Miles: 15.8; Elevation gained: 3,357 ft; Mile reached: 233.4

One of those days! 16 miles in solid rain, together with respectable vertical. Plan was to get off early, so we were packing up in the shelter before 6 – probably woke some folks up, but there was a party of 4 that had come in around 9:00 and wedged into the shelter on the floor and in assorted nooks and crannies, so a bit of payback to them and apologies to the rest! We hiked with headlamps until the trail turned to logging road, stopped to have breakfast, and of course it started raining at 7:00 and never stopped.

A few words on hiking in rain: it sucks. But that’s only two words. The main thing is, you’re not going to die, and once you’re wet, you’re wet (though you do have wetter and wettest, and I guess only at that point do you truly not care!). What you really don’t want is for your clothes or sleeping bag to get wet, so you need to make sure those are in dry sacks in your back pack. Some people do that, and then put everything in a Hefty sack, but whichever, the thing to remember is that pack covers don’t do sh*t in sustained rainfall. Whatever you have in your pack that is not waterproofed WILL get wet.

Then there’s the footwear issue. If you look at the entries in this blog for 2018, you’ll see that my son and I had heavy leather boots and that we hiked in a lot of rain and mud (in fact we hiked in streams which is what the trail turns into if it rains hard enough). It takes a while for boots to soak through, but once they do, they will not be dry again for a very long time. You will be sliding your feet into high humidity for days on end even after a few sunny days. The solution for many folks is to wear lightweight hiking shoes – either trail runners or just light boots that are mostly rubber and mesh. They get wet AND dry quickly. So I bought a pair of Oboz and did some practice hikes in them, but I was just not down with the low ankle support and, more importantly, feeling every bump in the road in the form of rocks, roots and what have you. So I left the Oboz at home and laced up my old school Salomons that had already hiked the LT and a lot more. In any case, it’s one of those personal preference things. Chris M wore the Oboz and came away unscathed. So far.

In any case, thanks mainly to Laraway Mountain, it was another big elevation day. Great views from the lookout up there but not today. Chris M’s phone officially died on Laraway, so fewer pics to choose from from here on. We lucked out at Lamoille River because we did not have to make the high water detour, and due to our early bird start, we got to Corliss Camp with time to spare and did not have to pitch tents. 37 miles to Canada…