Date: 2004-07-03
From: Goddard Shelter

To: Stratton Pond Shelter
Miles today: 19.4
Weather: scattered clouds

I climbed the firetower in the first orange rays of rosey-fingered dawn. To the east the sun burns. To the west a full moon glows over pink skies and blue misted mountains. Here the wind whips sporadic and cold--I am warm and glad for having bought and worn my new Hot Chillys. This place is beatiful in every direction I look. I'll eat a granola bar.The firetower rises forty or fifty feet out of a pine forest on the flat top of this mountain. On the way down I counted seven half-stair sections, each climbing six feet or more. About halfway up you are level with the treetops; it's a short forest, and free from underbrush. At the base, a rotting sign prohibits more than four people from climbing the tower ate once. It is a rusty and rickety thing that I was suprised to find myself unafraid ascending.On sleep: at first I would have said that I sleep very poorly out here, or maybe lightly. Now that I'm accustomed to outdoor nights, my former sleep seems unnaturally deadened and forced. I do sleep deeply for the first few hours--until about midnight, or maybe two. The remainder of the dark hours pass in a series of light naps. Typically I wake up fully between three and four--the coldest hours of the wilderness morning--to put on more clothes and drain my bladder. Between four and five the darkness lightens, and between five and six it brightens. If I haven't pulled my fleece liner over my face or if I'm in a dark hole, I'll be awake and ready to get up shortly after six. That gives me two hours to eat breakfast, journal, read, or sit thinking. By eight or nine Adam is up and ready to move.On packing up: I crawl out of my fleece liner and stuff it into its little sack. I turn around and put on my shoes at the edge of my tarp, and then take down the tarp, undoing the sides first and the centerline last. It gets packed into its little sil-nylon stuff sack along with the guy wires and stakes. Now I open the valve on my burnt orange thermarest and listen to the depressurizing hiss. I fold it in half at the waist-line, and then again lengthwise (it starts as a 6x1.5 foot pad, and ends approximately 3x0.75). This bundle gets wrapped in my Tyvek groundcloth, which I do by folding the Tyvek around the sleeping pad and tucking the edges in, except at the long, narrow end where the ends of the pad meet. I leave this end open, and am left handling a 3 foot, vaguely cylindrical bundle that gets inserted into my empty pack, open end up (notice three layers of water protection: pack, Tyvek, sleeping pad). Now I massage several cubic feet of open space in the middle of the inserted bundle (careful to arrange the folds at the bottom to not collect water). It's a clumsy process, and I'm left with a very irregular space. Fleece liner and tarp go in first. Food, clothes, and miscellany follow.If I have to pack in the rain (prefered technique: sit and wait) then I do not take the tarp down until the very end. Packing up under a tarp is humorously awkward, but one must keep the gear dry (or at least try). The last action I take is to strip off my night clothes, pack them, take down the tarp, pack it, and hike out....It was a long hike today. Chris and Anna (and Bo) are here. Bo is a great trail dog. Six dollars for an overnight stay at a shelter--blegh!