Date: 2019-06-04
From: Upper Goose Pond Cabin

To: October Mountain Shelter
Miles today: 8.8
Weather: clear sky

Late start today - hung around the cabin too long. In the morning the caretaker made real coffee with pancakes (limit three per person) for free at 6:30am. Most folks were awake and ready for food, but I lingered around my bunk till I was the last one in the room. Spent some of the morning catching up on journal entries, which kind of used a lot of battery power. I¢d find myself running unusually low on power in the coming days.Jersey and the caretaker took a canoe out on the pond to get to a spring, and refill a bunch of the big water bottles at the cabin (a better water source than the actual pond water).Left past 10am and the ¢guard dog¢ was still barking at me as I was walking around taking photos of the place.Headed back on the trail - the half mile blue blaze seemed to go by super fast, way faster than when I was going the opposite direction in anticipation of finally reaching the cabin.Right at the intersection of the AT and the blue blaze I saw Jersey, who told me he spent some extra time sitting on a rock and enjoying the area. No rush for either of us today, we were both heading to the same shelter - another sub ten mile day.I let him go ahead, since he had a faster pace. A while later he had gone too far ahead for me to see him. And maybe not 15 minutes after that I suddenly came across him sitting on the ground in front of me with a bewildered look on his face. Turns out he took his first fall, and banged up his elbow. He was a bit stunned and was taking it in, and I wasn¢t sure what to do. There was no blood and he told me he was ok, and I got the sense he wanted to be alone a bit to take it in, or just for some privacy... so I let him go.I thought it was kind of weird for him to fall on a dry day, when it wasn¢t even raining! I think times like these give us a subconscious ego boost - ¢at least I¢m doing better than him!¢. Of course some miles after this I would have my first dry day fall, falling face forward - what would have been a face plant, but my face never touched the ground luckily. My poor left knee took the brunt of it. Now both knees had taken the force of my stupid falls, the tear in the right pant leg telling the story of one of the falls to everyone.I pushed on a bit more and enjoyed what turned out to be another pretty great day. There was supposed to be another thunderstorm of course, but it wouldn¢t arrive until that evening.Jersey passed me up while I was relaxing by a spring, and I met him and his friend up ahead at the shelter. His hiker friend had delivered him a resupply, including cold beer on ice! Super nice... lucky him.His hiker friend had hiked the entirety of the AT just last year - and I was really surprised she was out hiking now, and wasn¢t sick of it by now.Both the bottom bunks were taken (I think she setup a spot for another friend who would arrive later that evening). I checked out the upper bunks and the upper loft (which seems like a Massachusetts style shelter innovation). I think I could get up on either of them, but I was afraid of rolling down one of them in the middle of the night. Setup a tent instead, which was great. Love being able to have my little private retreat to go to.The rain did revisit us that evening, but thankfully everything was dry by morning. Had a pretty restless sleep despite inflating the air mattress. I could hear small animals dancing around outside the tent and even urinating nearby... finally decided to be done with it and put my earplugs in for the night....