Day 116
We woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of rain yet again. We tossed on our rainflies and waited out the rain. Thankfully, it stopped raining about 8 am, so we were able to pack up and have breakfast while it was still dry. My phone battery is half-dead this morning since my phone won’t shut off, but I turned down the screen pretty low so it wouldn’t completely kill it. The plan this morning is now to head to Upper Goose Pond, a short 11 miles away, to avoid and impeding hail storm at 3 pm. Manboy was cowboy camping last night, so he got up and hiked out since he didn’t want to sleep in the rain. It was just me, Nokey, and Testament today. We had a short section of flat terrain and field walking before we climbed up and over Cobble Hill. From here, we walked through more private farm land before coming to the road to Tyringham. Now we had a steep climb up and over Baldy Mountain to Knee Deep Pond. Nokey and I met a guy here who did a thru hike in 1993 and wished us luck on ours. We met up again with Testament at Goose Pond Road and the three of us walked together to the trail junction to UGP cabin. We stopped for a minute at a swimming hole near the site of some old chimney ruins, but moved on quickly after hearing the rumble of thunder. We made it to the cabin at around 2:30 and were greeted by a large group of people we knew. We picked out our bunks (with mattresses!) and settled in for the night. I was pretty tired, so I ended up napping through the afternoon storm which thankfully never produced any hail. The caretaker of the cabin went to Big Y, a grocery store, and picked up pizza and beer for those who wanted it. I skipped out since my pack was still heavy from my resupply and napped some more! After getting up and eating dinner, we all hung out on the porch of the cabin until we could take the mosquitos no longer. We got to sleep on comfy bunks tonight and, in the morning, we’ll get hot coffee and blueberry pancakes! No photos today either due to my phone issues :(