It started raining about 5:00 AM that morning and rained for about an hour. It wasn’t a hard rain, just enough to get everything good and wet.

Everyone camped around the shelter was slow to get moving,but the weather was supposed to improve as the day progressed. We packed up our wet gear, trying to keep everything as clean as possible. Wet tents made our sodden packs heavy.

The first few hours of the hike were very foggy. The air was heavy and water dripped from the leaves on the trees. There were no views, and picking your way down the muddy slick trail took all of your concentration.

By lunchtime the sky had cleared and the trail was drying up. We were doing twelve and a half miles, our longest hike so far. I left camp a lot earlier than Deets, I wanted to hike alone. It was nice to hike by myself. I looked forward to the time when the physicality of hiking didn’t dominate my thoughts anymore. For now it was hard to think about anything else. I have a lot of aches and pains, but I’m fortunate that I don’t have any real injuries up to this point. A lot of hikers do. Knee problems and ankle problems seem to be the most common. Others suffer with bad blisters. My feet were definitely tender, bruised and rock sore, but so far the only blister I had was on my right hand from my trekking pole.

The hike went well, it was a good stretch of trail to choose for the first twelve miler. I was happy with the progress, even though this was the longest hike so far, it definitely was not the hardest.