It rained today. All day. It’s still raining. The forecast called for a solid, soaking rain, and it did not disappoint.
The day started with a short climb in an intriguing fog to the top of Glastenbury Mountain, where the fire tower has been deemed unsafe and closed to hikers, but there would have been no view anyway. It wasn’t raining at this point, or maybe it was, but I only felt it when a gust of wind would let loose a cluster of droplets from the canopy overhead. “Perhaps this will be a shorts and shell with the hood down day”, I naively hoped.
When I arrived at Kid Gore shelter and sat down to a morning snack, the skies opened up into a steady, drenching rain. This was not a Colorado rain, cold and violent, but brief. It was a sprawling, persistent, soaking rain, not icy, but not exactly warm, either, not in this season.
I cooled off quickly, so I pulled on my rain pants, pulled up my hood, popped in an audiobook on my earbuds, and set off down the increasingly sodden path. A quick uphill warmed me up, but most of the day was rolling or downhill, a nice change of pace compared to yesterday’s climbs and descents.
As the miles of green tunnel rolled on, I felt simultaneously appreciative of the thing that makes these hills so verdant and annoyed at its unrelenting persistence. Just as I was thinking about how fortunate I’d been not to have any slips so far, I slipped once, then again, then took a bonafide tumble — nothing injured or even bruised, thankfully. The trail was pretty tricky today, with lots of roots and boulders and puddles and deep mud, and less easy cruising. It was slow going, for sure.
I arrived at Story Spring shelter, and was faced with a decision: Stop and set up camp in a small but dry shelter at 2PM or knock out another 3 miles of mostly downhill and make tomorrow’s climb up Stratton Mountain that much shorter. I chose the latter, even though it meant setting up a tent. The last forecast I saw suggested that the rain was about to taper off, and the tent site at Black Brook was supposed to be pretty nice.
And so it was that I found myself chilled, standing in a downpour, staring at the puddles that would’ve made fine tent sites in better weather, and feeling pretty sorry for myself. It’s a beautiful spot, truly, sitting on the north bank of a deep and mysterious brook, aptly named. Or at least I think I’ll feel that way in the morning. I did manage to get my tent set up and crawled inside my sleeping bag with my poofy on to warm up. No companions tonight. It’s still raining.
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