Date: 2012-07-04
From: October Mountain shelter

To: Upper Goose Pond
Miles today: 8.8
Weather: light rain

Great news. The seam resealing worked and I now have a fully functioning waterproof tent. The bad news is that last night's rain left everything wet and slick this morning and it was horribly humid all day. I started out much later than usual. I'd like to blame the wet morning, but I was actually packed up at a reasonable time and then got involved in conversation up at the shelter. I only went there to have somewhere to sit while I replaced a strap on one of my gaiters, but 3 of the other hikers were fixing breakfast and my early start turned into 9:30. Today was extremely buggy and muggy. The efts and toads were out enjoying the damp conditions. My usual 2 hour reapplication of bug juice just didn't cut it today because I never managed to get my skin dry enough to make it stick to me. Everything I was wearing and swabbing off with was completely soaked. There was a lot of up and down today the only views were a brief glimpse of a pond, where I had my lunch but there wasn't enough sun to dry out, and my first crossing of an Interstate highway - I90. The sun was finally out for that, and I could have stopped to dry off, but there was zero shade (never happy, am I?), and it was noisy, and I was within 2 miles of my destination at Upper Goose Pond. I was ready for a swim so I just slogged on up and over the last hill of the day. My glorious experience at Little Rock Pond a couple of weeks ago has totally spoiled me. The lakeside platform there in full sun where I could swim, wash out all my clothes and then dry them while I languished in the shade has become an unreasonable expectation of all lakes. My late departure and tortuous buggy muggy hike meant I didn't get here until around 3:30. The cabin is neat, and the lake beautiful, but the cabin and the tenting areas are a little uphill from the lake. I wanted to tent tonight to get everything dried out from last night. By the time I had set up the tent and got down to the water the sun was gone from the little beach area. The swim was fantastic, not too cold, but cool enough to be refreshing, and I washed out all my clothes, though without enough direct sunlight to dry them I'll be putting on cold damp clothes in the morning. Rinsed out damp is better than sweated till it's soaked damp though, so I'll survive.There's a good mix of hikers here tonight, some thru hikers, but also some folks out just for a couple of days, and I just spent a pleasant couple of hours chatting with a father and his 2 sons who just started out on a section hike heading northbound. Lower Goose Pond is just below the Upper pond, and apparently a popular motorboat lake. There's lots of people out for the holiday in their boats, and I can still hear boats churning up and down the lake from my little tent platform, even though I can't actually see the lake.I keep looking at my maps at night and kidding myself that I'll be able to increase my mileage the next day, but the reality is that this humidity and heat is kicking my ass during the day. I'm enjoying the hiking, but the seating while I do it is wearing me down. I'm exhausted tonight, and I hiked less than 10 miles on relatively easy terrain. I think that the only way my miles are likely to increase is if the weather suddenly turns cool, or someone moves all the hills off the trail! Neither is likely to happen soon. If I thought I could be content with 10 mile days indefinitely, I would be Ok with continuing. If I'm honest with myself, I'm just not happy with it. Water is becoming harder to find on trail, the heat and humidity are increasing every day, and I'm just not very inspired by the trail at this stage. I have some serious thinking to do about whether I should continue.I just heard fireworks starting to go off somewhere nearby, but I'm just too tired to go see if I can see them from the lake. Time for some zzzz's for me.