[at-l] Weekend on the Long Trail

This weekend Stitches, Rick, Cobweb and I spent sometime on the Long Trail 
between Brandon Gap and Sherburne Pass.  

Decked out in one hyperlight on the back of my Breeze pack and a string of 
battery operated Christmas tree lights around my neck, Mara and I hiked into 
Sunrise Shelter on Friday night.  This was too much light so I turned 
everything off and we finished the short walk to the shelter by moonlight. 
Rick met up with us later in the evening.  It was a mild night.  One small 
string of 10 white lights sure do light up a drab shelter.

Saturday morning and for most of the day the sky was blue and the temperature 
was warm almost too hot.  By mid afternoon the clouds filled the sky.  I had 
last been on this section of trail in 97, prior to the ice storm of 98 and 
was saddened by the damage and the amount of briars which sprouted in the 
understory due to the open canopy.  Rick, carrying his 7,000ci pack wasn't 
feeling up to par.  If he croaked on the trail, there was NO WAY I was gonna 
carry out his pack. Just forget about LNT.

Cobweb joined us at Rolston Rest Shelter.  I had given him directions to the 
shelter via the South Pond Rd.  The private road wasn't accessible (or 
findable) so he made an unplanned walk in from Rte 4.  He brought a 
ben-o-matic lantern, homemade carrot bread, tangerines, a frypan, and a ton 
of bagels. We spent the early part of the evening watching him pour more lamp 
oil on the ben-o-matic.  Soon everyone one was nodding off, except for Rick, 
who seemed to have recovered from his earlier malaise and was talking to a 
sleeping audience.

During the night it rained and the temp had dropped enough to produce some 
snow showers.  After a good hot breakfast, which included toasted cinnamon 
raisin bagels and real butter, we walked out to Rte 4 at the Inn at the Long 
Trail.  It was 10:30 when we reached the Inn.  The Inn stopped serving 
breakfast at 9:30 so we went to the Rochester Cafe for some tasty eggs, ham, 
toast, sausages, ham, homefries, pancakes, OJ and coffee.

Stitches has another 20 miles of the Long Trail completed. She'll get that 
End to End Patch by the end of this decade.

Cin



--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts ---
multipart/alternative
  text/plain (text body -- kept)
  text/html
---
* From the AT-L |  Need help? http://www.backcountry.net/faq.html  *

==============================================================================
To:            AT-list <at-l@backcountry.net>