After the knee problems of the day before I wanted to see if a short day would help. With the rains of the previous day and overnight, none of the clothes on our makeshift clotheslines inside the shelter had dried. I decided on the wet socks since my fresh pair would most likely just become soaked again from the inundated trails. Most everyone was out early as usual, but since my short day should have only entailed three hours of hiking at my usual pace, I decided to hang about in the morning and relax a bit. The sun fought the fog and mist all morning, but had not yet been victorious by 11:30 AM. I had reached my breaking point for sitting around, so I headed out.
After about thirty minutes the fog had receded and an easy day of hiking and some lovely views were ahead of me. Less than five miles in my knee was at it again, and any hopes of pushing farther for the day were shelved. Cosby Knob Shelter came early. I found Bogey and Hat, roommates from the night previous, there already, both having left much earlier than me. Dinner was early (mac and cheese) and then the waiting game for darkness and bedtime. Many more people came in during the evening, with a shelter designed for 12 soon holding 17. More girls than I have seen in a while had stopped there for the night, with almost half our numbers being female, definitely unusual for the average gender make-up of the thru hiking crowd. We had a fire going in the fireplace all evening, and all the socks were quickly dried with special attention paid to the prevention of unfortunate ancillary fires. With such a late start and early finish, I was stir crazy by the time nature turned the lights out.
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