Wet days are good for making miles. There's not much else to do. Sitting around on mountain peaks and overlooks isn't very pleasant, so you might as well just keep walking.
~~
Allen "Monkeywrench" Freeman
NOBO 3-18-09 - 9-27-09
blog.allenf.com
[email protected]
www.allenf.com
I just spent a whole day in a downpour on a canoe trip. We knew it was going to rain on the second day before we left but weren't going to skip a trip and miss the first good day in order to avoid the rain on the second. We were really glad we went. But I'm not above laying in my tent all day and reading either.
1A lunch break out of the rain Sidney Tappan campsite.jpgSidney Tappan campsite lunch break. Maine SOBO to the Hudson River (stiff sore knee pulled me off the trail after 785 miles). 2010. It was cold and wet. This was the only place I could take a short break out of the weather and stay warm while I lunched.
Had a fiend ask me once if I hiked in the rain? My answer was "not on purpose".
I am not young enough to know everything.
If it's rainin' on a Wednesday, I take a bath.
if it's Sun, Mon, Tues, no need, to soon...just took one on Sat.
If it's Thurs, Fri, no need, gonna take one on Saturday anyway.
I'd rather be hiking in the rain than sitting around a shelter or in a tent doing nothing, actually, I like hiking in the rain, didn't like staying wet 11 days in a row though.
On rainy days when the high temp will be at least in the 60s I hike in a swimsuit, and as always I wear sandals. I put the rest of my clothes in the dry bag with my sleeping bag and put a rain cover over my backpack. I stay warm enough as long as I keep moving and when I get to where I'll be camping I can set up my tent and my dry clothes are waiting for me. My tent is a Eureka Spitfire which is big enough for me but there is not much room to hang things up to dry in it. I only have backpacked in summer so that made it a lot easier.
Zach
I don't particularly like to hike in the rain. But I do. I've been spoiled w/ some of the hikes I've down out west where there was infrequent rain (hiked the entire JMT w/o getting rained on in 2004). On the AT in 2013, no such luck. The worse rain I had was my first day in the Smokeys (4/4/13). It was a cold rain that froze on the vegetation. Man, that was miserable. It took me 5 min to open a Snickers bar. I was freezing!
'No rain, no pain, no Maine.'
2013 AT Thru-hike: 3/21 to 8/19
Schedule: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...t1M/edit#gid=0