Morning came, time to rise and shine...without the shine. It was cloudy and thundering, and the heavy rain started just as I got back to the shelter from the privy. We took our sweet time getting ready, being rather unmotivated to charge right into the mess. After we were set equipment-wise, we sat in the shelter and watched the downpour for a while. Eventually, Mike and Runner decided to leave, and Joe and I left about 20 minutes later. We needed to cross the Gulf Hagas Brook (our water source last night) a short distance from the shelter. It was neither deep nor wide, but it was sloped and the water flowed over the rocks in a manner that said "Go ahead, I dare you to cross without breaking your neck". Luckily there was a rope tied between trees, about head-high, that crossed the stream. It was pretty fun crossing that thing while hanging onto the rope, I was just praying nothing fell out of my pack because there was no way I'd be able to chase it downstream. The terrain in the first five miles out changed from an early "moderately difficult" to "easy, gradual downhill". I pulled ahead of Joe and completed that section in a little over 2 hours. It gradually ceased raining before I'd stopped, and parts of the trail were even paved as I got closer to the West Branch Pleasant River. Yes, the time had now come to ford my first river.

    My boots were already wet from the morning's romp, and I was wearing my rain pants, so I decided to try and seal my rain pants around my boots. Taking a cautious step into the water, the bottom of my pants seemed to hold just fine. I figured this would be a lot easier than stopping to take my pack off, removing my boots and socks, putting on my water shoes, and putting the boots/socks into my pack. Besides, there were horrid mosquitoes that were descending upon me the moment I tried to stop for any reason.

    I'd made it about a third of the way across the water when I heard some kind of "glub" coming from below me. The pants had opened up, and water rushed into my boots. Oh well, so much for that idea. I finished crossing as quickly as I could and took a break on a large rock. The sun was out by now, so I laid my boots and socks to dry after wringing them out as much as possible. There were parking areas not too far from the trail here, as such, I actually got to see non-hikers walking around. About 10 minutes later, I saw Joe approach from the other side and prepare to ford the river. While waiting for him, a great many black-winged butterflies came to rest on my boots, socks, and pack. When Joe finally arrived, we marveled at the mystical barrier that was this river. On one side, we were besieged with unrelenting mosquitoes. On the other, we were greeted with lovely butterflies that seemed to say "It's OK, you're in a better place now".

    If only it were true.

    After resting, snacking, and drying for a bit, it was time to proceed up the mountain. Joe went on ahead, I followed about 10 minutes later. The climb was incredibly long. There were quite a few times where, following a steep section, I said to myself "OK, now THIS has to be the peak". Oh, how wrong I was. The situation got a little more uncomfortable as I ran out of water. I'd only used half a liter on the first five miles, so I figured a full liter would be plenty for the next five miles. As the trees became scarcer, the sun became more of a burden. The uphill would seemingly not stop, no matter how many times I kept telling myself that the peak had to be just over that next incline. I said a quick little prayer and pushed on.

    I eventually ran into a guy coming downhill, and asked him how far away the shelter was - this time, I was SURE it was just over that incline. I had to be close, for real this time. He said it was about half an hour away. I let out a sigh of disappointment. It had already been a few hours since I'd left the river - five miles hadn't taken this long since Katahdin. I couldn't press on immediately, so I sat down for a breather. Even if I couldn't get more water, I would get rest, dammit. Suddenly I heard a familiar voice cry out "Gene!". Joe was just a bit above me, but I didn't see him because of a boulder. I moved up to his position, and found out that he was out of water as well. There wasn't another water source until the shelter, so we had to get at least that far.

    We got up and moved on. A small ways up, we saw a huge rock scramble that we needed to climb over. "Oh, hell no" were my exact words, I believe. I was dehydrated enough from normal uphill WALKING. This required you to use your arms to physically climb up in places, not to mention careful foot placement. I went ahead, climbed up, rounded a corner...and saw that it continued up. What initially saw was only a short section of the full thing. I climbed rather slowly, and eventually it stopped and the terrain changed to ridge-walking. To my right, far far away, I could barely make out a person walking across a lower ridge. The distance was so great that I could really hardly tell it was even a person - any farther and forget it. He must've spotted me too, because he waved, and so I waved back. I was unsure if that was the lower section of the AT that I'd just crossed an hour or so ago, or if it was another trail nearby.

    I slowed down a bit so Joe could catch up, since getting separated now could've been a problem (moreso than usual). We soon saw signs for the shelter, which got us motivated enough to move forward more quickly, ever so slightly (the flatter terrain helped too, as well as better shade). We finally came across the spring (good) and also saw where the shelter was (bad). The spring was to the left, but in front of us was a wall. The shelter was 150 ft straight up that wall. We visited the spring first to just get enough water to satisfy our thirst, then painfully crawled up the rock face, hand over foot. After dropping my pack in the shelter and resting for 15 minutes, I climbed back down with both our sets of Nalgenes to fill up completely.

    While pumping the water, Colonel and (guy) staggered in. They'd run out of water as well, so they hastily filled up. Otis stumbled in a few minutes later, and he, too, was out of water. I finished filling the Nalgenes and climbed back up to the shelter. I ate, I rested, I stared off into space. The others made it up to the shelter too, and we talked about how difficult the terrain had been. The topo map really didn't do it justice. Otis said that he'd started getting dizzy on the way up and was seeing spots. He said a prayer and pushed on to get to the shelter. He also lamented how he'd been able to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro two years ago, but had fallen out of peak shape since then. We were all quite tired and took our sweet time recovering. I had a huge lunch - peanut butter, power bar, tuna, and tomato soup.

(Quirky side note, as I retype these my notes from my hard journal - there's a squished bug right where a period should be at the end of a sentence fragment. I just find that wonderful.)

    Having gone through such a strenuous section naturally led the conversation to the topic of life out here vs. life back in civilization. Otis commented, as most of us sat in only our shorts, "You know, my friends are home right now, playing Xbox or something, and they're bored out of their minds. Me, I'm sitting on a rickety piece of wood...and I'm comfortable and happy." When I mentioned the person I saw when ridge-walking, Colonel laughed and said that was him. He said that was afraid it was indeed one of us, and didn't say anything to (guy) because he didn't want him to know that they had that much farther to go. Unfortunately the conversation somehow degraded into a debate of the (lack of) merits of Episode I. It quickly became apparent that Otis, for all his virtues, was a huge Star Wars fanboy and would not stand to hear anything negative on the topic. Joe tried to discuss what distinguished the earlier films, but it fell on deaf ears.

     Joe and I decided to try and press on another 6.8 miles to the shelter where Mike and the others were staying that night. Honestly, I felt kind of exhausted, but I wanted to get to Monson on the 4th. I was somewhat doubting my decision to push on, almost feeling like I'd already tempted fate once that day. I wasn't sure we could do 6.8 miles before it got dark (we left at 5:20), but I figured as long as we stuck together and were careful about our water we'd be OK. I pulled out the cross around my neck, gave it a quick kiss and moved out. We ended up doing the first two miles in about an hour, so we thought we'd make it to the shelter in time for sure. We stopped to have our picture (link image) taken by an "older" gentleman, who for some reason decided to take the photo sidewides instead of capturing the majesty of the land behind us.

    After stopping momentarily to watch the sunset, and later an accidental detour through a bit of marshland, we were climbing what we thought was the final mountain section. I'd lost track of the time, but the sun had gone down a while ago and we needed our flashlights to keep going at all. Even with them in hand, it was difficult walking up inclines without stumbling now and then on something unseen. My ski/walking poles were not doing well. I lost the ring on one pole, and broke the rubber section on the other. I couldn't even begin to guess where the end of this climb was in this light, but Joe had apparently reached the top. The infamous conversation that will never leave either of our memories was then uttered.
 

Joe: "Well, I have good news and bad news."
Me: "What is it?"
Joe: "The good news is we're stopping here tonight."
Me: "OK."
Joe: "The bad news is, this is Fourth Mountain."
Me: "I don't care, as long as I get to stop now."

 
    Well shit. We were an entire mountain behind where we thought we were - we'd only done 4.7 miles instead of 6.8. Some of the ups and downs we encountered felt like they were larger than they actually were. We thought they were the dips we saw in the topo map, but apparently they were too narrow or shallow to be depicted. As I finally stumbled to the top, sure enough, the sign clearly stating "Fourth Mountain" was right there. There wasn't nearly enough room on the top of there to set up my tent, so I just rolled out the pad and sleeping bag. I was going to sleep right on the trail, but Joe advised against it. In fact, oddly enough, I can still remember exactly what he told. "Listen, I'm not your mother so I'm not gonna tell you what to do, but generally you don't want to be going to sleep in the middle of the trail." I knew for the fact that no one in their right mind would be passing through at this hour, and we'd almost certainly be moving out in the morning before anyone would arrive, but I opted for a spot near the low, short pines anyway. It was the oddest thing - I kept having to swat bugs away from my face for about half an hour, but then they disappeared entirely. I could see some clouds passing overhead, and made a comment on how it would be just our luck to get rained on. Joe thought I was honestly being pissy, when in reality I was just being mildly sarcastic. I'm surprised he thought I was being seriously pessimistic, given that he had previously harped on me several times for being too optimistic.
 
    Pleasant winds came and went, but the rain never did. I stared up at the sky until my eyes didn't want to stay open anymore. It'd been a while since I'd stargazed far away from any urban/suburban lit areas, and I'd forgotten just how full the sky can be. It was really hard to gauge whether or not I slept at all that night. I think I was constantly in an in-between state because I of the slope I was lying on.

Colonel: You know, I really have a craving for Cherry 7-UP, and...the weird thing is, I've never had Cherry 7-UP.