Miles: 14
After hanging out on the summit of Hall Mountain for sunset last night (and the fact that we took 5 hours to hike 4 miles), the name "Herd of Turtles" stuck for Tangent, Semi-Sweet, Slacker (previously known as Texas Pete), Wonderboy, Kevin and I. Today, though, we were more like rabbits and did 14 miles over 5 mountains. Ouch. But we lost Semi-Sweet and Tangent :( We'll see them tomorrow night, so the Herd will stay intact. Phew!
We had a late and lazy start to the day, but made good time to our first break point - Surplus Pond. I saw my first leech! Eww! We then scuttled onto the waterfall and jumped in the swimming hole. Great spot, but the water was FREEZING! We went over another mountain and reached a lean-to. A couple of NOBO's told us that it may rain tomorrow and it's not wise to climb Baldpate Mountain wet. The sheer faces of rock that we had to haul ourselves up on proved that advice true. After a long and steep climb up, we had great views and even sneaked a peak at Mount Washington. Cool! To get to the next lean-to, we had to climb two more mountains and it was 6:30 at that point. So, we didn't daddle at the summit like we normally do.
The remaining mountains weren't too bad and we made it to camp with half an hour of daylight to spare. We're all exhausted, so our planned card game of spades was pushed to another evening. We'll have to wait for the Herd to reunite.
- Bobo the Turtle