Date: 2012-05-09
From: Mountain Harbour B&B

To: Mountaineer Falls Shelter
Miles today: 8.7
Weather: light rain

I woke up at 6:30am and was excited to be washing my face in a sink.  It's nice in a river but it can be shockingly cold sometimes early in the morning.  The hostel was in the room above the barn and I went down to the main house for breakfast.  I said good morning to Mary who was cooking breakfast and I poured out a half mug of coffee. It tasted pretty great compared to some of the "coffee" I have had on this trip so far and I topped it off.  The spread consisted of brioche French toast with a thick homemade honey and chopped walnut syrup, cheesy-veggie eggs, sausage links, breakfast potatoes, thick-sliced ham, monster-sized peppered tomatoes, bagels smeared artistically thick along with dill, salmon, and capers.  Mary also made cinnamon rolls with at least two kinds of raisins, and she sliced up strawberries, watermelon, and cantaloupe.  I was seated with the Professor (the second one of the trip), Downhill, and Patches.  We consumed the delicious food in a chorus of lip-smacks and mmmmm's.  I can't describe the mutual delight as we shared this gastronomical experience together.  Being on the trail makes you appreciate flavor, texture, balance and temperature so much more.  Magic.  Quantity is also an important aspect of meal greatness.  Seconds were had and one of us is rumored to have even gone back for thirds.  $9 was the cost of this heavenly meal and many folks who chose not to eat breakfast complained that it was too expensive.  I definitely planned to let them know what they had missed.  As Tail Dragger, Gummy Bear, PaPa Bear, and Josh came in to settle up, they were all asked to grab a little.  Mary seems to be a good judge of character and it was nice to see her spreading the bounty of food out.  I uploaded the last week's worth of journals from the living room while the wifi worked (the first quick internet connection I have had in quite some time) and drank two more cups of coffee.  I talked at length with Downhill who has some major foot pain slowing her down.  She also fell down the steps of the hostel and hit her back.  She seemed ok but scared and I hope she gets to feeling better soon.  A zero was on tap for her and Patches but I needed to get hiking.  I was pretty ambitious when I got up but as the calories piles up, the rain started pouring down in buckets and I decided to play it safe, go slow and short, and just head to the next shelter.  Note that this wasn't just heavy rain either.  This was as if one of those water-dropping helicopters got all of his friends together and went out to find you and dump thousands of gallons of water continuously on you.  It was pretty intense and my heart went out to the hikers on the trail.  After squaring up and sating goodbye to the dry hikers in the living room, I ran down to the hostel to pack up and got out the door soon after to become one of the wet  hikers.  I hiked out the long driveway in full raingear and up the road 0.3 miles to the trail where the mileage officially starts.  I locked in an 11:30 departure and was shooting for a 4:00 arrival.  I walked through the rain in good spirits.  The trail was pretty slippery but I had clean clothes on, was well-fed, and was headed for a dry shelter with really nice people.  Life is pretty swell.  I came across Miguel and we had a conversation about how beautiful today was.  He really sees it like I do.  We talked about hammocks and a bunch of other trail-related things when we came across Isaac's Cemetary.  I like to go and see everything and we went our separate ways.  I strolled through the cemetery and tried to guess at who was who and figure out their connections.  I like to try and imagine their world and what they thought about.  There are so many clues in a cemetery but I like that it still remains so ambiguous.  I moved on up the trail up, through what appeared to be an old burned-out tree farm.  It even still smelled like smoke and it's leafless conifers with dark brown bark and red-brown needle bed was in great contrast to the clean, wet, green low-elevation forests I was hiking though.  I went up a few moderate climbs and a long descent through slick mud that brought me to Jones Falls, which was impressively tall and flowing really strong with all of the recent rain.  I took a bunch of photos and got to walking again to eventually arrive at the banks of the Elk River, a wide, muddy, fast-moving, swath of water that looked like it would be quite pleasant on a hot summer afternoon.  The rain seemed to have moved on by now and I walked on and passing a pair of day hikers and their little dog Oliver.  You couldn't see Oliver because the grass was so tall but you could hear him.  He was likely drenched but sounded happy.  I passed Miguel again and we were about 45 minutes from the shelter.  We passed Mountaineer Falls and knew we were really close.  The shelter was pretty nice and Josh, PaPa Bear, Tail Dragger, and Gummy Bear had the fire blazing.  We created a rather nice shoe and sock circle around the fire to try and speed up the process of drying.  This was both entertaining and ultimately useful.  It rained on and off the rest of the afternoon and we alternated between outside by the fire and inside under the roof.  Nightfall came and we settled down for the evening after a few more rounds of Josh's favorite game: compile a list of the best 80's and 90's movies.