Daily Archives: July 29, 2014

Day 105 – near Bald Top to Dalton, MA (mile 1565.2)

We got a little more rain last night, but nothing crazy. The weather was in the 40’s this morning up in the Berkshire Mountains, so it was chilly for the first time in forever it seemed. It helped keep the mosquito swarm mostly at bay thankfully. The trail was still completely muddy and flooded though from the last couple of days. In some places it was 5 or 6 inches deep.

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Mildly wet feet

This made the hiking pretty slippery and slow, unfortunately. We slogged through the slip and slide trail and made our way into town around 1:30pm. The trail goes right through Dalton, so it’s really convenient.

We are taking our first sweet, sweet zero day here tomorrow since Pennsylvania, so that’s really welcome after the last couple of days.

Vital stats for Tuesday, July 29th :
Miles hiked today – 13
Mood – towny
Smell – better than this morning
Physical state – normal
Song stuck in my head – Forget Me (from These Hopeful Machines continuous mix) by BT

Day 104 – East Brook to near Bald Top (mile 1552.2)

Today was wet. Not like a little, more like a whole ocean was dumped on the trail. The thunder started around 5:30am and poured torrentially for a quite a while. We stayed in the tarp and waited it out until it stopped, so we were around an hour late in getting started. By then, the trail was a muddy wet mess.

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Massachusetts morning mud. I thought Vermont was supposed to be the muddy trail state, wtf?

We had a lot of wet slogging as the trail was completely waterlogged for miles.

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Slightly wet feet

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Get in! The pool water's fine!

The storms held off until around 4pm, when it began to thunder and downpour again. We hiked along through it as incredibly the trail got wetter and muddier. I’ve never seen anything like it. Other than our feet, we stayed mostly dry though. We kept our spirits up knowing that town and a zero day await tomorrow and Wednesday.

We camped on some relatively high ground not far past Bald Top, which was a pretty cool looking little mountain. We’ve got 13 miles to hit town (Dalton, MA) tomorrow. Hopefully most of the trail drains tonight!

Vital stats for Monday, July 28th :
Miles hiked today – 20.3
Mood – soggy
Physical state – normal
Smell – weird mix of bug spray and rain poncho
Song stuck in my head – Ingenue by Atoms For Peace