We Finally Made it!
We convinced my brother to hike to the top with us, and had a great time climbing together. It turned out to be an incredibly gorgeous Sunday, so we had lots of day hikers to contend with, but it didn’t matter. We finished! Continue reading
The last two days would have been lovely except for the sporadic rain and swarms of hungry mosquitos. We have hiked past dozens of absolutely gorgeous lakes, and the trail has been mostly rolling hills and flat lands. Luckily that makes for some quick hiking even with the mud because our speed was the only thing saving our skin! Continue reading
We hiked what felt like a very long day today, though it was only about 19 miles. We have officially cleared our last real mountains before Mt. Katahdin! We had heard you can see Katahdin from the top of Chairback Mountain on clear days, so we were keeping an eye out. We rounded a bend in the trail, and there it was!
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After an all you can eat pancake breakfast this morning and a lazy morning of relaxing we got on the trail at about noon. We had five days of food on us, which is the most we have carried the entire trip, but we are only planning a partial day today. Continue reading
Made it over two small mountains and about 36 miles in the last two days to get to Monson, ME. We have been talking about Monson for weeks now! We had been planning a rest day in Monson, and we … Continue reading
Despite the rain all morning we made it to the canoe ferry across the Kennebec River on time. Instead of building a bridge the ATC employs a local outfitter to provide a ferry for a few hours every day during the main hiking season to help people cross the Kennebec. It is a large enough river that I’m not sure how you would cross otherwise. Swimming with a fully pack is a poor decision! Continue reading
Today was an incredible day to hike over a set of mountains called the Bigelows. It is another stretch of trail that follows an exposed ridge and has absolutely incredible views in good weather. We may have had a lot of rain, but I must say we have been blessed with good crossings on most of these exposed trail sections. All I can say is that the views take your breath away! Continue reading
Had a good hike today. The sunny blustery weather made for really enjoyable hiking. It is lovely to not be totally soaked! That being said we tend to hike slower on nice days, and ended up not arriving at camp until nearly 7pm, which generally makes me a bit grumpy because we have to hurry to get everything set up, and dinner eaten before dark, but instead there was a lovely surprise waiting for us. Continue reading
Rangely was a stop we hadn’t intended to take. We were well on our way to making our goal mileage for the night, when it decided to downpour for about 3 hours. We’ve recently been leap-frogging a lot with a guy named Hooker, but we lost him today when he stopped to take shelter under the tarp of a summer camp group when it started to rain hard. Continue reading
Terrain has been a bit kinder the last couple of days, though we are still climbing mountains. We had another morning of some incredibly views from Bald Pate Mountain where we climbed a huge expanse of exposed rock face up to the summit. Tremendous 360 degree views that would have been completely clouded in if we had gotten there a few hours earlier. Continue reading