Days 154 + 155

Day 154: Mile 1574.5 | Crystal Mountain Campsite

In the morning we woke up to a misty rain. Clouds covered the sun and the light was dim. Chris and I packed up before Miles and we set off together to meet his mom. Chris powered through the rain with me and we covered the first mile quickly. We arrived at the road that we agreed to meet at about half an hour early. Aunt Missi wasn't there, though, and there was no cell service. We tried walking up the dirt road a little ways, hoping for service or to see her, but it yielded nothing.

There was a major road coming up in a couple of miles so I made the executive decision to keep trekking and hope we find her there. Chris hung in there with my fast pace and we showed up to the main road only 40 minutes later than our original meet up time. Aunt Missi was there waiting. Apparently, the road we had originally agreed upon was closed and this was the closest trailhead she saw. She had brought us donuts and more Gatorade! I devoured my donut and so did Chris. I pocketed two Gatorades, one for me and one for Miles, in my fanny pack and said goodbye to them.

I set off alone after that and made it a few more miles before deciding to take a bathroom break. When I got back to where I left my pack I sat down in the rain and pulled out a snack. I decided to look at Guthook and see what lay ahead for the day. When I looked back at it I realized that the intersection where Aunt Missi had met us was the same intersection that The Cookie Lady's house was at! I had missed it! I was very bummed. It was a few miles back but I didn't think walking an extra 6 miles today for a cookie was worth it. Besides, I thought, this was a section I'd consider doing again.

As I sat and ate my snack, disappointed that I'd missed another AT icon, Miles came up behind me! I got up and put my pack on and we started walking in the rain together. He really brightened the dark day. We walked and talked like we always did. North of us on the trail was Dalton, MA. Another walk through town. There were some coffee shops, delis, and convenience stores we would walk past. Miles and I decided to stop at a coffee shop and hopefully duck out of the rain. Just as we were discussing our options, the storm started clearing and the rain stopped!

By the time we made it into Dalton, the sun was coming out and the day turned out to be kind of nice! We got to a coffee shop next to a deli. I got a sandwich for us to split and Miles got us a smoothie to split. Miles even got my tent out for me to dry it out while I got the sandwich. We sat in the direct sun and let our clothes dry on our bodies while we ate our sub. I got some blogging done during our lunch, too. Once my tent was dry we followed the road back to the trail, which was just a sidewalk in town. Along the way we saw a very encouraging sign:

We stopped by a gas station on the way back to trail and I picked up some new water bottles and a couple of granola bars. We hadn't resupplied since Great Barrington and I was running low.

At the gas station some nice people offered to give us a ride to the trail. We had to explain to them that the trail was actually the side walk in front of the gas station. They were very confused, but extremely generous. We kept walking through town and eventually made it back into the woods. We passed a large group of hikers we hadn't met before and they were all discussing camping at the same site we were aiming for.

We didn't talk for long so that we could get a head start on some good campsites. We chugged up the hill toward camp, not stopping for any breaks. When we arrived, Miles got us water and I took his pack up to the campsites. I set up our tents and started boiling water for dinner. Storm clouds started rolling back in just as we finished setting up. Alone in a small grove of trees nearby camp was a younger section hiker we hadn't met before. He had a hammock set up with a tent's rain fly hung over. I saw it and immediately thought, oh man he's going to be wet tonight! 

I ate dinner with Miles and soon the crowd from the trail head also arrived. There were about a dozen people at camp that night, all in their own tents. Hooch, a hiker we'd recently met, set up nearby Miles and I. He played his small guitar quietly while we hung out around the fire ring. We socialized and ate snacks together while we waited for the rain or the dark, whichever came first. Another guy, called Jesus, set up his one person tent nearby and joined us.

Eventually, The rain came and we retreated to our tents. I lay in bed reading and eating snacks until I fell asleep.

Sometime around 3am I was awoken by a male voice outside (I was the only girl at camp anyway), "Hello?" I heard it say. It sounded at first like someone answering their phone. Tent walls are so thin, I assumed, that someone nearby was answering their phone. I rolled over, annoyed, and tried to fall back to sleep. A few minutes later I heard it again, "Hello? Is anyone awake?" At this point I was sufficiently pissed off. "What?!" I growled back, sleepily. No one else responded to him.

"It's really cold and wet and my rain fly didn't hold up. Do you have any room in there?" the voice asked. Without a doubt I knew exactly who the voice was. The section hiker who had been camped in the hammock with the poorly hung tent rain fly over him for 'protection'. I wasn't surprised he was in trouble but I was also annoyed and foggy from being woken up. I have a one person tent. I am also a young girl in a sea of male hikers. As kind as I was I couldn't let this guy in my tiny tent. I yelled the names of the hikers around me, trying to wake up someone else who might be able to help him. Every other hiker had a two person tent.

Miles woke up and offered to help him out. The young hiker went and got his emergency blanket (yes the Mylar crinkly, shiny 'blanket' that sounds like a potato chip bag). The rest of camp went back to sleep.

Day 155: Mile 1587.0 | Bascom Lodge @ Mt. Greylock

The next morning I was woken by the sound of tent stakes scraping. The hikers around me were packing up. 7am. I sat up and started preparing breakfast for myself. Miles wasn't awake yet, the section hiker had left. When I was ready to start packing up my tent I woke Miles up. Jesus, Hooch, and I were all wondering what had happened with the section hiker last night.

Miles told us the story: The section hiker went and got his Mylar blanket and got in Miles' tent, wet. The guy huddled in the corner of Miles' two person tent, trying not to get everything Miles owned wet. Every time he moved the blanket crinkled and made noise. Miles stayed up the whole night reading. He hadn't gotten to be in his tent alone in two nights. He was grumpy, and rightly so.

So at 5am, Miles kicked him out. The light was finally coming. The section hiker had apparently not brought any of the essentials. No extra clothes, no headlamp, no rain tarp. His car was just 4 miles away,  back in Dalton. Jesus and Hooch laughed. "Why were you so nice to him?" They asked. In hindsight, Miles realized, he had been a very generous soul. Not only would no one else let that guy in their tent, but everyone else also realized that it wasn't an emergency. This guy was not in much real danger.

The rain wasn't that cold, it was almost 70 degrees that night. He was just uncomfortable and didn't want to walk by the light of his cell phone back to his car. The whole situation seemed ridiculous in the morning light. And to think, Miles had felt bad kicking him out at 5am because it was still raining. Annoyed, Miles packed up as quickly as he could. Jesus and Hooch left just before Miles did. I left after him and hiked quickly. I passed every person that had left camp before me.

On this day the trail took a road walk through Cheshire, MA. I walked through the rain into town and stopped at Dunkin' Donuts that was only 0.2 miles off trail. I got a coffee and a bagel and packed out a breakfast sandwich and hashbrowns for Miles. We had talked about meeting here, but he said if he wasn't there he would meet me further up trail. Usually when Miles left camp before me I caught him within the first ten miles. Dunkin' Donuts was mile 11 for that day.

I packed his sandwich in my puffy coat to keep it warm on the cool rainy day, stuffed that inside my dry bag, and left town. I headed up the hilly trail toward Mt. Greylock, the high point of Massachusetts. I was exhausted, but I sucked down my yawns and thought about how much more tired Miles must feel. I made it to the next shelter and decided to take a break. All I'd eaten that day was a bagel and a ProBar at breakfast. The shelter was 0.5 off trail and I didn't want to walk all the way down there just for five minutes of dry snacking. So I scarfed down a peanut butter sandwich that I'd premade for myself at camp that morning. The bread quickly started absorbing the rain water that was falling on me and the soggy sandwich ended up sitting like a brick in the bottom of my stomach.

As I sat there I decided to check my phone to see if Miles had texted me back after I tried calling him from Dunkin' Donuts. The rain made it difficult to use my phone, even in its waterproof case. Miles had texted me! He said he was at the lodge on top of Mt. Greylock waiting for me. He had run into Huck and Ray, two friends he'd met earlier on trail and hiked with them for a while. I quickly got up and starting hiking again. I was only 2.5 miles away from the top of Greylock.

I trudged up the trail as fast as my soaked feet could take me. With every step muddy, brown water flowed out of my sneakers. Eventually I got a point in the trail where the whole thing was just a stream. An ankle deep stream. I couldn't see what was beneath the water but I kept going anyway. A dangerous move, but I couldn't bear to kill the mossy vegetation growing on the side of the trail. I moved through the water, past day hikers trying to rock hop to keep their feet dry, and made it to the top of Mt. Greylock.

The hike to the top of that iconic mountain was much less beautiful than I had hoped. It wasn't the mountain's fault. It was all of the roads people had built going up the mountain. You could drive to the top, which I suppose would be okay if I couldn't see the road, but the AT crossed the road four times. Each time it crossed the road there was a sign telling me how many miles left to the top. It messed with my head, and I had to wait to cross each road.

(Yes it was this dark at 3pm)

I got to the top and took a photo of the monument in the fog. I didn't go up it, the top of the mountain was socked in and my legs were too tired. I went into the lodge and found Miles waiting near the dining room. I got us hot chocolates and gave him the sandwich I had bought him at Dunkin' Donuts. We tried to wait out the rain inside. My clothes slowly dried on me as we sat in the dining room. The lodge at the top of the mountain was pretty cool! We looked around and the woman at the front desk told us they have a bunk room for hikers upstairs.

We weren't keen on staying but neither of us wanted to keep hiking in this storm either. The next few campsites that we could make it to before dark were all at high elevations and exposed to wind. We asked about work for stay but the woman at the desk said they didn't have anything right now. Miles and I just sat and waited in the dining room for a while and used their spotty wifi. Soon, Hooch came and joined us. The three of us ended up deciding to stay.

We paid for our bunks and went upstairs. Every other guest room was open, the hiker bunkroom had a sign on it: Please keep door closed. While the other guest rooms had cute, warm quilts and nice curtains, the hiker room had no linens or curtains. Just empty bunks with a fitted sheet on it. It was a bit pricey for what we got but I was dry and not freezing. The showers were separate from the toilets. Just a tiled wet closet with a shower head. I showered and rinsed out my still damp clothes and socks. Dirt flowed down the drain as I rang them out.

Dry and clean, I went back to the bunkroom and hung my clothes on the ladder. The restaurant down stairs was far too expensive for the three of us but the other hikers staying in the bunkroom went down to get their dinners. I was, again, the only girl and the other rooms in the lodge were clearly still unoccupied. The women's restroom had a window and was larger than the men's room. So Hooch boiled water on his camp stove in the restroom. We closed and locked the door, opened the window, and I stood guard while he boiled the water. We successfully made ramen in the bunk room, like the true hiker trash (broke, dirty journeymen) that we truly are. I ate the last of my PB+J and Miles snacked on tortillas and peanut butter that he still had from Great Barrington.

After we ate the three of us settled down and decided to turn off the lights. It was almost 9pm. Around 10:30pm the hikers who had gotten dinner in the dining room came in, talking loudly and laughing. They woke us up. Instead of turning on the bunkroom light for a minute they all used their headlamps on the white setting (hiker etiquette suggests using the red setting at camp or around sleeping people). The white light blinded me multiple times as they dug around in their packs noisily and got under their covers.

Finally everyone quieted down around 11:30pm and we all went to sleep.