Date: 2018-08-15
From: The Perch 

To: Osgood Tent Site
Miles today: 4.5
Weather: overcast clouds

I woke up a lot through the night and was tired and puffy eyed in the morning. The forecast was still calling for thunderstorms. Before we headed out I begrudgingly deposited $30 into the payment box at the shelter. How was this shelter worth $15 per person. There wasn¢t even a bear box or a picnic table. The toilet in the privy wobbled unsteadily on its base and you had to hold the walls while sitting there so you didn¢t fall off your perch. There weren¢t even any hooks in the shelter to hang our backpacks on. Shouldn¢t I at least get a thru hiker discount like I do at other shelters in the Whites?Then I scolded myself! Sheila, you would have gladly paid that money last night to get yourself and Cole off the ridge and somewhere safe once the sun went down. Now that the sun is up and you feel safe you don¢t want to pay. Be grateful! Suck it up! Pay the fee!So I did.It was misty and cool as we backtracked the way we had come the night before. The trail looked totally different in the daylight. I felt a sense of relief and a bit more secure once our feet were back on the AT. Isn¢t that strange.We were up above the tree line walking on rocks all the way to Madison hut where we stopped in for a break. Tomorrow Mark would be meeting us at Pinkham Notch. We had a very short distance to go and two days to get there. We could take our time. The sky rumbled a few times but did nothing more. Mount Madison was a great pile of sharp jagged rocks. Slowly we climbed up and slowly we climbed down a number of peaks. At a low point between peaks where two trails merged we sat to cook lunch. In search of something from his pack, Cole exploded the contents of his bag all over the ground and left it there. In the mountains, sometimes the air is perfectly still and silent. Sometimes the wind blows and howls. In this instance it was a sudden strong gust that came whipping through our low place. It picked up Cole¢s fleece where it was laying on the ground and flung it fifty feet up the face of the next rock pile. ¢Nooo¢ Cole cried, running after it. A south bounder who had just passed by us and was half way up the next peak, pointed and shouted trying to show Cole where the sweater had landed. When Cole reached the spot, the fleece was no longer there. He returned to quickly clean up the rest of his gear, then hurried back up the mountain of rocks . He hunted and hunted among the rocks, and finally, with a shout of delight, victoriously held it up for me to see.Soon we got ourselves moving again and climbed the rocks that had hidden Cole¢s fleece. Up above treeline, high in the mountains, sound carries easily across the rocks. We heard voices coming from behind us and off in the distance could make out a couple of hikers gaining on us. As they got closer and closer, I looked again. It was Tom and Gene. They had caught up to us. When they reached us we stopped to chat. Nick was behind and Tom and Gene were going to stop at Osgood tent site to wait for him. Since we had a lot of time to get to Pinkham Notch we decided to stop there as well. It was a short day. 4.5 miles on the AT and one mile off it. Still, we had taken most of the day to do it. Every step had hurt my foot.