Appalachian Trail (day 67) - October Mountain Shelter to Mark Noepel Shelter / mile 1590

Weather could not decide what it wants to do today. I've ended up hiking alongside a trail family.

As expected it was raining in the morning, my gear has been drying all night inside the shelter and it ended up being semi-dry which was a good news. I've packed up and left at 5:30 AM

First stop was The Northern Cookie Lady's house, unfortunately I was here too early to get a cookie and a hibiscus tea but it was fine I've met Seconds and his Tramily, they've spend night here and we're just heading out.

We hiked together until the city of Dalton and had a breakfast at Juice N' Java, their breakfast burrito was very good but not quite big enough for my hiker hunger so I went to a nearby gas station and had a slice of pizza as well.

Next stop was the Dollar General few miles down the trail at the town of Cheshire. Seconds and his crew were always one step ahead of me, I convinced them to hike additional 8 miles to Mark Noepler Shelter. Their initial plan was to stay at the Crystal Mountain Campsite because there was four of them they had concerns about amount of space left in the shelter but they decided to give it a go anyway.
Rain throughout the day was quite crazy, it reminded me of British weather. One minute sun would shine and the next heavy rain would fall on us, it cycled like this four or five times and it was still going in the evening. After the resupply at the DG, we made our final ascent to Mark Noepler Shelter, it was located just underneath Mount Greylock, Seconds Tramily was planning to get there tomorrow morning for the sunrise, they asked me if I wanted to join, but since I would have to wake up at 3:30 AM I politely refused. Yesterday was a tough day and I really needed those few extra hours of downtime to recover.

We arrived at the shelter at 5:30 PM, there was two more hikers here and the shelter got filled up, I've opted to tent, it would be way to noisy here tonight, besides there was many good campsites around. Other than the weather it was a fun day on the Appalachian Trail.

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