Mountains Under Foot

From Hazard’s notes:
Day 108: August 25, 2009
Travel:
From: ME 26; Grafton Notch, ME
To: Hall Mtn Lean-to, ME
Beginning: 7:20am
Ending: 3:30pm
Number of miles hiked:
a) Trail – 16.3
b) other -
c) AT Mile Marker – 1927.7 cumulative.
Weather:
AM: Cool morning.
PM: Sunny and beautiful.
People: Peter, Harvard freshman orientation group.
Animals: Moose scat.
Money: $5 breakfast, $1914 cumulative.
Notes of the day:
AM: We had to get moving pretty fast this morning. We cleaned up all the mess we made, tidied up, and consolidated all of the trash we inevitably create from repackaging food and stuffing our boots full of newspaper. Peter went to retrieve our clothes left in the dryer overnight. We were having trouble getting them dry last night and they ended up staying a little moist which Peter apologized for, but was really unnecessary since it wasn’t a problem at all. I put on my moist clothes and they were dry by the time I got to the trailhead where I would end up soaking them with sweat anyhow. We piled into the truck and headed back towards Grafton Notch. We stopped at a gas station to grab some quick breakfast food. I picked up a breakfast biscuit and a Gatorade to scarf back in the truck. At the parking lot at Grafton Notch we thanked Peter for taking care of us and all of his hospitality. Seriously, thank you Peter for rescuing us out of our funk. The previous four days really drained our spirits and this was exactly what we needed to keep moving through Maine. We threw our packs on and made our way up the trail which would take us straight up to Baldpate Mtn. Just like many mountains before this one, the beginning of the climb was really gradual and then turned into a super steep climb up what felt like a vertical river bed. The ground and rocks still soaked from the day before and the sun breaking through the trees helped it get really humid on our climb up to the top. Once on Baldpate’s west peak we could clearly see across the saddle to the higher east peak. I could see the trail snaking across the saddle but couldn’t figure out where it went once it passed tree line on the east peak. Spoon, Nick, and I cruised over the saddle and spotted Crocstar beginning his climb up the treeless mountainside. The trail traversed diagonally across the side of the mountain but it still felt like we were going straight up. At the top we made up some drink mix (really cool crystal light stuff) and had a snack while taking in the beautiful views and soaking up the best weather we had seen in a really long time. We all left at slightly different times from the top and as I came down the backside of Baldpate a bunch of hikers were headed up. I smiled and said “Hi” to them as we passed and then a guy stops me and says, “You must be Hazard.” He said his name was The Rabbit who we had been following for months and enjoying his drawings in the trail registers at the start of our trek. He had come off the trail and was now flip-flopping, intent on finishing the trail. After chatting with him for a bit, I continued down the steep, wet rock, descent to Frye Notch Lean-to. We had an early lunch while lounging around the shelter. The privy had an interesting anomaly where the bottom was covered with chicken wire but after reading the sign posted on the door, “Latch the door when leaving or porcupines will eat this building”, it all made sense. Nick went down to the spring to fill his water and didn’t bother to take any bleach with him. I asked him if he wanted to treat his water with anything and he figured that with all the antibiotics he was taking to kill his Lyme that he was immune to Giardia. All of us joked around at the fact that Nick was saying that anything entering his stomach would die on contact. After leaving the shelter we hiked over a small hill to end up at the top of Dunn Falls where we took another short break before moving on to East B Hill Rd, which most hikers hitch into Andover.

PM: Since we took the stop at Grafton Notch we no longer needed to go into Andover. The rest of the day was fairly easy, walking around Surplus Pond, and then gradually making our way over Wyman Mtn. then crossing over to Hall Mtn. where we would stay at the shelter sitting on the side of the mountain. We got to the shelter relatively early in the afternoon because we usually don’t want to do heavy miles coming out of town. This gave us plenty of time to rest, cook dinner whenever we wanted, and build a fire. A few other groups of thru-hikers dotted the camping area around us leaving the shelter entirely to us for the night. That evening a freshman orientation group from Harvard came wandering into camp from the north and made a bunch of noise setting up their gear behind the shelter. Crocstar poked fun at them for wasting their time doing their undergraduate degree at an Ivy League school. We joked that they certainly didn’t get into Harvard for their wilderness skills. It was a relaxing evening where it felt good to be back on the trail, not having to hide and suffer from the elements.

From Hazard’s notes:
Day 107: August 24, 2009
Travel:
From: Carlo Col Shelter, ME
To: ME 26; Grafton Notch, ME
Beginning: 6:30am
Ending: 4:00pm
Number of miles hiked:
a) Trail – 14.1
b) other – .3 back to trail
c) AT Mile Marker – 1911.4 cumulative.
Weather:
AM: Rainy all morning. It rained three separate times during the day.
PM: Sun finally came out late in the afternoon.
People: Peter Bingham (Crocstar’s second cousin)
Animals:
Money: $0, $1909 cumulative
Notes of the day:
AM: Another dreary day was in the making as the sun came up and revealed the gray clouds still hanging over us. For a minute during breakfast someone thought they caught a hint of blue sky, but it quickly disappeared. I always dread the moment in the morning when I have to put back on my wet clothes from the previous day. You really can’t expect anything to dry on the east coast no matter what the conditions are. Our stuff was so wet that for the first time Spoon decided to just wear his board shorts and stuff his soaking long pants into his pack. Our crew was the first group out of camp, leaving the rest of the hikers still asleep in their warm sleeping bags. We still had a few mountain tops to clear before we faced the infamous Mahoosuc Notch and Arm. The rain started to come down as we made our way over Mt. Carlo and continued on through Goose Eye Mtn east and north peak. All of the rain turned the trail into a string of deep puddles and soaked the many wooden platforms, stairs, and ladders making them slippery and dangerous. By the time we got to Full Goose Shelter the rain had almost come to a stop, but the damage had already been done. Nothing on us was even remotely dry and while I was taking care of business in the privy I wrung out my shirt and even my underwear to try and make a small difference in my comfort situation. I almost didn’t want to leave the funky privy just because it had four walls and kept the wind from cutting through me. The rest of the guys were sitting under the roof of the shelter while 6-7 hikers from the night before had hardly moved from their sleeping bags and were really reluctant to get started hiking that day, many of them joking about taking a zero day in the shelter. Before falling into the trap that a warm and dry shelter becomes we continued down the trail, descending into the Notch. The Mahoosuc Notch is widely considered the hardest mile on the entire AT because it sends hikers under, around, and through car and house sized boulders that had fallen into the notch from the steep walls on either side. It is famous for having ice throughout the year hidden in deep crevices and for moose falling down into the notch and getting stuck, eventually dying and decaying, leaving a nice pile of bones and hair. While you are traversing the notch, you have to follow the white blazes painted on the rocks to find the best/safest route from boulder to boulder. Trekking poles were pretty much useless in this section of the trail where it was really important to stay low and use your hands to stabilize yourself on the wet rock. So I guess it was a good thing I slipped earlier this morning, coming down on my left knee and breaking my only pole left. We saw some ice hidden under some rocks and a pile of moose bones that hikers seemed to have picked through for the coolest bones. The temperature changes through the notch were really out of control. It would be freezing cold one second and then you lift yourself over a rock and it would be unusually hot and humid the next. Spoon was having difficulty maneuvering over the rocks without his pole getting in the way so he collapsed them down and stuffed them in his pack. The problem with these poles was that they only had one section that was collapsible and fully retracted were still taller than his pack and continued to make his life difficult. He came to the decision that he would rather snap his poles into pieces and buy a new set of Leki poles while in town than deal with the ones he had any longer. He found a sturdy tree and broke the poles down into jagged pieces he could stuff in the side pockets of his pack. As we continued through the notch, crawling through gaps in between and under the rocks, the jagged bits started to tear holes in his pack cover just to make matters worse. It took us an hour and fifteen minutes to make it the one mile across the notch. As we were leaving a guy and his dog were just starting and it concerned me that this guy expected his dog to make it over such rough terrain. There are a few places that he would have to lift or lower his dog himself just for it to have a chance to make it over an obstacle. As we started to make our way up the Mahoosuc Arm we ran into another large group like the one we met last night and could only wish them luck through the notch because it was starting to rain again and things would only get more hairy.

PM: The Mahoosuc Arm is the 1600′ climb straight out of the canyon that also doesn’t hold back the difficulty level. We had to use the exposed roots coming over the trail like stair steps to make it up the waterfall coming down the smooth rocks. As we approached Speck Pond and its shelter the rain really picked up and pounded us for a good couple of minutes before we could reach the shelter. The sun had come out for a little while coming up the Arm and I was closing in on a reasonable level of comfortableness before the rain came down and ruined that. Soaked once again, we sat in the shelter eating the last scraps of our food for the final push of the day which would take us up Old Speck. There was another hiker in the shelter who was going SOBO and told us that the section ahead was pretty easy and that we didn’t need to worry. Boy was he a liar. The rain backed off again and we left the shelter hoping it would stay away for good. Right about the time we broke treeline and started our steep climb up the exposed face of the mountain the wind and rain picked up, wrapping us in a dark shroud of suckitude. I could barely see where I was going and the wind cut through my clothes like there was nothing there. Spoon who had been moving pretty slow earlier was now behind me and out of my sight. Crocstar and Nick had sped up the mountain and I lost sight of them as they went over the peak. Thankfully, once I was off of the exposed mountainside, the trees blocked most of the freezing wind and it was only 3.5 miles downhill to Grafton Notch. I basically just let my mind wander while I hiked down the mountain and then I pulled out my iPod because I still had Crocstar’s earbuds from him letting me borrow them last night. A little bit of heavy metal really helped take the edge off of the day and make the last part of the hike go by much faster. I must have been really tired or a little disoriented because I miss-stepped multiple times, ending up on my back at one point, just before reaching Grafton Notch. When I popped out of the woods into the parking lot, Crocstar introduced me to his cousin Peter who would be putting us up for the night in his ski condo. Spoon arrived shortly afterwords and in the interest of time we piled into the truck and headed towards town. We got to the outfitter with just enough time to pick up some supplies; Croc got some fuel, Spoon bought his new poles, and I attempted to get my broken poles finally fixed. The guy at the outfitter had only non-shock bottom sections and he couldn’t get the broken piece of pole out of the middle section of the shaft in one of my poles so I ended up leaving with only one pole fixed and the piece to complete my other pole if I were to ever get the metal out of the middle section. We then made our way to the pharmacy so Nick could get a refill on his Lyme pills since what he had were water damaged coming off Mt. Madison. Next was to get resupplied at the grocery store. Spoon and I also bought Crocstar a wicked cake and ice cream to properly celebrate his birthday. We then made our way to Peter’s ski condo where we had some issues in finding a key to get us inside the building. But once that was all taken care of we split off to take showers and get laundry going so we could go out for dinner. Peter treated us to some food and spirits at a popular restaurant at the bottom of the mountain, which for being in the off season, wasn’t very crowded. I had some pretty excellent barbecue for being in Maine and Peter shared some of his ribs with us. It was really cool to hear some of Peter’s stories of his own personal travel as well as relating our own adventures. After dinner we smashed back into the pickup to eat cake and ice cream at the condo. We repackaged food and watched a little TV before retiring to our bunk beds. We would need to get up at dawn to make sure we were ready to go for Peter to give us a ride back to the trail in the morning.