Above: From our first trip up Ramsey to see Drinkwater Pool, Peter stops at our turnaround spot to look upstream, knowing now that we can indeed push on through to Cosby in a long day's walk. Again, Broome's quote about never wanting to leave a mountain top comes to mind. We're not exactly on a mountain top, but it sure is hard to turn back.

At this point, the valley makes a long straight run towards Mt. Guyot, and for a brief, very brief time, the difficulty seems to ease a bit. Just beyond the end of this straightaway though, it really gets dense. The stream narrows to step-across size, then branches and branches again. In places, slides have left behind piles of twisted logs and shattered rock, brought down from the slopes above the stream. Here and there are still deep pools to be seen and traversed, but the time is growing near when we'll have to climb out of the stream and start climbing through the forest to the AT.