Date: 2023-08-07
From: Salisbury CT

To: Race Creek Campground
Miles today: 10.5

It was raining briskly this morning, which made me not want to get up. Thankfully few others in the bunk room felt the same and were dragging their feet getting ready. I packed out some food from the supermarket, got lost finding the right hostel and inadvertently wandered down a neighboring driveway (but it made sense it wasn't the right spot as the Nantucket bumper sticker seemed very at odds with the hiker hostel owner ethos), and then met up with the others.We headed off to the trailhead, with Rabbit true to his name bounding off, but SP only made it a few yards before realizing he was going to have to call off his thru for the year due to his knee not feeling better. I sat with him while he figured out logistics for getting home, and I felt so incredibly bad for him. It was like seeing Professor Oak in the south curled in a ball on the ground because he had to call off his thru - it doesn't seem that intense when you're curled up at home with a steaming mug of tea reading trailjournals but on trail it feels like contemplating nonexistence in a way - having to leave this wild, painful, magical experience not on your own terms and betrayed by your joints, weather, funds, or life happening outside of your control. After it was sorted and he just was waiting for the shuttle driver, we hugged it out and thanked each other for being hiking buddies, and then it was just me walking up and away into the forest.It was a lot of emotions for sure, to have a friend I'd been hiking with for so long get off and it just left me alone with my thoughts worrying as I found out last week that my grandfather had been hospitalized for dehydration but quickly released to a rehab facility - he had decreed it such that no one tell me since he wanted me to focus on hiking but it was still at the back of my mind. Externally the landscape was beautiful, foggy (my favorite weather!) with an evenly graded track of dirt versus evil sharp, pointy Pennsylvanian rocks. I was climbing up a rock face when I looked up and saw Rabbit standing at the top! He looked startled to see me, but we hiked together discussing SP getting off trail. We refilled water at Bossie Creek (it was made May of *this* year so it was so clean, new, and smelled deliciously of fresh pine - and discussed stopping for the day since we didn't have our hearts in it today but it was so early that we couldn't justify stopping.Of course as retribution it got really rocky again with lots of slow downhills requiring climbing and jumping - FarOut comments called it "baby Whites" and if that is the case then I see why folks' mileage jumps down. It would have been a fun scramble if a dry day, but since it was wet required a lot of strategic thinking. We did some exposed ridge rock walks that would have been soo fun, if again, it were dry and sunny - but in the thick fog and rain? Not so much.Executive decision was made to stay at the campground between the 2 peaks of the day because we didn't want to get caught out on the rocks after dark, so set up camp and made dinner. The precipitation report for tonight kept dramatically changing as a storm is approaching, and crossing my fingers I don't wake up floating in my tent.