File this post in the enormous category of things I didn’t fully appreciate before setting foot on the AT 114 days ago. As regular readers will know, I’m a planner, don’t love surprises, and will evaluate every risk before making a choice. So I did a bunch of research – read the books, talked to former hikers, made lists and checked them more than twice, searched by soul – to be really ready for this indulgent six-month vacation. What New Hampshire (and Pennsylvania) taught me and Maine is reinforcing in a powerful way – terrain is absolutely not the same as elevation and it can knock you flat, even in good weather. This week included the strenuous 30 mile stretch including Mahoosuc Notch, which made all other terrain seem like a paved highway. All photo credits this week: Plus One. 

AT Box Score

• Friendly People – 166/166
• Interesting Wild Critters – Frogs and toads!
• Errors – 0
• Injury Report – Thankfully, no news!

A funny thing happens at this point in an AT thru-hike – the northbound and southbound hikers start to collide (not literally, mostly) and the conversations change. NOBO hikers have a mix of sadness and excitement when they cross the Maine border because they’ve worked so hard to get here and the beauty of the remainder promises to be spectacular, but they aren’t necessarily ready for the vacation to be over. SOBO hikers have just completed the section of Trail that is the most remote and strenuous – they love talking about it and are so excited to hit the “cruisy” states. On both sides – renewed excitement for what’s to come. 

The people I’ll remember most from this section are the day-hikers, though. It’s about 30 miles of extremely difficult terrain between US 2 in Gorham and ME 26 near Bethel. Most thru-hikers take 3 days to work their way through the jumble of boulders that litter the Trail. We met a handful of hikers/runners who were completing the distance in a day. Two had started at 4:30 AM and were expecting to finish with head lamps after the sun went down; two were confident they would be at the finish by dark despite one having fallen 30 feet in an ambitious scramble over some towering rocks. Two of them had bleeding wounds they hadn’t bothered to stop and dress. These folks are in a whole different tier of sufferfest.

As you cross the border into Maine, the number of beautiful mountain ponds increases dramatically, so the call of bullfrogs becomes a daily experience. Coupled with that, we saw a huge increase in the number of toads on trail – lots of hopping critters!

We took special care to avoid errors and injuries this week, given the terrain, so glad to report success here. 

It Wasn’t Just Mahoosuc

I guess that the Maine Appalachian Trail Club (MATC) doesn’t want northbound hikers to miss the challenges of New Hampshire as they cross the border or maybe it’s just a game of one-upmanship between these two states, but in either case they serve up some of the most difficult AT terrain in the first 30 miles. Mahoosuc Notch is the area that gets all the attention because it is a mile of car sized boulders randomly strewn about the landscape with no clear marking of the best way to navigate. Plus One and I took about two hours to travel through this section and by the end we were very ready to be done with it. I appreciated all the warnings of the terrain to come so that we could plan our day the right way. We went through it with beautiful sunny skies and couldn’t have asked for better conditions. 

The thing that came as a surprise were the other sections of terrain that required us to stow our poles and climb hand-over-hand up (and down) enormous boulders and rock faces. The AT is extremely well documented – most hikers use FarOut or the Data Book to understand the knowable things about the Trail. In any given day, I can tell you with reasonable precision how many miles I’ll travel, how much elevation gain, and how much elevation loss. I love knowing these things – it helps me feel prepared. Terrain is different, though, because it can’t be measured. One person’s scary climb is another person’s casual stroll. The comments that describe the terrain are notoriously dire, so you learn to dismiss most of what is written as fear-mongering. I think hikers need a better way of understanding the difficulty of terrain because comments like “don’t do this in the rain” or “don’t go down that slope unless you have rescue insurance” aren’t helpful at all. I want to know things like whether it’s a hands and feet climb or whether the footing is grippy. Apps like FarOut can provide these descriptors through crowd-sourcing without the free-text comments that are so subjective. Nonetheless, I enjoyed most of the unexpected rock climbing that we tackled this week. The only bit that had me a little concerned was the climb up Baldpate East Peak, but the views were 100% worth my moments of panic.

Fritos for Breakfast

I vowed in an early blog post that I wouldn’t write about food, poop, or rain and I’ve mostly stuck to that rule unless there was a story-telling opportunity that made it impossible to resist. I’ve been disinterested in tracking my body weight on the Trail because I’m doing everything I can to eat big quantities of nutritious, calorie-dense food. Blue Bear helps a lot with this and I’m really happy with how strong I feel as a result of paying close attention to what I eat. Which made a few of my food choices this week feel a little out of character – in addition to pouring avocado oil on my cold-soak dinners, it just seemed right to have Fritos as my post-breakfast treat. Really, is it ever too early in the day for Fritos?  

Curiosities From the Trail

Oh, silly hikers! It is a well-known tradition that thru-hikers mark the major miles by arranging natural items in the shape of the relevant numbers. When Plus One and I happened upon this one, we just thought it was marking someone’s 600 mile accomplishment. But when you look closer, you see that it is “POO” spelled out in moose pellets, a Poo poo. And it left me wondering, did the hiker use their hands for that?! And who was the creative genius behind this?!

Remember to Look for Beauty

Maine is famous for its blueberries and they show up in huge quantities along the AT. They were perfect, without any intervention from people. The trick was getting to them before they were picked clean by other hikers and various critters that enjoy them!

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Help me reach my goal of raising $25,000 for the ATC this year. 

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