Day 50: Hemlocks Shelter

A few weekenders were in the shelter last night and I got treated to popcorn and dried cherries. Good stuff. They offered to cook us breakfast too but we needed to move on since I have been going slow both up and down hills now. We had three big climbs to do today and needed/wanted to get an early start. The first climb wasn't too bad but the down was pretty bad. The second climb seemed find but ended up going on forever. It turned into a rocky summit with ridges. Good views but the ridges wore thin. We stopped in the camp area for water and got caught in the rain. A small thunderstorm rolled through but we hiked on as it was passing. The problem was we were close to the third summit when the second wave came through. It was longer and more intense. We ended up sitting on the side of the trail waiting for the thunder to pass. we then hurried over the summit but by then it was definitely breaking up so we stopped to enjoy the views.

We stopped 0.1 mi short of our goal. There are two shelters close to each other, but the second one sounded like party central. So we decided to stop at the quiet shelter. Tomorrow we head into Great Barrington and see about going home to have my knee looked at.