July 14

(11.9; 356.9 total, 1817.1 to go; -3.1 from pace, -183.1 overall)

It’s an early start today to be ready for a shuttle back to the trail; I eat breakfast and pack up and am on the trail again by about 8:30. It’s a nice walk up to Ethan Pond Campsite, where I duck in to sign the register. I’ve been ducking in most places and huts along the way hoping to find Dan and Leah, since I’m carrying their Companion, but no sign of them anywhere; it’s starting to worry me. This campsite apparently has big bear problems, and there’s a specially designated cooking area about a hundred feet from the shelter; I’m glad I’m not staying there, because that looks like it’d be really frustrating to have to use.

The next stop is Zealand Falls Hut, next to Zealand Falls, and the trail is an extremely pleasant surprise. It’s incredibly flat and easy terrain, and I cover the 4.8 miles between the two places in just under two hours; I rave about the easiness of the terrain in the register at the hut so northbounders will be aware of it. After lunch I continue onward.

The next terrain isn’t nearly so easy, and I make fairly slow time. I’d hoped to make Garfield Ridge, nearly ten miles away, by the end of the day, but instead I find it’s getting late and I’m only near Guyot, 5.5 miles away.

It’s a 0.7 mile trip off-trail to get there, but I’m not really in the mood to bushwhack to find my own site the requisite distance from trail, so I stop there early. My only thru-hiker companion is a guy named “R.B.” as I recall. Dinner is some rice and dried vegetables I picked up from the leftover hiker goods at White Birches; I don’t have directions, so things don’t turn out perfectly rehydrated, but it’s still very much edible. After dinner it’s straight to sleep.

July 15

(5.5; 362.4 total, 1811.6 to go; -9.5 from pace, -192.6 overall)

I wake up a little late this morning, but it’s not wakeup time that makes the day go slow; to be honest, I’m not really sure what did make it go slow. All I remember is that it gets to be midafternoon and I’m still not even to Garfield Ridge Campsite, which is more than a bit frustrating. The last stretch of trail up toward the site is incredibly, ridiculously steep. I stand at the bottom marveling at it when I hear voices from up the trail: “That’s way too steep to be the trail, no way that’s it.” I yell up, “Yes it is!” for massive hilarity from my point of view. Day hikers.

It’s still kind of early, but there’s no real place to stay unless I go to Greenleaf Hut, and the register at Ethan Pond said to avoid it, so I stop super-early for the day. I’m eventually joined by a bunch of other hikers: Old Dawg and the Foot Machine are northbounding, and Medicine Man, Privy, and Hungarian are southbounding, among others I don’t remember. The caretaker, Claire, comes around to collect payment in blood from people staying the night; her job during the winter is “Solid Waste Supervisor” (not human waste, note) or somesuch at McMurdo in Antarctica. I try to get to sleep early so I can get an early start the next day and hopefully make more reasonable mileage than I’ve made the last two days.

July 16

(15.1; 377.5 total, 1796.5 to go; +0.1 from pace, -192.5 overall)

I wake up around 5 and get the early start I’d intended. Before I head out, I sign the shelter register. The register has an amusing, unsigned (of course) rant yesterday from someone complaining about going into the wilderness to get away from capitalism yet still being followed by it and the AMC monopoly. In my entry I take the time to differentiate capitalism from monopolies (capitalist societies do often act to curb them, after all) and note that it’s really the government-sponsored monopolies, as here, that are most dangerous.

The first stop is the top of Mount Garfield for a sunrise; the valleys around are still covered in fog, making for a beautiful view.

Next up after a bit more hiking is the famous Franconia Ridge, consisting of Mount Lafayette and Mount Lincoln (and I suppose Little Haystack Mountain). The views from both peaks and along the ridge are fantastic; here’s what it looked like from Lafayette:

The walk along the ridge, despite going up and down a bit, is actually easy walking. The descent down is the usual sheer-cliff drop, but once I get past most of it it’s easy walking to Liberty Springs Tentsite. However, I’m making good time and it’s early, so I continue on.

Around 17:30 I reach Lonesome Lake Hut, the southernmost of the huts. Its main attraction is Lonesome Lake, and the swimming looks too good to pass up. I stop, swim and dry for an hour, pick up six Snickers bars to tide me over for trail snacking out of the Whites, and continue on another two hours to Kinsman Pond Campsite. It’s the last fee site in the Whites (yay!), and I’m even offered a work-for-stay while I’m there, but I want to make good time the next morning, so I pass it up and fork over my payment in blood of $8. The shelter’s super-duper new, and it’s really spiffy.

July 17

(13.1; 390.6 total, 1783.4 to go; -1.9 from pace, -194.4 overall)

Unlike yesterday, I don’t get an early start; in fact, it’s really rather sluggish, and I’m passed by a couple thru-hikers who opted to stop for the day yesterday at Lonesome Lake Hut.

On the trail things proceed at a mellow pace. I pass a trail crew doing maintenance, with a radio playing Steve Miller’s Jet Airliner in the background. There are a couple people at Eliza Brook Shelter when I pass by, but I continue on. There are an awful lot of people heading north toward the shelter that I pass as I head toward Kinsman Notch, and I suspect some people were forced simply due to lack of space to tent.

Around 19:00 or so I reach Kinsman Notch, at which point only 1.6 miles remain to Beaver Brook Shelter on the slopes of Mount Moosilauke, the last above-treeline travel on the A.T. heading south. One slope is so steep there are wooden blocks and rebar in places for hand- and footholds; my understanding was this was the southern slope, so I’d be hitting it tomorrow morning. My understanding was wrong. Oops. It’s now twilight and I’m busy scrambling up a ridiculously steep ascent with a weak flashlight as the sun goes away; it’s about 20:30 by the time I finally reach the shelter, safe and sound, in full nighttime darkness. The shelter’s full, so I pull out my tent and use it bivy-style for the night after a quick dinner.

July 18

(7.9; 398.5 total, 1775.5 to go; -7.1 from pace, -201.5 overall)

I wake up around five when another camper is taking pictures of the sunrise; it’s a nice sunrise, but my camera can’t capture its colors very well.

I slowly meander into making breakfast, in no rush since I’m planning on a short day into Glencliff and the hostel there. I’m hiking by about 7:45 and reach the cloud-covered top of Moosilauke by about 9:30, at which point I start my descent into the hiker superhighway south of the Whites.

Today’s terrain is nice and easy, no steep ascents or descents, and I’m into Glencliff shortly after noon. I grab a bike (rock on!) and head over to nearby Warren for resupply, including a half gallon of mint chocolate chip ice cream (eaten in Warren before the return trip), and return with supplies to get to Hanover and the NH-VT border. Several northbounders (among them Doctor Zayus, Start, and Chef, whom I met in a backpacking trip over spring break down in the first two hundred miles of the A.T. in North Carolina) are holding a small barbecue, so I chip in some money and get awesome food for really cheap; alas, they go for cheap Budweiser, so I have to buy my own Guinness bottle to have anything tasty to drink with the meal. After eating and doing some more trail update writing, I head to sleep.

Now that all the hard stuff is done, it’s time to start cruising; it shall be awesome. Also, as a note from the future, I’m currently at -173.9 after stringing together a week or so of averaging around twenty miles a day, including one gangbusters thirty-mile day. Things are looking great for an on-time finish, although I’m now starting to eye a possible one-week off-trail hiatus to do trail maintenance for the fun of it during my thru-hike, which might just fit in my schedule if I can keep up a good pace. We shall see…

July 8

(0.0; 297.9 total, 1876.1 to go; -15.0 from pace, -152.1 overall)

I set my alarm for fairly early the next morning as I plan to walk into town to Welsh’s for breakfast. As it turns out, I wake up just as Dan and Leah are leaving to hit the trail again. After they leave I notice a 2008 thru-hiker’s companion left where they were staying; it’s probably theirs, so I put it with my stuff to deliver it to them further down the trail.

I walk about a mile in to town before getting picked up by the same guy as yesterday, who drives me the remaining half mile in. Breakfast is a big omelet; at Welsh’s I meet Sunday again (staying at a different hostel), as well as a different couple, Silver Potato and Cracker, who are eating breakfast and getting a mail drop before hitting the trail again. They ask what kind of stove I have, and when I note I have a canister stove Silver Potato asks if I need any fuel — their mail drops anticipated a greater burn rate than has actually happened. I’m still working on my second 15.9 ounce canister but was planning on getting more while in town, so we discuss a meeting location when I finish breakfast.

After breakfast I head to an outfitter nearly across the street to pick up those trekking poles I could have used so long ago. A random passerby from the Randolph Mountain Club explains the basics of trekking pole features; the available choices range from $80 to $140. I eventually decide to keep it simple and just get the most expensive ones, because I’m generally pretty thrifty and can’t think of a better way to spend it than here — I’ll be using these for at least another couple thousand-ish miles. I also grab a second stuff sack to help with carrying food; I don’t remember what I used before I got this new stuff sack.

Next stop is Colonial Comfort Inn where Silver Potato and Cracker had stayed the previous night. Silver Potato gives me two eight-ounce fuel canisters, which should at least be enough to get me through New Hampshire. Yay for free fuel! I’m also present as Cracker conclusively chooses her trail name (for managing to break one each of two pairs of hiking poles so far; they’re sending them home now to deal with possible warranties and such when the thru-hike finishes).

After making a phone call home, I head to the library for Internet access. The library in Gorham, as with every place I’ve visited, has a copy of Firefox running on it. What’s particularly interesting, however, is the bookmarks — the bookmarks in the bookmarks toolbar are:

• Firefox Help
• Firefox Support
• Plug-in FAQ

So this install dates back at least to Firefox 0.8 or 0.9, can’t remember the last release with those bookmarks — pretty unusual for a library with restricted use policies.

Speaking of restricted use policies, this library’s Internet is practically useless. I cannot access my blog (Reason for restriction: Forbidden Category “Games” — what the heck? It’s a single personal domain! The blacklist must be ridiculously comprehensive.), so I’m forced to write some of the immediate past trail updates in an email to myself via webmail. I also can’t access xkcd (Reason for restriction: Forbidden Category “Humor/Jokes” — at least this one makes sense). I cannot access Facebook (Reason for restriction: Administrative Custom List settings — so a prejudicial block), which isn’t really a huge deal. Internet security gurus will not be surprised to find that 0x000000 is blocked, as I suspected after images from an entry displayed by Google Reader didn’t load (Reason for restriction: Forbidden Category “Hacking/Proxy Avoidance Systems” — I am amused). Note how the last item demonstrates the considerable flaw in the apparent blacklisting setup they’ve got running here — there doesn’t seem to be any attempt to block content, so if you can get it another way you win. Lastly, while I don’t have any intention of doing any here, it seems this publicly funded library also forbids speech over the Internet in the form of political lobbying as well. (Aside: small-government enthusiasts will note that there would be no First Amendment concern here if this library weren’t publicly funded: a private library could set any access restrictions it wanted without raising any freedom-of-speech concerns. The First Amendment applies to state and federal governments, not to independently-operating private entities.) I don’t ask the librarians if there’s a way to disable the blocking, but when I mention the blocking being a pain they say they can’t do anything to override it. To top it all off, the connection is slow and flaky, and I can’t get images off my camera’s memory card and into permanent storage elsewhere because of it.

I spend rather more time at the library than I should making less progress than I’d like before heading out and back to the campground. On the way out I pass a northbounder, Bird, who’s in town from further south on the trail (possibly Pinkham Notch, I think); we talk for a little bit about various things before heading our separate ways.

Back at the campground I regroup for a trip to get supplies for the next section of hike. Tomorrow begins the anticipated White Mountains, consisting of roughly 100 miles of trail. Various roads cut through these national forests, so I don’t have to carry food for the entire trek, and furthermore, thru-hikers have the option to do a work-for-stay at a series of luxury shelters (in price, not amenities) in the mountains along the way. I decide to carry food for a roughly fifty-mile section to Crawford Notch, about five days of hiking. I get a ride in to Shaw’s, which is at the far end of town, to pick up food.

After the limited options in Monson and the relative smallness of the Stratton store, Shaw’s is paradise: rows and rows and rows of choices, much closer to what I expect after having grown up in suburbs of Detroit and having spent the last four years in Cambridge in Massachusetts. The choices are most obvious in the pouch tuna section: several choices, with seasoning and without, and a variety of other pouch meats as well, including salmon and crab! I cannot pass up the chance at crab, so I grab a pouch for one of my meals. Along with the usual Knorr fare I also try out Idahoan potatoes, as noted in another hiker’s meals earlier on the trail. Once groceries are completed I head a little further up the road, intending to hit a Wal-Mart (yet another verdant oasis on the trail) to get a new memory card for my camera. The current card was the original that came with the camera, and it’s painfully small: a pitiful 16MB for pictures and minimal video. I end up hitting a Radio Shack before getting there, and the new card I pick up means I’ll never have to worry about capacity again: 1GB of roomy goodness for pictures!

It’s now about dinnertime, so I head south back into Gorham to find a place to eat. I’m in the mood for Mexican, but Dan and Leah discouraged me from going to the Mexican restaurant (it apparently doesn’t serve free chips and salsa!), so I end up stopping at Mr. Pizza, this time for a sit-down meal. I attempt to satisfy some of my Mexican longings with a margarita, and I eat another Hawaiian pizza for the actual meal.

What’s truly memorable about the dinner, however, isn’t what I eat but rather what I watch: baseball! The Red Sox are hosting the Twins at Fenway, and when I come in it’s the top of the seventh and the Sox are down 4-1. The top ends and the bottom begins; the Sox score a run to take it to 4-2, but the Twins strike back in the top of the eighth to make it 5-2. The top ends and things start to get interesting: the Sox get a man on base, and a double puts him in to make it 5-3. Up to the plate comes Manny Ramirez (who I have since found out has been traded, alas — hope the results of the trade pan out), with a man on second. Manny takes the very first pitch and smashes a monster over the Monster and into the stands, and suddenly it’s a tie game! There’s still more inning to go, and the Sox get another run in to edge up to 6-5; the Twins can’t overcome in the top of the ninth, and we have a game. Awesome!

By now it’s nearly ten; I should sit in the parking lot and wait for someone heading south to leave so I can get a ride, but instead I start walking back to the campground, arriving some forty minutes later, just in time for a good night’s sleep. I’ve probably walked seven or so miles today around town (albeit without a pack) and I fall asleep pretty quickly.

July 9

(8.0; 305.9 total, 1868.1 to go; -7.0 from pace, -159.1 overall)

Back on the trail again today! First, however, I go into town (this time hitching the entire way — I’m saving my energy for hiking today, no unnecessary walking around town; I ask the campground owner about getting cheap bikes for use by hikers, and she says they had them until the insurance company complained — phooey) and eat another breakfast at Welsh’s; I then head to the post office to ship home more supplies I don’t need. This time the big item is a bear canister which everyone’s said I don’t need (the sites which have problems have adequate facilities to handle smellables) as the container, and inside I stuff a water bottle (I was carrying four, of which I only ever used two or three assuming on-the-go water refilling), trekking pole packaging, soap (licking clean plus boiling water is plenty for sanitation), a compass (the trail provides enough directional assistance, and besides, I don’t have a map with which to use it), and other assorted items I’ve since forgotten and rarely if ever used. That done, I grab a ride back to the campground, pack up my stuff, and hit the trail around noon with a northbounder named Ishmael (yes, he carries Moby Dick with him, as I recall) who’d arrived the previous day.

Today’s hike is going to be short since I’ve started so late; the question is how short. The first shelter is 1.9 miles in, and I cover it in 35 minutes. Is it the zero, my poles, breakfast, or something else? As I write in the shelter register, “Who cares!” (In retrospect that section was fairly flat, so it was probably that plus excess energy from breakfast; I’m also a little skeptical of that distance being accurate.) Jukebox catches up and passes me at the shelter from his stay in Gorham, and I continue on after a snack.

Much of the hiking today is fairly uneventful; the weather turns a bit inclement, but there’s nothing particularly memorable about the views. Still, since I have the pictures, I might as well post them. Here’s one last bit of video footage from a trailside overlook area:

Continuing on and up, it starts to rain. I pull out a rain coat and my pack cover and keep going to Imp Campsite, my first pay site in the Whites. I pull in around 19:30, pay the caretaker the fee, and head in to the shelter itself to make dinner and head to sleep. Compared to every other shelter I’ve used, this one is dead — I doubt I hear more than fifty words from the time I reach the shelter to when I go to sleep (including anything I said) because so many people are asleep or close to it, even though hushed voices really wouldn’t pose any problems.

July 10

(10.6; 316.5 total, 1857.5 to go; -4.4 from pace, -163.5 overall)

I get up in the morning and return to my traditional breakfast fare: oatmeal packets. These oatmeal packets are Shaws-brand, just as my first batch in the 100-Mile Wilderness was, and they have trivia questions on them. Strangely, today’s trivia has an error in it, giving “Irvin” Berlin as the author of my aunt’s favorite Christmas song, White Christmas. (I also hit an error on the last day in the 100-Mile Wilderness with a packet crediting Hank Aaron with the all-time home run record but forgot to mention it here; it passed to Barry Bonds fairly recently.) Another oddity: a fellow backpacker remarks upon my eating oatmeal from the packet after pouring in the requisite boiling water; I’d thought that trick was well-known backpacker folklore, but perhaps it isn’t in very rare cases.

The day commences with travels over three peaks named North, Middle, and South Carter Mountain. Early on I pass two girls in a tent off the trail at a stealth site (although to be honest it’s pretty un-stealthy; I’m surprised ridge runners haven’t managed to cite them, since they’re right next to the 0.25-mile radius around Imp where you can’t otherwise camp and aren’t the required 200 feet or so off the trail. Jukebox passes me on one of the peaks when I stop for a snack.

As usual, I also snag a few 360-degree videos:

Lunch is near Carter Dome, a rocky mountaintop with excellent views. I meet Limeonade and Emily doing a southbound thru-hike; Limeonade got her trail name from a botched blue hair-dyeing session, learning as so many MIT students learn that getting the color hair you want is easy to get wrong. There’s also a backpacker out enjoying the Whites who did a thru-hike in the past and a couple northbounders who talk about shelters south; apparently there’s one which is known as being capable of receiving pizza deliveries. 🙂

I continue on, doubling back to grab a water bottle that fell from my pack in an errant stumble (wasting probably half an hour doing so), and reach the trail to my first “hut” before 16:00.

In the Whites, huts are buildings administered by the AMC where you can stay overnight in bunks with provided sheets and blankets, get meals in the morning and at night, use bathroom facilities, stock up on drinkable water (a scarce resource, especially if as a day hiker you don’t carry water-purification options), and get minimal supplies (energy bars and the like). They’re also wicked expensive — upwards of $90 a night, targeted at day hikers and families. Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone would visit them at that price. Thru-hikers, however, do have an option which makes them useful beyond just temporary resupply and indoor snack-eating: work-for-stay. Under this system, some number of thru-hikers (the Companion says two or four, but experience says these numbers are lies) are allowed to stay overnight in the hut, on the floor in the common area, and get to eat dinner and breakfast leftovers, in exchange for an hour or so of work around the hut. It’s about the time when I could do a work-for-stay at Carter Notch Hut, but I decide to continue on and leave that open for Limeonade and Emily, who are nursing a sprained ankle and need it more. (Had I known of the two-is-a-lie rub I might have stopped, but it would have been a pretty short day, so I probably would have pushed on.)

Next up are the Wildcat Mountain peaks, of which I pass over peaks A and D (I don’t know where the others lie, except off-trail). I’m hoping to reach Pinkham Notch and camp off-trail to walk in for an all-you-can-eat breakfast the next morning, but the terrain stymies me, and I make it but half a mile or so past peak D and have to call it quits for the night. I move off-trail a ways to be regulation-legal (200 feet, but as I find in the morning it’s really only about half that, oops), set up, eat some Idahoan potatoes (amazing, competitive with Knorr in simplicity, weight, and calories), and sleep.

July 11

(10.3; 326.8 total, 1847.2 to go; -4.7 from pace, -168.2 overall)

I get a really late start today, far too late to eat that breakfast at Pinkham Notch, and descend the remaining miles to the visitor’s center.

As it turns out, I’ve been here before — this was the entry point for a weekend trip in the Whites toward Glen Boulder (not on the A.T.) during MITOC‘s winter school in 2007. I eat lunch, offload my accumulated trash, and head on.

I reach Osgood Tentsite around five or so in the evening, at the base of Mount Madison, after passing over a stream on a bridge which seems excessive after the sparseness of bridges over rivers in Maine (picture coming when I have time to insert it — and there they are).

There’s possibly still time to reach Madison Hut or a tentsite on a side trail near it, so I head on and up for an above-treeline summit. It’s up but not too steep until I reach treeline, and I make what I think is good time.

Once I hit treeline, however, the going slows. A lot. It’s not the exposure or incline but rather the stupid rocks there, and I have to pick my way carefully to avoid twisting an ankle. Fog starts rolling in as I head up, and there’s not a whole lot of view from the top. More impressively, however, is that I get within about 500 feet of the hut and treeline without even noticing it — a break in the fog as I happen to lift my head from staring at my feet reveals it to me at an impressively close distance.

I reach Madison Hut around 20:00. It’s late and I don’t really expect a work-for-stay, but I need their bathroom and figure I’d be kicking myself if it actually were available and I hadn’t asked, so I ask. Turns out they’re awesome and say, “Yeah, we won’t make you walk further tonight.” Whee! It’s past dinnertime, but they find some leftover pasta and pass me an approximately 9″x12″ cafeteria pan full of bowtie pasta with chunks of ham, along with a bowl and spoon. I fill the bowl and eat, idly chatting with people staying in the hut overnight. As it turns out, there’s another Waldo on the trail hiking north! (I seem to have passed him without knowing it, which isn’t especially hard to do.) Good thing I didn’t stick with that name, because it would have been mildly confusing, to say the least. I refill the bowl again, and again, and again, and eventually I manage to empty the entire pan — I really was hungry, I guess. There are a few other work-for-stayers, but I can only remember that one was named Applecore; all total there were about six or so of us when the limit is supposedly two.

Lights go out at 21:30 to conserve energy (the huts all have these goofy “going green at the huts” posters that make it out to be a save-the-planet notion, but I don’t doubt it’s also economically efficient — this is one place where wind power is a very viable source of energy), and people filter to bed shortly thereafter. I pull out my pad and bag and do a little reading of the Federalist Papers (I believe around No. 20 or so), quite appropriately as I’ve just passed over a mountain named for one of its authors, and go to sleep after topping it off with the usual Bible reading.

July 12

(7.0; 333.8 total, 1840.2 to go; -8.0 from pace, -176.2 overall)

I wake up early, around 5:30, to get out of the way of the crew at the hut (“croo” as they call it, for reasons which escape me) as they prepare for the overnighters’ breakfast. Now it’s time to sit tight and wait, because we thru-hikers eat after the paying visitors and croo do — living it on the cheap means you don’t necessarily get a high-quality experience. I do some more reading of the Federalist Papers while I wait. Breakfast consists of some oatmeal and a pancake or two; after that, I sweep out the dining area and both bunkrooms as my work and head out on the trail.

Today’s trail is more of the end of yesterday. I’m now in the Presidentials, a twenty-five mile stretch that’s all above treeline, with all the same frustrating rocks. Progress is slow as I approach the most well-known peak in the Whites, Mount Washington.

Mount Washington is the site of the world record for greatest wind speed (upwards of 230 miles per hour) and, as with Pike’s Peak in Colorado, can be reached either by cog rail or by driving up it on a road. The summit has a visitor’s center, gift shop, and all the usual tourist trap things, so I’m hardly going to be in wilderness on it (not to mention the throngs of day-hikers the huts enable, carrying packs that are way fuller than they should be to carry food and water for a day, warm clothing, and basically nothing else — my fellow thru-hikers wonder what they could possibly be carrying).

On the hike up I pass by the cog railway, best known to thru-hikers for a tradition known as mooning the cog; you can guess what it entails (I choose not to participate). The cog rail is belching an incredible amount of exhaust fumes, making a complete mockery of the “going green” poster at Madison Hut. Some would say the cog shouldn’t exist, but then you require that everyone agree with your assessment of the relative merits of the different ways to pollute, and it’s clear that’s never going to happen, for any assessment that could be made. Once again we see a situation where a fully equitable Pigovian tax which forced people to consider the full costs of their actions, including those which would otherwise be negative externalities not shouldered by the offenders, would result in a natural (and totally voluntary) decrease in an undesirable activity (polluting by riding the cog). Never heard of Pigovian taxes before? It’s too bad, because they’re a good policy idea that politicians are wary to touch for fear of not getting elected; instead we see inequitable and less efficient systems like cap-and-trade proposed simply because it’s easier to say “make someone else pay” than “everybody pay your fair share based wholly on your voluntary choices”.

On a mostly unrelated note, some of my Federalist Papers reading lately touches on the federal power of taxation, a contentious power in the days when the constitution was submitted for ratification by the states. No mention has yet been made of why the power to levy income taxes was not included in the constitution (no, really, we amended the constitution to make the income tax possible — go us!); exactly what the reasons were for this prohibition would be extremely interesting to read.

Further up near the summit I’m passed by the two hikers I started with, Slowpoke and Asgask. At the summit I stumble through the crowds to find a gift shop, from which I purchase a candy bar and several postcards, which I hastily fill out and leave at the post office (yes, the summit has a post office, with a “distinguished” postmark, or so I’m told) to be sent when the weekend end. After signing the hiker register I continue down to Lakes of the Clouds Hut, the highest and largest of the huts.

I arrive to the sounds of dinner starting; the impression I get is that the croo functions similar to that of a summer camp, so you get the usual skits and rah-rah-rah stuff as mild entertainment (which invariably here instructs you on how to fold the blanket they provide you as well as how to “tip the croo”, of course). Asgask and Slowpoke are there, as well as another southbounder, Cripple, as are two northbounders (Dee Jay and Gray Ghost, I believe), and I duck inside to inquire about work-for-stay, which is indeed available. I settle back to do more Federalist Papers reading until paying dinner ends. Once everything’s cleared away, dinner is served — turkey, cranberry sauce, some salad, and lentil soup. I get several bowls of lentil soup and, once everyone’s cleared out for the night, head to sleep sated.

July 13

(11.2; 345.0 total, 1829.0 to go; -3.8 from pace, -180.0 overall)

We’re up and out of the way of the croo at breakfast by 6, to sit back and wait for our scraps. Breakfast is more oatmeal, and after that we do our work (sweeping out the bunkrooms and changing pillowcases) and head out on the trail.

Today’s hiking gets me below treeline again, which is nice because it means camping options are more plentiful; I don’t know what non-thru-hikers do if they’re not getting scalped by the Appalachian Money Club at the huts, because the pickings are spare through here. The first stop below the trees today is Mizpah Spring Hut, where I stop for a snack. There are tent sites as well there, but it’s way too early to stop, and I continue on and over a couple more peaks, seeing what remains of The Old Man of the Mountain in the distance (a picture is, as always, forthcoming), and heading down the mountainside to Crawford Notch, reaching the road there by about 19:30.

I’ve planned this bit of hiking to have me resupply at Crawford Notch General Store just three miles up the road, so I sit down and put out the thumb. I wait nearly forty minutes before getting a ride, the longest wait yet, until I get a ride there just before it closes, in time for quick resupply for the rest of the Whites down to south of Mount Moosilauke. I’m staying at the attached campground for the night; there’s a new bunkhouse there for hikers, but I’m too late to get a spot in it for the night and it’s already full, so I pitch the tent adjacent to a northbounder named Thud in a hammock, cook and eat a dinner as it starts to rain, shower (although I’m not sure how much good a shower without doing laundry actually is), and head to sleep.

I’m finding I have less and less time when I stop off the trail to make these posts, and I’m stopping off less than I did early on now that I’ve adjusted to living on-trail all the time, so I’m most likely going to try to churn out a few days at a time rather than the longer sections I’ve been trying to do. For example, this bit was going to go to Glencliff just south of the Whites, but I ran out of time to do so and would rather get something out instead of punting getting anything out for another long period of time; I’ve punted getting anything out for too long.

Just so everyone’s aware of my current progress, I’m about 25 miles into the New Jersey section of the trail, but the trail dips back into New York for a little bit (it’s hugging the border mostly), so I’m in Unionville, NY at the moment. By my numbers I’m at 843.3 total, 1330.7 to go, -206.7 overall, an offset from pace which is worse than the latest numbers you see in this post but better than a nadir of -234.1 overall, hit partially due to an opportunity along the trail that I couldn’t bring myself to miss that required that I slow down slightly (or rather, not speed up too much) through August 1. More importantly, in the last two weeks of hiking I’ve only had three days below pace (one due to a thunderstorm as I was heading up a mountain and by only 0.6 at that, the other two which I intentionally made into an effective zero), and if you cut those out I made up about 40 miles on pace over that time, and some of those days felt (and were) easy due to restrictions on available campsites (the last several states only allow camping in designated sites, which curtails freedom in how far I can hike). I wish I had no deficit, but what I do have seems to be peeling away nicely, and 20+ days are easily and commonly in reach now.

Oh, if you were in MA/CT/NY and a little bit on either side of that between July 30 and August 17 and smelled something funny, it was probably me and my stench from not having taken a shower during that time.

I still have not upgraded:

Super-special brownie points if you can guess where and when I got it. (Hint: I wanted to make this post about two weeks ago, if I’d taken the picture and found Internet access between then and now.)

Posts have been slow in coming of late partly because they take so long to write and partly because I haven’t hit towns at the right times to use their libraries (today’s access actually is the result of an overnight stay after a short day because this library isn’t open on Mondays). Also, my progress in the last few days has been hampered by a giant, man-eating rattlesnake! (Or at least that’s what it’ll grow into by the time I fully elaborate on the encounter; you know how it goes.) Thinking of you, dear readers, I of course managed to get a few pictures (although they’re rather severely impaired by my camera’s lack of zoom capabilities) and even a little footage of it slithering along! Take a gander at my best picture of it, and make sure to click through for the video footage as well:

July 3

(4.1; 250.5 total, 1923.5 to go; -10.9 from pace, -124.5 overall)

After a full breakfast of pancakes and an omelette at the store (it’s a diner as well as a general store), I get back on the trail, but not before being told that there’s a nice storm coming through in the afternoon and that it might be wise to consider my schedule once I’ve reached the first shelter.

The first big trail feature of the day is Moody Mountain; by Maine standards it’s not especially big (2440 feet), and it’s a reasonably nice hike up the side. By the time I arrive at Hall Mountain Lean-to on the other side it’s early afternoon and the rain hasn’t come; since it’s ten miles to the next lean-to, I decide to stop early and avoid getting wet.

Given the time, it’s not surprising that it takes a few hours for anyone else to show up. By the end of the day I share the shelter with three other people: Laserchuck (apparently it’s a sailing term, not associated with speediness) doing a northbound thru-hike, Sunday going southbound (I apparently just crossed his path back in Monson when he was laid up for a week due to injury), and a guy on his second day out doing a section hike north. Since it’s so early and I’ve got a little extra food due to the Andover layover, I cook and eat two dinners tonight.

Just as I’m heading to sleep, Sunday asks if he can have a match to light a cigar, and he and the guy whose name I don’t remember each smoke a cigar before going to sleep. It’s strange, but I’ve seen a fair number of hikers smoking on the trail; I wouldn’t have expected it given that smoking’s not particularly good for your lungs. There’s certainly much talk on the trail of stops at pubs and breweries in towns along the way; I recall once seeing wine juice boxes that look like they’d be awesome at the end of a day, perhaps in a short stretch between towns (water’s heavy and all). The big difference there is that alcohol, in moderation, is good for you and not actively harmful, but smoking, in any quantity, isn’t. Even weirder, I’ve seen a hiker or two rolling weed joints at the end of the day, which makes even less sense than a cigar, so I suppose it could be worse. (This was just after Monson, for what it’s worth; apparently he “resupplied” in Greenville, although how in the world you’d know where to find a resupply spot in a city you don’t know is beyond me. I really should have asked him when I had the chance — not to use said knowledge but rather just to know it for the pedagogical value, in the same way that when I enter a store with signs mentioning closed-circuit cameras I feel obligated to look and find them as if to scout out the best way to rob it. It’s all shades of this xkcd comic, really.)

I end the day, as I’ve nearly always (sans a night or two in hostels, to the best of my memory) done so far, reading a bit of the Bible I’ve carried with me. Typically I’ll read a few chapters before going to sleep; I started at the beginning of Romans and have been working my way forward from there (as of July 22 I’m in 2 Timothy, for what it’s worth). Sometimes, however, I’ll get sidetracked with something like Saul’s reign or something else; tonight it was the book of Ecclesiastes. (Yes, I did say “book” — it’s only eight or ten pages, not too long.) Having read it, I have to say it’s by far the weirdest passage in the Bible I’ve ever read. Anyone out there done any studying of it? I can’t imagine it’s possible to get too much out of it without having some sort of “guidebook” to help you through it and its content, to be honest.

July 4

(14.0; 264.5 total, 1909.5 to go; -1.0 from pace, -125.5 overall)

Whee! Fourth of July! Happy Independence Day!

I need to start writing these entries while I’m on the trail; it’s now (the 22nd) nearly three weeks since I actually finished this day, and things are starting to get hazy.

I get a relatively early and quick start out of the lean-to and head over to the next one, Frye Notch Lean-to, just over ten miles away. Along the way next to Wyman Pond I meet a sectionwise thru-hiker, Ol’ Graceful. He says he’s on his seventeenth year of section hiking and will complete the full thru-hike with this section. To be honest, I find this achievement in many ways more impressive than a one-shot thru-hike like I’m doing; consistently committing time every year for that long to doing sections is something I can’t imagine I’d be willing to do, to be honest. There are too many other things I’d want to do (cross-country bike trip, I’m looking at you!) for me to be likely to continue doing it year after year like that. There’s also the conditioning: getting in shape again every time you start has to make the hike far less fun than it would otherwise be.

I stop for lunch at Frye Notch as a couple is sitting there doing the same, heading north on a day hike. They say the climb ahead up Baldpate Mountain is fairly intense; at this point, as a thru-hiker, I’m not sure whether to believe them or not. Unfortunately, all my sources of information are suspect at this point. Northbounders are in far better shape than me, so their analysis doesn’t apply. Day hikers are an entirely different breed from backpackers. Section hikers are closest, but there aren’t that many of them out on the trail. I leave a nice 4th of July note in the register and encourage other hikers to read the Federalist Papers as I’ve slowly been doing along the trail. (I also mentioned that I’d be dropping my copy off somewhere along the trail when I finished it, but as it turns out I only just finished them before my thru-hike experience ended, so nobody else got to read my copy.)

As it turns out, the 3.5 miles to the next lean-to over the mountain are initially easy going, temporarily very difficult (right up a sheer rocky slope), a reasonable stroll down and over to the second of the mountain’s peaks, and another steep descent to the lean-to. Since it’s the 4th I consider making the shelter, packing up a few things, and heading back to the top of the second peak (1.6 miles round trip) to try to catch fireworks, but unfortunately the peak is wooded, and three miles to get to the top of the first, clear summit and back (in the dark!) is too far, so I stop.

Tonight’s shelter is where I finally meet Spanky, he of the long shelter register entries accompanied with Bible verses (Sunday referred to him as “preacher-man” once), website, and a fairly relaxed pace. Spanky did a southbound trek in ’02 as well (his home is near Springer, hence the direction), and he says he’s doing the hike and then living out the rest of his life with his wife. He’d get along with my mom well, because he talks quite a bit. (I’m not much of a conversationalist, but I’ll talk when there are other people around or they try to draw me into discussion, generally.) We see a snowshoe hare run across the clearing in front of the lean-to; I lust for a gun, a license, and hunting season. It appears it’ll just be the two of us for awhile, but eventually four or five northbounders walk in from Carlo Col, 16.5 miles south and just before the NH-ME border, and we share the shelter with them. One’s British and mentions having made an entry in the next shelter’s register noting “Happy Insurgency Day”, which I find moderately amusing.

July 5

(11.5; 276.0 total, 1898.0 to go; -3.5 from pace, -129.0 overall)

Today is the day that I finally meet that most vaunted adversary along the Appalachian Trail, Mahoosuc Notch. Some thru-hikers describe it as the most difficult mile on the entire trail; I have customarily reserved judgment and set no expectations regarding it.

Today is the first day of the trail where I’m not in Maine ATC land any more. Once I pass Maine 26, I enter AMC land. The Appalachian Mountain Club is old — older than the Appalachian Trail itself — and is probably most closely associated with the White Mountains. Today also marks the start of an abomination upon the trail: fee sites. The AMC is a non-profit organization, but frankly, from the way they operate, it’s not obvious. Most sites in the area of the trail they maintain have an overnight use fee of $8; even worse, camping is prohibited within a quarter mile of all such sites (to preserve the land, which is probably accurate but is a stunningly convenient excuse), and they require non-site camping to be off the trail by 200 feet, so you can’t just hike until you find a nice place to stop, generally.

The hike up to Speck Pond Shelter goes over a mountain to Speck Pond, the highest body of water in Maine. I pass two thru-hikers named Pickle and Garlic while doing so, one of whom has apparently just completed a Triple Crown due to having sectioned in Maine previously. The Triple Crown of hiking is the Appalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail; if you think just the AT is insane, well, there are gradations of insanity. 🙂

I arrive in Speck Pond to catch up to Spanky, who says he’s stopping for the day. I’m still aiming to finish the Notch and get to the shelter on the other side of it, so I continue on. I’m starting to run low on trail snacks now, which isn’t good; I have plenty for meals, but a hiker can’t survive on just meals unless he’s willing to make very long breaks to cook meals on the trail — not good for hiking pace. Spanky gives me some of the food he’s carrying; it’s not trail food, but it’ll help, and oatmeal can be trail food in a pinch.

First, however, I have to hike down from Speck Pond to the bottom of the Notch; that hike goes slowly, as all descents do, and I finally decide that when I reach Gorham I’m going to get a set of hiking poles (really could have used them through Maine, but a bit late for that now). Finally, I reach the Notch.

Mahoosuc Notch is about a mile of ravine traveling over, under, and around house-sized boulders. It’s sheltered from the elements and contains scattered patches of ice/snow year-round, and the temperature’s easily twenty degrees lower than elsewhere. My pace slows quite a bit, and I have to plan my footing and route much, much more carefully than I usually do. I can see why they call it the most difficult mile, but frankly, after going through it, I don’t understand that sentiment. The only proper way to approach this is to budget a few hours and to look at it as rock-hopping through a giant’s playground; it’s absolutely a blast if you don’t care how little progress you’re actually making. Of all the miles of trail I’ve hiked, both on and off the Appalachian Trail (which at this point are of comparable magnitude, although probably not equal), this mile is by far the best mile of trail I’ve ever hiked. If you’re ever up in this area, give yourself a day to do it and hike through Mahoosuc Notch; you’ll be glad you did.

The Notch progresses slowly. Spanky apparently decided to move on, and he catches up to me perhaps halfway through the Notch. We pass by a dead moose carcass, which the AMC has chosen to leave there to let it decay naturally. It’s a very powerful odor, and between that and my route-finding skills taking me a bit away from it I end up not taking a picture of it.

Eventually, after many false finishes, we exit the Notch. It’s pretty late at this point — at least 7 or so — and there’s still a mile and a half to Full Goose Shelter. Spanky’s headlight broke in the 100-Mile Wilderness, and it’s only dusky, so I let him borrow mine as I carefully and slowly step up Fulling Mill Mountain.

We reach the top just as it gets dark, and as we only have one working light (and an underpowered one at that for night-hiking) between us, we stop atop the mountain for the night. I pull out a meal and eat; the stars are awesome tonight. Spanky raves about how he wanted to sleep atop a mountain in Maine and finally got the chance on his last night in Maine. We’re 5.4 miles from the border now, and I can’t wait to see the back side of Maine!

July 6

(15.0; 291.0 total, 1883.0 to go; 0.0 from pace, -129.0 overall)

I wake up around 6:30 or so to sunlight and dew; conveniently I’d put my sleeping bag inside my tent, used bivy-style on the rocks atop the mountain, so it’s not very wet. Sunlight dries things pretty well atop the rocks on the mountain, and I eat oatmeal for breakfast. A few northbounders — Topo, Cookie, and Kirby are the names I remember — pass us pretty early. Topo asks how many packets I eat a day; I’m currently at around two, and she says she and her companions are up to five now.

The morning progresses at about an average pace over a couple mountains. The trail to the top of one is pretty amusing, because, standing atop the highest point, I can clearly see the trail making a 30-degree bend to reach it — no taking the shortest path between two points around here! Trail snacks are now almost entirely depleted, and after passing the state line (NEW HAMPSHIRE!) I have to stop and cook a dinner for energy.

Another five miles down and I reach Gentian Pond Campsite, closely followed by a southbounder named Moose. He’s hiking with a girl named Duckie who apparently also attends or attended MIT (or maybe just lived in Boston? memory hazy), but she doesn’t catch up by the time I get there, and given my snack situation I want as short a trip into Gorham the next day as possible, so I continue on another 4.9 miles to Trident Col Tentsite after being given an energy bar by a hiker in the shelter. It’s a good thing, too — at this point I’m down to eating powdered hot chocolate dry for the energy. I leave Gentian at 19:30 or so, and it takes me until 22:30 to get to Trident, the last two hours of it in darkness save for my flashlight at a snail’s pace. Thankfully the blazes are pretty thick, so it’s not too hard to follow the path (although I do stumble about twenty feet down the trail to the tentsite without noticing until I look up to see a blue blaze rather than a white one). I make and eat dinner and fall asleep quickly, hoping to wake up and get into Gorham early.

July 7

(6.9; 297.9 total, 1876.1 to go; -8.1 from pace, -137.1 overall)

My plan to wake up early fails miserably, but at least I’m not sleepy. I eat a breakfast and a dinner as preparation for the walk in, still mostly snackless save for some hot chocolate packets, and hit the trail at 10:30.

I make reasonable progress down the trail and don’t hurt too much until the last few miles, when I’ve depleted my energy from breakfast and hot chocolate. The last miles really drag, and it’s a relief to finally hit US 2. My target for the day is White Birches Campground a mile and a half towards Gorham, which has a hiker bunkroom and some ability to shuttle into Gorham. I start walking, thinking to look for a reasonable place to sit and put out the thumb, when a white van stops and picks me up. Turns out the guy lives at the campground and drives hikers around a bit in his spare time. I get to the campground, drop my backpack inside, say hi to yet another hiking couple named Dan and Leah (from Texas or thereabouts, married since December, recent college graduates, were going to go as the Honeymooners but the name was taken and so just go by their real names), whose entries I’ve seen as I’ve hiked the trail, and get a shower. Once that’s completed, I get a ride in to a Shaw’s grocery store between Gorham and Berlin, where I pick up 1.75 quarts of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Ice cream containers have had horrible size deflation recently; I wanted a half gallon, but the only option for half gallons was Shaw’s ice cream, and they didn’t have mint chocolate chip, sadly. After eating that and reading several of the Federalist Papers, I order a pizza from Mr. Pizza in town, eat that, and head to sleep. The plan in the morning is to head into town, eat a breakfast at Welsh’s, hit up the library to write some updates, get hiking poles and fuel, and get groceries for the next leg of travel.

The biggest change going forward, now, is that unless I bivouac in non-site sites, I’m going to be paying camping fees when I stay at campsites. There are good reasons for the fees: they sometimes support a site caretaker, help defray the costs of dealing with human waste (privies aren’t all that cheap to operate in the middle of nowhere and often involve chartering a helicopter periodically), and advance other AMC goals. That said, nearly all the rest of the trail is free, so it comes as a bit of a slap in the face. Many thru-hikers are fairly antagonistic towards the AMC, and (speaking from outside AMC-land now) I can understand why, although I’ll probably talk more about that in the next update. Right now I’m in Hanover, NH (Dartmouth College land) heading into Vermont; I’m guessing my next stop with Internet access will be Rutland, but we’ll have to see, since I might not have time to take advantage of it.

On the topic of pictures, they’re still coming, but it’s a slow process. The problem is I have to upload them in bulk, usually, because individual pictures just takes too long. I’d prefer to self-host them as well, so no Flickr. Last, WordPress doesn’t seem to have a good way to use a picture already on the server within a post unless it’s previously been used by WordPress; I’d like to say “use this URL”, but I need the thumbnailing to save people some bandwidth (kinda, I’ve flouted that nicety in the last posts, but especially going forward now that I have the ability to take full-res images [more on that in the next update] it’s getting pretty size-heavy to do that). To top it off, uploading big huge files isn’t all that easy anyway; sometimes I don’t have an SFTP client to do it (the computers I’m using don’t always allow software installation), and the file size is too big for a CGI script to accept the upload. Expect pictures to come, but slowly. :-\

June 27

(7.3; 195.1 total, 1978.9 to go; -7.7 from pace, -89.9 overall)

The next morning I wake up, finish off the second pound of strawberries and apple juice I’d purchased yesterday, add some photos to the first trail journal post. Incidentally, the laptop the hostel has for our use is running Firefox 2; I download and run the install program for Firefox 3 (released to the masses during my time hiking, and with a world record to its name, no less!) to find — gasp! — that the laptop is running that marvel of stability, Windows ME, while Firefox 3 requires Windows 2000/XP or newer. No upgrade for this machine! :-\ No Unicode love for the Firefox 2 users, either.

I then hit the trail with The Honeymooners at around 9:30 or so. I immediately confirm a fact I’d suspected yesterday: I bought way too much food when I did my shopping on an empty stomach. Best of all, we’re starting to hit the more mountainous part of Maine, and my pace becomes abysmal. Today I’d planned to hike to Spaulding Mountain Lean-to, a distance of 13.5 miles. Instead, I reach the Crocker Cirque (fun fact: the word cwm is defined by the official Scrabble dictionary as “cirque”; it is actually not a “Scrabble word” for me, because I’ve seen it labeling one of the features in the map in Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air) tent site, a grand total of 7.3 miles up the trail, of which the last mile or so is a rocky downward scramble — the absolute worst thing possible for my making any sort of speed.

The silver lining of this overfull pack, however, is that I eat very well today: two apples, three tortillas with peanut butter and honey, and a lot of gorp (with M&Ms added, naturally), and that’s just on the trail. (I’d planned to eat the bagels and apples anyway since they’re heavy, but I did eat them a bit more hurriedly than I’d expected.) Dinner is a Knorr chicken meal to which I add real chicken! Apparently, in addition to tuna in a pouch, there also exists chicken in a pouch! The miracles shall never cease. Mine is a lightly-garlic-flavored breast, although I hear they also sell unflavored breasts (not in Stratton, it seems). It goes pretty well, all told, and I sleep sated, again on a tent platform with a rigged-up staking system for my not-freestanding tent.

June 28

(6.2; 201.3 total, 1972.7 to go; -8.8 from pace, -98.7 overall)

The next day goes, if anything, worse than the previous day. I start the day pretty late, eating the remaining apples I’d started with and a few of the bagels I’d brought (which actually contain a pretty hefty number of calories, a fact I’d not noticed before in normal life). I’m still carrying far too much.

The trail is relatively uneventful. I pass South Branch Carrabassett River, a “ford” but in reality a bit of rock-hopping followed by walking an uncertainly-anchored plank across a ten-foot stretch of water, around noon, finishing off the bag of dried fruit as trail mix that I’d started the previous day. (I picked it up from the hiker box at the hostel; it was amazing stuff but pretty heavy even after drying.)

The day ends just short of six in the evening at my target for yesterday: Spaulding Mountain Lean-to. I note in the trail register that The Honeymooners did stay last night here, and I make a note in my entry warning hikers not to buy groceries on an empty stomach.

The lean-to is a full house tonight: a couple on a three-day trip, it being the weekend and all, and a bevy of northbounders (five, the most I’ve seen yet in the same place). The northbounders are Crazy Legs, Water Bear, Marathon, Strides, and one last person whose name I’ve sadly forgotten. Dinner tonight is another modern miracle: beef Knorr with dried beef slices (again from a pouch). The slices are, of course, heavily salted; the instructions on the label suggest running the slices under warm water for fifteen seconds to wash off excess sodium, which I don’t do, much to my chagrin: this stuff’s wicked salty, nearly to the point of not being readily edible. The northbounders remark on the quantity of food I have (with good reason!) and say the bear canister I’ve been using on the trail is superfluous, with bear lines or boxes at every shelter (and perhaps tent site as well? I don’t remember the exact wording) where you’d actually need them. Given my pack weight now, I’m inclined to agree with just about any suggestion that reduces its weight.

Some fun facts about some of the northbounders from late-night flab-chewing:

One of them is from the upper peninsula of Michigan near Marquette (I believe the exact town mentioned was Big Bay, but I’m not 100% sure). He worked for the National Park Service on Isle Royale several years ago doing wildlife surveys, among other things, and once while hiking with a partner saw three gray wolves approaching him. He called to his partner hiking fifty or so feet ahead of him, and when the partner turned they’d all scattered. Since this was a bit unnerving, they quickly continued on for another mile or so before stopping to regroup. Then, on a whim, they checked whether any of the wolves had been radio-tagged: turns out one of them had been, and furthermore, it was only thirty or so yards away and had followed them the entire time. According to him, this was at the time the closest incident to a wolf attack in NPS history (!).

Another of the northbounders (perhaps the same one, perhaps a different one, perhaps the one who would then quite aptly have been named Marathon) has so far logged three forty-mile days on the trail during his thru-hike. I doubt I’ve broken fifteen more than a handful of times, ever, so this is an almost-incomprehensible feat. We shall see what flatter trails do to what I consider achievable.

June 29

(10.4; 211.7 total, 1962.3 to go; -4.6 from pace, -103.3 overall)

I get a nice quick start this morning in 75 minutes from in sleeping bag to hiking down the trail; I’m pretty sure it’s my fastest start yet out of a shelter (out of a tent is naturally slower), but I haven’t been paying much attention so far.

The first few miles are across reasonably flat ground, and I make nice time — for a moment I become optimistic that I can do well for the day. The first real stop is Poplar Ridge Lean-to at eight miles out, occupied by a couple guys drying out tents and other gear. I talk for a second to them (one has the same Eureka Solitaire tent I have), and they mention an under-construction tent site (not listed in books yet, of course) a little further down the trail between mountains — they inadvertently stayed there the previous night to be awoken by a trail crew coming in to work on the second of three days installing a privy. I then continue down the trail a touch and stop to use the shelter privy before heading along further; it’s too early and too short to stop here for the night. I pass over Saddleback Junior and stop at what I think is the nascent tent site, although it’s not marked by the orange tape that had been mentioned as denoting it. There’s a large number of boot prints from the south which stop right at the place where I turn off, so I think I’m there, even if I can’t find the aforementioned half-built privy.

The site itself is pretty nice; it’s not too buggy, although I pull out my rain coat to reduce the need to ward them off, set up my tent in a nice cushioned spot, and start making dinner. While making dinner, I hear some loud grunting noises from the east by the trail — turns out it’s a porcupine about ten or fifteen yards away! I don’t know for sure it was one since it was dusky, but it looked a lot like one; since I’m in the middle of dinner preparation the last thing on my mind is taking a picture — I’d rather he leave me (and my smellable goodies) alone now.

June 30

(10.4; 222.1 total, 1951.9 to go; -4.6 from pace, -107.9 overall)

Often trail magic, as it’s called, comes in edible form, a fact which should not be surprising given just how much energy hikers require to move from place to place (particularly through places like Maine which are particularly hilly). Today, trail magic was not edible but rather white and stored on a roll. More on that in a bit…

It turns out I’d stopped short of the nascent campsite, which I pass a bit down the trail this morning. Nobody’s there, and the privy looks complete, so sadly I can’t celebrate its existence; it looks pretty awesome. The morning continues with a nice hike up The Horn, yet another mountain in Maine. Saddleback Mountain itself follows next, and it has good views all around.

The most interesting part of the early day, however, isn’t what’s listed in the Companion. Strangely, it’s also not on any of the Maine maps I’ve seen. It’s definitely mentioned in a lot of books, but my available guide resources have both inexplicably missed it. It is a feature, located between The Horns and Saddleback Mountain, known as Saddle Point:

I fully expect the ALDHA and the Maine ATC to rectify this serious omission from their literature at the earliest time possible.

Finally, I take the customary 360-degree video from the top of Saddleback Mountain:

I continue down the trail toward the next lean-to, Piazza Rock Lean-to. Along the way I pass a guy wearing bug netting trimming along the trail; turns out he’s the lean-to’s caretaker out for a bit of maintenance. Since I’m hoping to make it six miles further that day to Little Swift River Pond Campsite, I continue on.

When I reach the lean-to, I decide to stop in to check when the Honeymooners passed through. Before doing so, I stop to use the privy. This privy has all the amenities:

Incredibly, while using the privy, I run out of toilet paper. I’d resupplied with a small partial roll in Stratton, but somehow, due to a ridiculously (but not perilously, as I note in the shelter register) active bladder, my supply (intended to reach Gorham) is already depleted! The options aren’t good. I’m right near a road into Rangeley, so I could hitch in in the morning just to get toilet paper, which would eat up a good hour, and that’s if I get lucky. I could experiment and see just how well leaves work, but I’d rather not find that out until I’m forced to do so. I also have one last option: see if the caretaker has a phone I could borrow to call for some to be delivered by friendly people in the area (there’s a nearby place with five people willing to put up and party with hikers that would probably work). I head back to the trail to think about how to find the caretaker without walking back too far, but amazingly he comes around the corner at exactly that moment! I make my request, and he goes one further and outright gives me a roll! It’s an absolutely monster roll that’s at least three inches in radius before flattening, but I don’t care: it’s saved me a lot of trouble.

Reinvigorated from this unexpected bit of magic, I complete the remaining 1.8 miles to the road in 48 minutes, at the strong pace of 2.25 miles an hour. If I keep that up for the next 4.8 miles I can make my intended destination with a little time to spare. Naturally, the uphills start again and I fail to do so, but I do make it two miles further down and set up camp just off the trail and next to South Pond, so water’s readily available. Bugs are out but not too bad as I make dinner and go to sleep.

July 1

(11.8; 233.9 total, 1940.1 to go; -3.2 from pace, -111.1 overall)

I’d planned to wake up around 6:30, thinking to pack up and be out before anyone else can pass by. Since I’m two miles from a road (and shuttles from town wouldn’t arrive until far later) and four miles from the nearest shelter, I don’t really expect anyone until at least eight. It’s really strange, then, when someone walks by at 6:35 as I’m slowly thinking about getting up and says hi. You meet all kinds on the trail, I guess.

After breakfast and packing up I head further south. I don’t go far before I pass a treasure: a Maine map for the section of trail I’m hiking! The Maine topos are pretty awesome: profiles, notes on trail features passed along the way, and so on. I haven’t bought them because they’re expensive, and many thru-hikers have done fine with trail signs combined with the white blazes on trees and rocks along the way. This map is only good another few miles, but I’ll take what I can get. It’s probably the early hiker’s map, but if it isn’t, I’ve got a nice shiny map (and if it is, he’ll be happy to get it).

A few hundred yards later I stumble on an even better treasure: the map for the next section of trail. Again, it’s probably the early hiker’s map, but whatever: I have far-seeing guidance for a little while.

Later down the trail I meet another hiker heading north named Saxifrage (a thoroughly awesome name). After inquiring where he’s heading to make sure he’s not doubling back for maps (he’s not), he mentions that a guy up the trail, a Seth of the American Hiking Society, had asked him to look for the maps. I tell him I picked up the maps and will pass them along when I see Seth.

I eventually catch up to Seth at Sabbath Day Pond Lean-to, where I eat lunch and pass on the maps. He’s delighted and passes along contact info in case I need any trail magic in the D.C. area; we’ll see how I feel when I get there.

I’m hoping to head on to the next lean-to, Bemis Mountain Lean-to, so I hurry on, past an awfully large number of hikers — I think I pass around twenty total today (twelve or so from a camp group). Before getting to the lean-to I have a road crossing and a ford, not to mention the mountain itself. The road crossing is a definite candidate for best road-crossing view; I’ll post the picture when I have more time later here’s a picture out across the road showing how good it is:

The descent from crossing to ford is steep and takes a lot of time, so I decide to stop just after the ford and pitch the tent. This isn’t actually a good idea: the bugs are the worst they’ve been since the one site in the 100-Mile Wilderness, and I pull out the raincoat and forego a cooked dinner in favor of energy bars and call it a night.

July 2

(12.5; 246.4 total, 1927.6 to go; -2.5 from pace, -113.6 overall)

I get a late start in the morning; bugs are out again for breakfast, so I pack up quickly and don’t heat water for oatmeal. First stop is the lean-to I’d intended to hit the previous day, after a long hike over Bemis Mountain. I see I’m still behind the Honeymooners, and I discover that the two hikers with whom I’d hiked Katahdin oh-so-long-ago are now known as Asgask and Slowpoke. I sign the shelter register and include the birthday song in my entry, because it’s my birthday today! Happy birthday to me! (22, a pretty unremarkable number, but still a new age.)

Travel is fine until just before Old Blue Mountain at about ten miles in. I hope to go seven miles further to a shelter, but just then it starts to rain pretty hard, and even with a rain coat I’m completely soaked when I reach the top of the mountain. Since I’m just short of a road to Andover, I decide to stop there and hitch in to a hostel for the night — a birthday present, or something. The only problem is that the Companion says of the two roads into Andover that, “Neither road has much traffic.” I hurry as fast as I can and hope for the best.

I reach the road at 20:15, at which point it’s not yet dark but is starting to get there. One vehicle passes heading in the opposite direction as I descend the last few feet to the road; I then wait fifteen more minutes, during which time exactly two vehicles pass heading in the direction I want to go. Miraculously (and I mean that in the literal sense) the second vehicle offers me a ride, next to their two dogs in the back seat of their pickup truck. They take me nine miles into town, and I arrive at the Andover Guest House at 20:52. I say hi to the hostel owners, who tell me I probably want to head over to the store across the street to get something to eat — just before it closes in eight minutes. (See what I meant about miraculous? You can’t cut it any closer than that!) I get food and eat it while talking to family back home on the phone; when the conversation ends I check email and deal with a post here while laundry cycles, then I head to sleep.

The main theme of southern Maine is that it’s a lot of up and down. Northbounders are blowing past us, fresh from 2000 miles of hiking and the White Mountains as conditioning for the ups and downs (south of the Whites is actually considered pretty easy — the “hiker superhighway”, actually, where twenty-mile days are neither uncommon nor generally difficult if you get up early and keep a nice, long stride going), so their pace can be a bit depressing if you don’t take it in context. Right now I’m just anticipating Glencliff in New Hampshire, where, as I’ve been told by the two hikers at the lean-to just before Saddleback, the mountain climbing ends and the hiking starts.