Date: 2012-07-12
From: Toymakers Cafe

To: Behind Toymakers Cafe
Miles today: 21.3

This morning we were up and ready to go by 7:00am. We went into the cafe for breakfast. I got a cup of coffee and a cinnamon and sugar waffle and it was delicious. While we were eating, we started talking about doing a slack pack southbound back to the cafe today. We spent an hour trying to set it up but could not figure it out so we just headed to the trail. On the way there, I saw a poster on a pole that said about hiker shuttles so I tried one last time and gave Hudson a call. He said that he could slack pack us today so we headed back to the cafe and waited for him to pick us up. Hudson had just opened a new hiker hostel a few weeks ago called the Bearded Woods - he section hiked the trail in four big sections so he really knows the trail and understands hikers which is really important. He picked us up at around 9:45am and dropped us off at the trail at 10:45am. It was a late start but we should be able to get back to Falls Village CT before dark...I think. Right away we had to climb up 500 feet to the top of Mt. Everett; going southbound the climb was not bad but going down the other side was steep and rocky so it took us a little longer to go down. Once we got to the bottom we went right back up another 400 feet to the top of Mt. Race. Once at the top, the trail followed along the edge of the cliff that went along the ridge of the mountain then the trail slowly went down the other side. We went down into Sages Ravine which is a steep ravine with a creek flowing down it and a lot of cool waterfalls and swimming holes...unfortunately we were a little crunched for time so we did not have time to swim in the deep holes under the falls. The ravine is also the borderline for CT/MA and we took a break there and filled up our water bottles. Even though we crossed the border and started today in MA we are not yet done with CT until we get back to Falls Village CT, then we can say we are ten states down and have four to go!After we took a break there, we started up Bear Mountain and the trail went straight up it on a sheer rock face and the rocks were a bit slippery from all the foot traffic the trail gets. I am starting to notice that my boots are starting to loose their gripping ability so I guess after putting almost 1300 miles on my boots its time to retire them when I get to Great Barrington MA. From the top of Bear Mountain, we had some good views of the last two mountains that we had just came over but we did not stay for long we just continued on down the other side. The trail slowly went down the other side and we passed by two shelters that were within a mile of each other; we did not stop there either because we planned on taking a break at Lions Head which is the half way mark for today. We got to Lions Head but it was not a good place to stop so we just continued on down to some streams and planned on taking a break there but all three streams were dried up. We kept going until we got to a spring and we took a break and filled up our water bottles.From the spring, we had a little over four miles to go and it was only 5:00pm so we had plenty of time to finish before dark. We continued on up the last climb of the day. The last four miles were split in half: the first half was up hill and the second was downhill. It took us a little longer than what we thought it would to do the last four miles. We were in a hurry all day so we took very little breaks and we did not have many good water sources so we a little dehydrated. We made it to town at around 7:30pm which was a lot earlier than what we had expected. Big Sky's mom did really well with doing a 20 plus mile day on her ninth day out. We made it back to the Toymakers Cafe and found that Einstein, Coffee To Go, Big Foot, Foster and Big Anaranjado were there and had their tents up. We sat around with them and talked until dark then we set up our tents in the last few remaining flat spots and called it a night. Tomorrow Hudson is going to pick us up again at the cafe and take us back to the base of Mt. Everett and we are going to hike 8.4 miles to Great Barrington MA and take a zero there...night all.