Saturday, August 11, 2012
A day of fog, rain, and distant thunder
We were twice sad when Jeff carried us back to the trail at 6:30 this morning. First, we would have enjoyed much more time at his Green Mountain House, and secondly, we were once again loaded down with four days of food and facing a 1,400′ climb up Bromley Mountain. For the next five hours we hiked in a thick fog, with only the immediate surrounding forest to be seen. The rocks and roots were wet and slippery, but all day long the most treacherous walking was the slick bog boardwalks. As everything around here has been so dry, we mostly walked beside rather than on them.
Near the top of Bromley, the AT follows one of the ski slope runs. We wondered if southbounders could “get air” as they came over some of these sharp rises… The decrepit old Bromley tower (from which five states were visible) was taken down this year for safety reasons, but in the fog we didn’t miss it. A sign said the local club was raising money to build a replacement.
The path down to Mad Tom Notch was rocky and steep, as was the climb back up to Styles Peak. After some undulating trail, the path was really rocky and really steep down from Peru Peak. We were almost below the clouds when it started raining.
We decided to stop at the next shelter, fix our big meal of the day, and give the rain time to pass. Several other hikers joined us (including Hashbrown and John Wayne who we would wind up camping with tonight). The Peru Peak Shelter was roomy and clean, and it was tempting to stay, but we needed more miles and when the rain didn’t stop, we moved on.
A highlight of the day was Baker Peak, where the AT makes a sharp turn to follow an exposed seam of rock up to the top. This would have been extremely hairy in wet conditions. Thankfully, the rain now stopped, and the clouds parted enough to give us some nice views. However, we could hear thunder in the distance and thought it prudent not to dally at the top.
We got to Lost Pond Shelter just as it was filling to capacity, and on X’s intuition we’d have better luck further along, we decided to push on the 1.7 miles to Big Branch Shelter (in record time!) where we hoped to find more space. We are much less crowded here, and although we certainly won’t need it after today’s hard effort, we have the rushing waters of the large stream in front of the shelter to lull us to sleep…