but I couldn't shake him. I'm glad I had to pee because it gave me the chance to catch my breath. I ran back up the trail to catch him but then it was obvious I was trying to race and he let me pass. It started raining hard when we got to the shelter. There's no way I'm cooking over a fire tonight. Back in Rutland I purchased a disposable aluminum oven liner and made a windscreen and lid for my titanium cup. Time to try out the new Esbit cook system. I was able to boil 2 cups of water with a 1/4 ounce of fuel. This is extremely efficient....To be fare, the water I heated had been gathered at the bottom of the hill and wasn't freezing cold spring water. But none the less, I was able to bring 2 cups of water to a rolling boil, heat another 15 ounces for tea, and still have a little bit of that .5 ounce fuel block left over.The roof in this shelter leaks and got my sleeping bag wet. I found another spot that didn't leak and slept pretty good.Yesterday's post explains my cell phone problems.