Date: 2014-07-07
From: Congdon Shelter

To: Goddard Shelter
Miles today: 14.4
Weather: scattered clouds

First true summer thunderstorm today - it rained itself and cleared out...at least for a while. The evening was different with a constant rain and a full shelter and old friends!Nice warm night for hammock sleeping had us well-rested and ready to roll out of camp early! Started the day out with a nice walk in the woods while climbing slowly uphill that set us up for the drop down to VT 9. Enjoyed a nice view of the valley and Bennington below while Big Dawg made two phone calls."Drop" is the operative word in the paragraph above - it was pretty darn steep in some parts - wet rocks and all! As a whole it was not too bad but they did run us down the hill to get to the road. Which prepared us for...A long up to our destination - the Goddard Shelter. Luckily most of the climbing today was not too steep and from the road to the first shelter we enjoyed some switchbacks. Ran into the Captain as we were leaving the first shelter - a kid about my age thru-hiking the trail. Decided to press on further up the hill before stopping for lunch - needed a quick water break at Hell Hollow Brook where the bridge was out...but not really. It said it was out but I could see it and it looked ok so I walked across. True to my name of Indiana Jones I live life dangerously but nothing bad happened - no boards breaking underfoot or alligators below.Since we had left this morning we were still moving slowly and taking longer to walk - not sure why we were well-rested from town! But it is what it is and we kept moving on until we found a good place for lunch - lucky for us we ate before the rain came in!A true summer thunderstorm - a period of rain followed by nothing afterwards. This is the first time on the trail this has actually happened to us and it was nice not having to walk in rain for hours. Still got us wet but not near as bad. Climbing in the rain was not too bad and the trail did not turn into complete mud - kept it cooler outside while hiking!The rain broke and we had overcast weather up to the shelter - also required a steep half mile climb to finish out the day. Fortunately it was not a wicked hot day but it was also overcast so we did not see the view from the shelter.Not a lot of good hammocking spots and we really did not want to get everything more wet so we opted to stay in the shelter with two kids who had set up their tent in it as well. Enough space for us and we did not think anyone was behind us so we said nothing. Boy were we wrong!Turned out to be a full shelter tonight and the two brothers even took down their tent. Started as a trickle and then the shelter was full of thru-hikers. We finally met Fiver for the first time when she stopped at the shelter for a rest - a nice girl doing a flip-flop hike from Harpers Ferry. She decided to stay because it started raining again.The weather never really cleared up and it blew some old friends into the shelter - Chops and Chocolate and Cheese! The Swiss had finally caught up to us and we haven't seen Chops since Pennsylvania! In addition to the new member Five Star we had a full shelter and a great night catching up with friends old and new. The Swiss even brought me a little gift from Delaware Water Gap - a Junior Park Ranger pin to add to my hat! Great little gift since I did not find any pins for New Jersey!Amazing what the trail can do - especially running into people you haven't seen in a while or who you thought you would never see again! Gonna be a rainy night tonight.