Days 80-88

Hiking southbound from Mt. Katahdin, through the 100 Mile Wilderness, to Monson, ME

Day 80

The hike up Katahdin was a success! We woke up at 5am this morning, got breakfast and we all loaded up in the shuttle can from the hostel to take us to Baxter State Park. All the other hikers in the van were flipfloppers, except one guy who was starting the first day of his southbound thru hike to Georgia. Cathrine recognized one of the hikers, "Fusion", we had met him on the trail near Buena Vista. She is amazingly good at recognizing faces.

We began out hike up Katahdin at 8:15, it was more of a climb that a hike. We were on all fours for the majority of the time coming up and down. 

It was the toughest hike I've ever done, the 5 miles to the summit took us 4 hours, but it was beautiful, the most beautiful hike I've ever done. he views are well worth the work. The weather couldn't have been better, I'm very glad we decided to come up and knock the north out, that climb would have been miserable in the freezing cold.

We made it back down to the ranger station by 4pm and got extremely lucky with getting a campsite at the Katahdin Stream Campground, Where people reserve spots months in advance. We split the $30 site with 3 other hikers. One of them, Socrates, is from Kernersville NC, pretty neat to meet someone from so close to home.

Tomorrow we make our way into the 100 mile wilderness, the most remote section the Appalachian Trail. There are very few roads, towns, or civilization at all through this section. We are nervous, excited.

Day 81

We fell asleep by 9pm last night and slept really well. Today we hike 13.4 miles into the Hurd Brook Lean to.

We had to ford 2 rivers today. The first one I made it across fine but Cathrine got halfway across and got nervous about her footplacements. So I put my pack down on the shore and went back for hers and slipped off the rock and my feet went into the water. She made it across fine but her platypus fell out of her pack into the quick moving water and was gone before we could do anything. The second river we just walked straight through. I am regretting leaving my water shoes in the hiker box in Harpers Ferry. I will probably have a new pair sent to me, along with Cathrines Crocs, so we can be more prepared for the future river fords, we are there are a number of them in Maine.

We stopped at the Abol Bridge Campstore on the outskirts of Baxter State Park and ate at the restaurant. It's so remote the place is off the grid and runs on disel generators. We picked up some bug spray and bug nets for our heads. They have mutant mosquitos, like the ones in Jumanji and they were tearing us up. Cathrine had 8 on her legs at any given time.

Right after the campstore, we followed the trail for a quarter mile to where we entered the 100 mile wilderness. The Maine woods are beautiful and covered in moss, they've got a magical feel to them. 

The pole to our tent finally completely snapped tonight, MSR sent another set to my home, but until that set makes it to me, I frankensteined it back together with duct tape and a metal tube. Hopeully it holds until we get to Monson and out of the wilderness.

We are 13 miles deep into the 100 mile wilderness, only 87 more to go. 

Day 82

We were out of camp by 9 and hiked 19.6 miles today. It was pretty flat all day, we just had alot of obstacles like roots, stream crossings, and muddy/boggy terrain.

We got alot of cool views of Katahdin. On the second half of the day we had a pretty good climb but just before it we heard thunder rolling in, we decided that it wasnt wise to head up a mountain with a thunder storm over us so we posted up at the bottom and waited for it to pass. It took a while but eventually it did. We met some other hikers going north and they said they got hailed on pretty hard. Cathrine and Ijust got a few sprinles of rai.

We almost got caught in the dark on the way to the shelter. We're so used to the sun setting at 8:30-9 but up here its been rising at 5 and setting at 7:30, so were gonna need to start waking up even earlier.

Tomorrow were gonna try and knock out 21 miles.

Day 83

Out of camp at 7:30 today. We hiked a long 21.5 mile day, our longest yet.

We walked through more of Maine's muddy bogs and followed along another lake for most of the day. Tomorrow we have a shorter day planned so hopefully there will be another lake on the way so we can swim some. It was very buggy today, we broke out the head nets and looked like idiots for a while, but it was well worth the price for our sanity.

I had a rough day, inbetween the high mileage, the non stop roots, rocks, and mudpits, the bugs, the rain storm, and the huge rash thats been developing on my lower back from my pack- I had a tough time. But we made it to our destination in 10 hours. 

11 miles tomorrow, please no more rain, our feet havent been dry in so long.

Day 84

We hiked 11 miles today, the weather was awesome. A guy who tented by us last night gave us some powdered gatorade packs this morning. It was great, we've been craving gatorade so much lately and have been forgetting to get some on our resupplies. Early on in the day we crossed a road where 2 guys in a truck unexpectedly took our trash and gave us 2 bottles of gatorade out of their cooler. A little later on we passed by a couple and they gave us 2 chocolate chip cookies and an apple. Triple trail magic, we must be looking rough. This was unexpected and helped out tremendously because we are beginning to run low on food, last night we had to ration out our food to ensure we have enough t get us to Monson, ME.

We got to Logan Brook lean-to at about pm I did some sewing and made a fire. It's  nice to relax for alot of the day. We've got 7 miles planned for tomorrow, maybe we'll do more if we're feeling good.

Day 85

We hit our 900 mile mark with 17.1 miles today. Another day of awesome weather other than the 5 minute downpour we had on the last stretch to the Chairback Mountain shelter. 

Alot of up and downs through the while day- we had our biggest river crossing yet, I was looking forward to all day, it felt so nice on the feet. From the sound of it we have many more river crossings to go, I'm happy we dont have to take them on in the winter. It's already getting chilly here at night I can only imagine what it'll be like in a few months when we originally planned on arriving.

Somewhere over the past 3 weeks Cathrine and I discovered our hiker hunger. Hiker hnger hits everyone at different times on their thru hike, you know it when you get it. Its when you eat absurd amounts of food but never get the feeling of being full. It's a curse actually. Ive lost 25lbs on the trail so far (as of Delaware Water Gap) and can eat more than I ever have in my life. 

Today I gained a new liking for spam.

2 more days to monson where I'm getting a large pizza, a box of fruit loops, and a half gallon of milk for dinner.

Day 86

Another rough day, We hiked 10.9 miles but it was some hard terrain and hiking is hard when you're low on food. We definately didnt pack enough in to meet the amount of energy we're burning. We were smart about how we rationed it out and its enough to get us to town without dying, but its been hard.

We got rained on for about an hour today and waited at the bottom of the Cloud Pond Mountain for the thunder and lightening to pass before we went up it. That mountain sucked. It was essentially a pond on top of a mountain and we had to walk through it- inbetween that and the pouring rain, we got drenched. We stopped at the top under some trees and waited for almost an hour for the rain to stop before heading onto Barren mountain because we've heard from everyone we passed that it was a dangerous climb down and we didnt want to add rain on top of that.

We almost went to the Cloud Pond Shelter .4 off the trail to call it a day but were glad we didnt when we made it to the Barren Mountain ledgges and the sun came out and we caught an awesome view. We made it to the Long Pond Stream leanto at about 5pm. We may or may not just head into Monson tomorrow, we were hoping to camp 3 miles out of town tomorrow night and get to town early to take a "near-o", not quite a zero, the next day. This is to avoid paying for 2 nights somewhere in town. The lack of food is making that a hard call.

Day 87

We slept in late today, didnt get up untu 8, we really needed the sleep. We decided we would walk the 15 miles to ME15 where we would get a ride into Monson. We figured there's no point in starving ourselves while being so close to town.

We had 7 river fods throughout the day. I didnt bother taking my boots off for them because they were pretty quick moving so my feet were wet from 9am until we got to the hostel at 6pm.

We passed alot of ponds today and did our best to spot some moose. No luck. We've been dodging moose poop on the trail all day everyday since Katahdin. Tons of moose poop, it's amazing we havent seen a moose yet.

We met an older gentleman section hiking the 100 miles, he gave us 3 granola bars after Cathrine told him of our food predicament. His name was 7 miler. He made our day so much more pleasant.

The 15 miles went by quick. We made it out of the 100 mile wilderness! We got a ride from the nice lady who runs the Shaw's Lodging hostel in Monson. We're tenting here tonight to save monet and taking a zero tomorrow so we can resupply on food and stay another night in a private room in the hostel. Shaw's is a cozy, clean place.

Day 88

We woke up and the hostel staff made us breakfast. The day was spent aying around in our room watching Sark Week while slowly doing what needs to get done to return to the woods. Clean our pots, resupply food, bleach our water bottles (this needs to be done eery few weeks once they start smelling moldy), wash our clothes, eat as much junk food as possible, etc.

A section hiker staying at the hostel offered to drive some of us to the nearby town, Greenville, where there's a grocery store and outfitter so we could get supplies without having to pay for a $25 shuttle. He drives a Prius and apparently could only fit 3 people in his car so I stayed behind and Cathrine and 2 other thru hikers went to get food, etc. Cathrine has desperately needed new boots for about a month now s she went to get some and also got us each 3 days of food to get us to Caratunk, ME. I sewed some more of my ripping gear while she was gone.

We walked down the main stretch of Monson to check out what the town has to offer. We wandered into a cool thrift store to look around for stand in wedding rings. We've been searching for good, inexpensive rings in every town to wear on the trail. There wernt any there either. The nice lady who owns the store asked us what we were looking for and pulled a ring off her finger and offered it to Cathrine. She said she fould it on her desk this morning and doesnt usually wear it but would give it to us and asked us to donate however much we thought it was worth. It fit Cathrine perfectly, we paid for the ring and Cathrine got a photo with her. Before she let us go she asked if she could pray with/for us and so she did right there on the sidewalk. She was a really sweet lady with a good heart.

We're hanging around the hostel, rain has been on the brink all day, and it's really cold. I hope it rains today/tonight and not tomorrow when we get back on the trail. 

Our next town is Caratunk where we will stop by the post office to pick up a package from my mom. She sent out my tent pole replacements from MSR and another resupply of food and homemade brownies.

Back to Shark Week!