Date: 2017-07-31
From: Dalton

To: Upper Goose Pond cabin
Miles today: 21.9
Weather: clear sky

The downside of the many towns the trail is now traversing is my inability to resist the vortex effect it creates. I was up at 6am and headed down to the breakfast place, Juice and Java, soon after it opened half an hour later for a leisurely meal of coffee and a breakfast burrito while I perused the pages of The Berkshire Eagle.(Let the record state that in the sleep vs paper delivery argument of the previous evening, my prediction was vindicated. I woke up to find the paper at my feet with no recollection of its arrival.)I was back at Tom's by 7.30am but he was serving coffee and cream cheese bagels to the assembled hikers and I settled in for conversation and didn't manage to extract myself until 9.20am.That's not the ideal starting time for what turned out to be a day off nearly 22 miles, but I think I was expecting the terrain to be as easy as the previous day had been.The trail was pretty good but not as cruisey as the day before. My pack was also a little heavier since it seemed like the good water we'd enjoyed until now was at an end so I had to carry the full complement.It sounded like we'd swapped mountains for what I'd dubbed the four B's: bears, bugs, bad water and boring trail.The day was broken up halfway by the Cookie Lady's home, a place about five minutes off the trail where a local couple ply hikers with cookies, allow them to raid their blueberry patch -- they have a pick-your-own farm, and traditionally sobos are asked to and provide blueberries for the Upper Goose Pond cabin caretaker's pancakes -- and water.Nobody was home when I dropped in, so I made do with filling my water bottles, letting my feet air out on the grass and then heading on.There was a final solid climb before the trail descended down to Interstate 90, from which it was only 1.6 miles further to Upper Goose Pond. I was feeling unexpectedly tired when I arrived despite the easier terrain -- maybe doing five days of around 20 miles was taking a toll?Just as I arrived at the cabin, I went past a tent platform and saw Spiff and Littlefoot, hikers who'd I'd been bumping into since the start of the 100 mile wilderness but who I hadn't seen since the Whites. I'd known from the log books that they'd been a little way ahead.It was particularly awesome to see them again, then I headed to the cabin and checked in. My grand plan of going for a swim was subsumed by a new plan of chilling in the vortex of the porch, which was set up with rocking chairs and books. This is worth all the effort of getting here, although I suspect the vortex effect will be even greater than it was in Dalton...Life is good.AT fact of the day: The AMC runs this hut, although it's hard to reconcile this with the way the same club runs the expensive huts on the Whites. It turns out it's run by a different chapter with a different philosophy: to make it attractive to hikers through donation prices and free pancake breakfasts so hikers would stay here rather than indiscriminately camping around the lovely but fragile environment of Upper Goose Pond. It's nice to see carrots being used successfully instead of sticks.