canopus lake shelter to wiley shelter

another 30 miler in the bag. that’s 3 in a row. two more and i get a free sandwich.

i didn’t get the best night’s sleep last night. i have a small hole in the top of my mosquito netting. it’s been there for years. normally it’s not a problem, but for some reason last night the mosquitoes just single file marched right through it. i ended up plugging it with a square of tp and then had to go on a lengthy murder spree to kill everyone in the tent.

i was on trail again around 05:45 and spent the day in near constant moving. i’m finding the 30s aren’t bad provided you leave early, and don’t get sidetracked during the day.

my shoe fix didn’t last the morning. the trail quickly wore off any exposed thread from my sewing job despite my paying considerable attention to making my footfalls as delicate as possible.

i passed nuclear lake near lunch time, named from a chemical disaster involving plutonium. apparently it’s been deemed safe, but i couldn’t bring myself to stop. my safe level of nuclear chemicals is none.

i stopped at a shelter about a mile past the lake. i ate an extraordinarily bland lunch, an exploded and somewhat brown avocado and plain tuna packets, because that’s all the last resupply had. scrumptious.

after lunch i took another crack at fixing my shoe. i tried to sew it in such a way that there wasn’t any thread on the outside. then i put a long strip of leuko tape over the whole thing for even more protection. this lasted the rest of the afternoon and other than a tape touch up tonight, it’s still looking good.

a few miles from the shelter i took a brief detour to what i thought was a malaysian food truck. it wasn’t malasian, and was in the process of closing when i got there. i convinced the lady to sell me a raspberry lemonade, which i downed in about a minute.

i hiked on, finishing up most of the miles for the day. i stopped about .5 mile from camp to camel up some water, since the shelter apparently had coliform in the water adjacent to it. i wanted to also take my bath, but the weather said i had about an hour before it might start raining, so i headed up.

when i got to the shelter there were 4 people already besacked, and there was room for me, but i opted for my tent anyway because i’ll be seeing magz soon.

during dinner i calculated the next few days to see whether i could start pinning down a time when i’d be able to be picked up. what i discovered is that if i do another 30 tomorrow, i’ll only be 36.7 from great barrington. oof. the temptation to get in a day early is very strong, but i’m going to play it by ear.

the following image might be disturbing to some viewers. you have been warned.