Date: 2018-08-12
From: Garfield Ridge Shelter / Campsite 

To: Zealand Falls Hut
Miles today: 9.6
Weather: light rain

It rained last night. I woke up only once and alhough it took me a while to fall back to sleep, I felt like I had a good rest by morning. The fly had been a bit droopy and the tent had not been pegged down on the deck. Cole had made an attempt to put the pegs between the deck slats and attach the tent that way, but it didn¢t work well. Our neighbours¢ tents looked just as wilty as ours in the morning but surprisingly not much water had found its way inside.This shelter has a cooking area which was a bit of a trek from our tent platform. I trudged over there with our mountain house bacon and eggs (Thank you Richard!) and the water and stove. The stove wouldn¢t light. It didn¢t light last night either. I suppose the igniter is finally pooched. Back I went to the tent to get the matches. Cole was a long way from being ready. I handed him the matches and asked him to go and boil the water and I would pack up his things. Off he went. I began packing his bag. Five minutes later he returned. He couldn¢t get the matches lit. Ugh! ¢Ok, you finish up here and I will go try.¢Back I went to the cooking area.After ruining two matches, I finally got one lit. I guess that they have been sitting in my backpack for too long. A couple of more additional trips were made from cooking area to tent to cooking area to tent. I felt like I had hiked a mile by the time we finished our breakfast. ¢Slowly and carefully,¢ was the campsite caretaker¢s advice as we headed past his tent and back out onto the AT. Immediately we came upon a steep rocky descent (aren¢t they all!) right down the middle of a waterfall. Slowly and carefully. The whole day it was wet, slow and careful. Every potential view was shrouded in clouds.Around 11am we stopped at Galehead hut. We have heard a lot of things about the huts. One thing we heard was that they will give breakfast leftovers to thru hikers. A couple of other thru hikers were there when we arrived. There was no breakfast, but there was a wee bit of lasagna from the night before. Cole was happy to polish that off. They had snacks and lemon cake as well as soup for sale. I bought us both a snickers, a piece of cake and a bowl of potato soup. It might be the last time we buy their soup. I really think it was just the water that they boiled potatoes in.....perhaps with the addition of a few spices. We had bagels in our food bag and we dipped them into the ¢soup¢.This morning we had discussed going either ten or fourteen miles depending on the terrain and how we were feeling. It was very clear when we headed back out to the trail that ten miles was going to be our limit. The terrain is very difficult and challenging. Instead of pushing for extra miles and having late days, I would rather do fewer miles and finish with enough time to relax and feel rested. Most of all I just want us to be alert and safe through this difficult section. The wet rocky climbs and decents are just so tiring too. I wanted to be finished early. We had our sights set on finishing at Zealand Falls Hut and doing a work for stay. Let me explain. Each hut will take in a few thru hikers each day to get help cleaning up after the evening meal. In exchange, the hikers are fed dinner (after the guests have finished) and they get to spend the night on the floor of the dining room. This is another one of those things we have heard many different stories about. One source said that they only take a couple of people, while another said they will take everyone who shows up. Another person told us that the time to show up for work for stay was between 4 and 7. We had no idea if they would take us (Cole being a minor), or if we would arrive at the right time. Maybe they would have enough people and we would get sent on. It was a gamble.About two miles from the hut, we were sitting on a rock to rest when a French Canadian hiker came by. We struck up a conversation and she asked us questions about our hike. She told us that there were already a few thru hikers milling around at the hut. That didn¢t make our chances took good.Before she continued on, she reached into her bag and pulled out a bag of gummy candies and handed them to Cole. ¢They are made in Canada.¢ she said, knowing by then that we were from there too. He was delighted...of course!We arrived at the hut just before 5pm. I went inside and asked about work for stay. ¢We need two people,¢ the woman told me.¢There are two of us.¢ I said.She glanced at Cole, but said nothing about his age. Our instructions were to hang out until dinner was over. We would then be called in and we could eat and do about an hour of work. After that we would sleep on the floor. Perfect! While we were hanging out waiting on the porch of the hut, I ventured over to where the restrooms were. There were two doors and both said ¢restroom¢ but neither one indicated which gender they were for. I slowly pushed open the door on the left. On the counter by the sink there were a few feminine products . Bingo! I picked the correct door.As I was sitting there doing my business, I heard someone else enter the restroom and go into the stall beside me. The person began to pee and I could tell from the sound that it was not being done from a seated position. I bent forward a bit and peered under the wall. Sure enough, there were two great big harry feet facing in the wrong direction. I was in the wrong restroom!!! Or....was he? I didn¢t know, but I sure wasn¢t coming out of that stall until he was gone. So, I sat there. He finished up and washed his hands (good job!), then exited. I darted out of there as fast as I could, (without washing my hands-bad girl!) not wanting any other guy to come in before I left. (Thank goodness for the hand sanitizer I keep on my pack).After the guests ate, we were called in to eat. It felt really odd. There was not much of the main course left, certainly nothing like the stories we had heard about oodles and oodles of food. However there was a lot of cake left and Cole was happy to eat three pieces.We waited a long while to be given our chores. Again, they were nothing like what we had heard. We had to: Clear off and a wipe down all of the shelves in the kitchen, organize the spice shelf alphabetically, remove and clean the cast iron burners on the stove (they were still cooking food and some were very hot. We were told to just use a pot holder to pick them up and run cold water over them in the sink to cool then) clean the grease tray on the stove, and finally pull out all of the crumb catchers on the stove and replace the tin foil in them. When we were done, the dining area, where we were to sleep, was still full of people playing cards. We were told that lights out was at 9:30 and we could set up our beds then. 9:30 came and someone announced that it was time for lights out. But, she added, you can stay up and continue to play cards if you have a headlamp and keep your voice low.What? Half a dozen people stayed behind to play cards. Cole and I pulled one of the tables and benches out from the wall so that we could set our bedding up behind it to have some privacy. We crawled under our quilts still dressed in our clothes and put earplugs in our ears. I could still hear the not so low voices of the people playing cards as I tried to fall asleep.