Appalachian Trail Retrospective - Rangeley, Maine to Gorham, New Hampshire

Day 18

Tuesday, 6/27/00

U.S. Rt. 4 (Rangeley, ME) to Sabbath Day Pond Lean-to

9.4 miles

Woke up pretty early, in a BED though!  It was a little too short but it was better than a sleeping bag…

            Went out for breakfast, had an omelet.  It was sooo good!  Did a bunch of packing and took care of food and stuff.  Got rid of my oatmeal! YES!  Did laundry, but my socks still smell a little…

            Got gas [white gas for the stove] and did some other things in town.  Saw some cute girls [believe me, there’s not a lot of ladies out on the trail].  What a sight for sore eyes!  When I see someone out on the trail, 95% of the time it’s some older dude.  Anyway…

            Got to trailhead about 1:00pm.  Took a last look at the new trumpet, hugged Ma & Pa, and I was off again.  In the pouring rain… I wore my new shorts and shirt mom got me.  Worked very well.  So the did XC ski poles.  No leg pain today, but I did only go 9.4 miles.

            Pretty uneventful hiking.  Saw a rotting moose carcass right next to the trail.  It sure smelled great.

            Oh yeah, at the Rangeley library the computer wouldn’t let me send email!  Piece of junk!  Didn’t have time to write any postcards either.  Or get hold of Sofi… (Sofi was a friend of mine I worked with in the summers.  We were planning on meeting up and hiking at some point.  I don’t think I saw her again until a year or so ago when I met her when I was working out in Santa Barbara and we went on a whale-watch trip to the Channel Islands.  I did eventually meet up with another ice cream shop friend, but that wasn’t until North Carolina….)  Sheesh, being in town is busy!

            Now I’ll be seeing dad in Gorham, NH on the 2^nd.  Looking forward to that.  Then the next week, maybe hiking with Sofi.  I hope I can arrange that.

            Oh well, short day tomorrow…

            I am pretty sure that Sabbath Day Pond, where the shelter was located was full of leeches.  I remember going down to the waters edge of some pond in Maine to filter water.  While I was kneeling by the bank, I remember seeing big leeches gliding around.  I remember being grossed out and killing one, and while I continued to filter water, several other leeches came along to feed on the carcass.  Nasty little things…

Day 19

Wednesday, 6/28/00

Sabbath Day Pond Lean-to to Bemis Mountain Lean-to

8.3 miles

I feel so incredibly lazy for only going 8 miles!  But the next shelter was another 12 miles with big mountains in between.  Maybe I’ll go extra and camp out tomorrow.  I’m not in a hurry, but I want to make more progress!

            Don’t remember when I woke up, at a bagel (much better than oatmeal!) and was gone by 7:45.  Pretty uneventful… At the crossing of Hwy. 17, you could see Mooselookmeguntic Lake.  It looked really pretty.  Maybe a good place for kayaking/canoeing?  Near the town of Oquossoc.  That was pretty much the highlight of the day.

            Got to the shelter around 12:00.  I probably could have made it to the next one, but my leg might get hurt again.  Better to take it easy than to mess up my legs!

            Read for quite a while.  There wasn’t much else to do!

            Snacked on food too.  Mom:  Thank you so much for the Nutella!  Where did you find it?!  Keep it comin’! (I had experienced the wonder of Nutella for the first time on a 3-week trip to Germany the preceding April on a highschool trip.  It changed my world.)

            Two guys I’d met earlier in the day, Chris and Jared showed up a little after 1:00.  Chris had just been to town and he brought hot dogs, bund an onion and mustard!  Good dinner.  And… for dessert we roasted marshmellows (thanks Phoebe!).  So, at least I ate well. (I remember Chris’s trail name became Freefall, but I don’t remember Jared’s.  “Freefall” made it all the way to Georgia, but I don’t know about Jared.  I hiked with them for a day or two, but left behind eventually.)

            Not too far to Gorham and New Hampshire!  It’ll be good to be in a new state.

            My water filter sucks!  (I had/have a PUR hiker that was always getting clogged up, making it very hard to pump water through it.  Eventually figured out how to make it work a bit better, but often times, I just drank the water without filtering, especially from high elevation streams.  Ponds and slow, warm water, I always filtered.  Especially when I could see cows wading upstream…)

Day 20

Thursday, 6/29/00

Bemis Mountain Lean-to to Hall Mountain Lean-to

12.8 miles

Got up early and was gone by about 6:45.  Caught Jared, who had left at 6:30, in about an hour.  Made good time until descent of Old Blue Mountain.  Very, very steep and rocky.

            Then, I had to climb up and down Moody Mountain, which was even steeper!  But it wasn’t too bad…

            Then came Hall Mountain.  Wow, it was steep!  But I made it up to the top finally.  That was about all I had energy for.

            Somehow the strap on my poles pulled my watch off and I didn’t notice it.  So there’s $45 down the drain!  It was a birthday present too!

            I got to this shelter between 1:00 and 2:00 (I think).  I wanted to keep going, but wanted to see if Chris or Jared had picked up my watch.  Nope…  By the time they got here it was too late to go any further.  Oh well… By the way, Orange-pineapple Tang is really good!  Keep sending it if you can.  More Nutella too!

            Fairly easy day tomorrow…

           

Day 21

Friday, 6/30/00

Hall Mountain Lean-to to Baldpate Mountain Lean-to

14 miles

Rained a lot last night.  Kinda noisy.  Don’t know when I woke up…  I think I left around 7:15.  The trees were all wet so I got soaked.  That was kind of a bummer…

            Hiking was pretty easy.  Got to Frye Notch Lean-to around noon.  Met “Sleepy”, “Little Debbie”, and “Candyman”.  They said it was noon!  I’d been going pretty fast.  As soon as I left there it started hailing with lots of thunder and lightning.  Climb was pretty steep up Baldpate Mountain.  It was very windy and cloudy at the top.  No views!  Took a while to come down to the lean-to.  Felt good to put on dry clothes.

            Eventually “Porkchop”, “Jackass”, and “Sleepy” showed up.  They’re characters!  Well… I go through the infamous Mahoosuc Notch tomorrow and over Old Speck Mountain.  It’s big (4^th highest mountain in Maine at 4,170 feet).

            It was this fateful night with Porkchop and Jackass that I was given my trail name.  They were goofy college kids and they were making up spontaneous rap songs while dousing a boulder with white gas and lighting it on fire while dancing around it.  They were rapping about chili-dogs, and Porkchop said to me as I watched the hilarity, “Hey, your trail name should be CORNDOG!”  Obviously this is a stupid name and doesn’t really have any meaning, so I ignored it.  However, AT tradition states that you’re supposed to take a trail name that’s given to you (though many people make up their own).  This was the only trail name anyone ever gave me, so I eventually became known as “Corndog”.  It’s pretty silly, but there it is.

Day 22

Saturday, 7/1/00

Baldpate Mountain Lean-to to Full Goose Lean-to

12 miles

Nice day today!  Left camp around 7:30.  It was downhill to Grafton Notch, the end of MATC territory and the beginning of AMC (Appalachian Mountain Club, aka Appalachian Money Club because they charge you for everything).  After Grafton Notch, climbed Old Speck Mountain.  Hiked most of the way up with a girl named Holly (just a day hiker).  She was cool.  She shared her food and gave me a peach!  Fresh fruit!  Climbed the tower at the summit, got my first view of Mt. Washington.  BIG!

            Ate lunch (a Powerbar) at Speck Pond Shelter.  After that, came down Mahoosuc Arm.  Wicked steep.  I think I pulled my quad on my right leg now!  Passed a group of north-bounders, all moving really fast.  One of the last people in the group I asked about “Northwind” (Eric Eisele from East Boothbay, a kid I’d never met, but his mom gave me some pointers before I took off on the trail).  It turned out he was the first one in the group!  I passed him without knowing it.  But I wasn’t going to go backwards to chase him down.  Met his hiking partner Julie though… (I never did meet Eric, not even back in Boothbay).

            Made it through Mahoosuc Notch OK.  It’s supposed to be “the hardest mile of the entire AT”.  Wasn’t that hard but it was really slow going.  Maybe that’s what they guidebook meant.  Had to squeeze through little cracks and gaps in the boulders, often having to take my pack off and shove it through first. 

            Got to shelter (big, sleeps 12 people) around 4:30, I think… “Little Debbie”, “Candyman”, “Squirrel” and “Waldo” and 5 other people were here.  Lotsa company.  Sleepy, Porkchop and Jackass haven’t shown up yet.  They probably wussed out!

            Too bad I missed Eric.  Old Speck is very pretty.

 A glimpse of the trail through Mahoosuc Notch.  Note the arrow pointing the way.  Mahoosuc notch is filled with giant boulders that have fallen off the walls of the notch.  There is about a mile of this sort of scrambling.

Day 23

Sunday, 7/2/00

Full Goose Shelter to Gorham, NH

21.4 miles

I’m writing this on the 9^th in Boothbay.

            My leg hurt all day.  Didn’t make very good time because of it.  Did finally make it to Gorham though.  A new state!  1/7 of the way done! 

            My garage sale, fiberglass XC ski poles broke on the way into Gorham.  I remember struggling a lot this day, limping and swearing down the trail.  It was a bad day to do 21 miles.

            I bought some Leki poles at L.L. Bean, hopefully I’ll have better luck with them.  Haven’t tried them out yet…

            Can’t wait to be back on the trail.  Hopefully on Monday.

            I wound up taking 8 days off in Boothbay to let my leg recover.  I think it was a combination of pushing too hard, not eating well, and maybe not drinking enough.  It would have been very easy to call it quits at this point, but I kept on going…