It took everyone a while to get packed up to leave this morning but we finally got back to the trailhead at Kinsman Notch. The trail immediately went up, and was rocky and flooded the whole day. I started out with new shoes, my third pair of the hike, but they were soon saturated in mud. I still wasted time trying to keep out of standing water on the trail though because it’s demoralizing to constantly step into cold, muddy water above your ankles. Some areas were even deeper but I managed to avoid all of them.

We went over Mount Wolf and made it to the Eliza Brook Shelter for dinner. I was only hiking between 1 – 1.5 MPH all day. It’s hard to accept that I’m that slow when I used to be able to plan my days based on a 2.5 – 3 MPH speed. The terrain was difficult but I definitely could have gone faster without all the water. The sun never came out today but I have hopes for tomorrow. We only hiked 7.5 miles because there wasn’t time to go all the way over the Kinsman Mountains before dark, and there’s no camping above treeline.

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