The last weather forecasts I had seen all agreed that Day 15 was going to be sunny and hot. When it started out cloudy I wasn’t complaining, well not about the clouds at least. The legs agreed that since they had been given the afternoon off they would be willing to climb Isolation and maybe even hike some Davis Path if it meant they could go home the next day. Then there was an odd pop as I was putting on my pack…seems another part of the poor thing had come undone. This was repeated twice more that morning and soon I had resorted to more of my clothesline to hold the pack together. For the rest of the trip, every time I put the pack on I held my breath hoping it would stay together.

Then it started raining. At times it was pouring and I would put up my umbrella. Other times it was just a light rain for walking in, but soon everything, including me, was soaked.

The rest of the day was spent on the Davis Path. There was no point in hitting Isolation or Davis summits in the rain. The forest was just wet everywhere and so was I. At lunchtime I just sat down on my bear can in the middle of the trail and had my cheese and sausage.

This is some rugged trail in an area that is hard to maintain. I had great appreciation for the axe work that had been done. It would have been much harder to finish this hike if I had been wrestling with all the blowdowns that had been cleared.

After having been soaking wet for the entire day I had had enough and set up camp near the old Resolution shelter area. Once again a bit confused I looked in the wrong place for water. Luckily I found a usable seep, but it would have been easier if I was looking in the right place to begin with heh. Finally dry I had dinner and hung everything up to drip. I wasn’t sure if I was wearing damp dirty clothes or wet slightly less dirty clothes in the morning, but I knew it wasn’t going to be good. Then I heard the first sound of thunder…

There were two waves of thunderstorms that night. Lots of lightning and thunder, but it seemed to stay a few miles away. The closest count I had was four seconds from flash to bang. I recall laying there in my hammock thinking how close I was to finishing this trail and how it would be unfair to get hit by lightning after all that work.