May 13th, 2015

HiToday's miles = 17.3
Total ADK miles = 111.7

I did not sleep last night. It was so cold all night. I couldn't eat my oatmeal this am because I was a bit nausous from having not slept. I did, however, drink my coffee and look out at the lake. This trail has been nice in that I don't think I have slept right next to so many lakes as consistently as I have out here.

I paked up my things while shivering and mumbling under my breath at how cold it was and was hiking by 7:45am. It rained most of the morning. It was most certainly the coldest day so far on the trail. It drizzeled and was cloudy until lunch. I thought I was doing well this morning with mileage. I was navagating the obstacles really well I thought and was crusing through the sloppy mud with my 'Iron Man legs' (my new knee high gators) pretty fast. After what seemed like 6 or 7 miles I stopped to fill up on water and realized that I only had hiked 3 miles! I had been trudging through so much mud for so long. How had I only come 3 miles? The trail went up and around Colden Lake and crossed over to Flowed Lands. I had to take a high trail by Flowed Lands because the low trail had all flooded. I did not want to walk through any more floods. But, of course, I had to later. A few miles later I had to ford Opalescent River because the bridge had been removed due to 'safty concerns'. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I crossed it one more time where a bridge had been demolished by hurrican Irene in 2011. All in all it was a very wet afternoon.

The sky clearned up for a late lunch on a grassy jeep road. I took off my shoes, tried to dry my socks, and even made more coffee to warm myself up. It was the only (weather) nice part of the day. After lunch the sky became gray once more that the trail became a mud pit again. I climbed up to Duck hole which is... a giant mud pit where a lake had once been. Hurrican Irene had burst the dam and the lake drained down stream. There were two shelters by this giant mud pit and I slept in one of them. There was a thermometer on the side of the shelter that read 30 degrees...

I didn't take any pictures today because I was too cold to get my phone out.