#212 Guyot Shelter to Ethan Pond Campsite - Day 133: MM1835.7 MM1844.7
But that’s the trail, my friends - it’s not just one feature day in and day out, but a journey of constant scene changes, where you meet different characteristics and characters of the trail daily.
9-10-24
A nice steady overnight rain usually leads to a good night’s sleep. The easy falling rain did its part last night, but my sleep was disrupted by Mike restlessly moving and banging around on the platform. His sleeping pad lost its air, causing him to have a bad night’s sleep. Again, my sleep was disrupted throughout the night by others.
Despite the disruptions, I slept well when I slept.
The rain stops just before sunrise. Being on a platform, all the water falls between the planks, and not pooling around the tent, making it nicer to crawl out.
Throwing open the tent flap (door) I crawl out of my tent into a beautiful sunrise. The wooden platform is dry where the tent’s rain cover stretches out beyond my tent body. My camp shoes and other items stored beneath the vestibule (the part where the rainfly stretches out a couple of feet beyond the tent for extra storage, cooking, more room to get organized, etc.)
The cool air cuts through my thin sleeping shirt so I reach in to grab the down jacket.
The remnants of the rain clouds linger over mountains miles away across the valley.
Mike and I head down to the bear box to get our food bags. He forgot his coffee, so I give him a few packs from my bag. In return, he offers to boil water for both of us. This saves him from getting caffeine headaches and it saves time and a fuel tab for me. It’s a good trade.
The caretaker, a very enthusiastic guy around twenty years of age, who seems to really love working out here, comes around to collect fees. He takes my orange coupon card and five dollars, then draws a mountain scene around the word Guyot (Campground) while jokingly making a comment about how “boring” the artwork is that his buddy drew around the word “Ethan” (campground) on the card.
The cold hard wind pushes me around while crossing back over the exposed ridge from Guyot Shelter to the trail. The sun is shining bright, warming one side of me while the wind cuts across my legs like razors.
Remember Ghost from the other day, the SOBO thru-hiker I shared a platform with, who got her name because she keeps appearing to people that she’d met before in places and at times they never expect to see her?
Remember me saying that Steady Eddie is my Ghost, because he keeps popping up from behind me, though he’s much faster and able to hike much farther them me?
Well, he does it again - while climbing up to Zeacliff summit I hear someone coming up behind me. Stepping off trail and spinning around simultaneously to see who it is, I’m surprised to see Steady Eddie once again.
While hiking up we exchange trail experiences. The reason he keeps passing me is because he keeps taking side trails to climb up as many summits above four thousand feet as he can reasonably hike to.
There are forty-eight mountains in New Hampshire that stand four-thousand feet, or more, above sea level, with Mount Washington standing the tallest of them all at six-thousand-two hundred-eighty-eight feet high.
Most of those are located in the White Mountains, which I’ve been hiking across for about a week now, with several more days to go.
Hikers who climb them all become members of the 4000-Footers-Club. Many of the people I meet on trial who are staying in the huts are using them as a base to hike as many of those mountains as possible in that particular region of the larger mountain range.
Eddie knows he’s not going to hike them all right now but loves it so much up here that he intends to come back some day, when he’s not tackling the entire Appalachian trail, to climb the rest.