Giant thunderstorms in the night but we had the tent set up right this time and weathered it easily.  The morning dawned sunny though and we slowly got ourselves together.  The only thing we had forgotten to do was Megan left her pants hanging on a tree so had to put them on soaked. 

Lunch on top of Barren Mt

We climbed treed mountains and fought through very rough trail until lunch when we broke out of the trees on Barren Mountain.  We had a lovely, breezy lunch enjoying the views but realized that we had not made very many miles, considering how hard we had worked. Due to the slow pace we had also misjudged water and were completely out.  Fortunately, the trail headed down from the highs and directly into a beautiful river gorge, complete with waterfalls and eventually a giant river ford for us.

My feet were not very happy with any of today but that ford plus another one soon after really told me how raw they were.  We trucked on though and reached our destination pretty late only to find a hermitic northbounder, Red Beard, sitting in the shelter smoking and writing a Sci-fi novel. We couldn’t find a camp spot so we’re forced to push on, ultimately fording a 3rd river before finally finding a campsite.  We fear condensation but this is our last night in the 100 Mile Wilderness, and we will hit a town tomorrow, so good enough!  Lots of midges here too, which I’m not familiar with but Megan tells me to avoid at all costs.  I tried… Somewhat successfully.

Near the top of Whitecap

We finally climbed another mountain!  Whitecap was nice right out of bed, a good way to wake up.  Our first night in a shelter was pretty solid too, no bugs and everyone went to bed early. 

I woke up early enough to watch the 3 older gentlemen get up and leave,  then we rolled out shortly after 8 into the clouds, climbing with a brisk wind pushing misty clouds by us. The top of the mountain ended up being obscured by them so we didn’t see much but it was still cool.  We then bumped up and down over some smaller mountains before dropping down to follow a river valley most of the afternoon.  We got to walk on a really nice flat trail for a whole mile in there too!

Megan found snow!

The end of the day was pretty tough though, first we forded a very wide river, which turned out to be only mid-thigh deep, but obviously soaked our shoes completely. We then climbed another mountain ending with a Katahdin-esque rock scramble.  After that we dropped down to another shelter and camped.  This one is super busy though!  At least 12 South bounders all making dinner and chatting, with Quiet Earp and others taking turns on the guitar.

After a beautiful sunset, we are back in our dry tent.  A few lingering concerns – Megan is still sick and my feet are getting rapidly worse.  Another full day of soaking in my shoes has turned the tips of all my toes into basically one big blister.  This is new to me! A new form of blister – top toe.  I haven’t figured out how to treat it yet, so far it’s just been “grin and bear it”

Crossing a stream with a rope aid

Another semi disastrous night of rain and crazy condensation led to us being fairly wet.  Combine that with rain much of the day and we were finally interested in trying out a shelter for camping.

We hiked through more very west coast-like forest and found our food cache right where we expected.  After loading up with another 5 days of food we headed up into some mountains finally.  Unfortunately due to the continuing rain, we didn’t get to see much.  We met a guy named 1Step, and ended up at a shelter half way up the mountain with him and 3 other guys.  We crammed 6 of us into the shelter with Quiet Earp providing music on his backpacking guitar.

We chatted for quite awhile and met one of the ridgerunners – caretakers of the AT.

Rain this morning and lots of it!  We met Vocal, who I had seen in the logbook a couple days ago – turns out he was just down the beach from us last night. After spending all morning trudging in the rain, we got to a shelter at lunch and got to hang out with Vocal, Aussie and others for a couple hours. 

Megan tells me that in tree planter parlance this is called cache wanking, aka sitting around talking instead of doing what you’re supposed to.  Vocal and I swapped stories from the CDT, and he told us a bunch about what is to come. I came away excited to see what’s next.  The rain eventually slackened off and we left hoping for a sunny break…

Megan now has a cold and an annoying foot issue that cropped up after lunch (and hopefully will be gone by tomorrow).  We hobbled through the afternoon and stopped by another rushing stream.  Looks like more rain to come…

We finally had a solid night’s sleep!   The actual hiking this morning was beside a series of pretty little lakes in a fairly flat trail. The actual trail tread reminded me a bit of the Juan de Fuca trail back home – very rough, wet and rooty.  We eventually got to a beautiful river and had lunch in the middle of a bridge hoping to beat the bugs (failed).  The black flies and mosquitoes are getting worse but still aren’t out of control.  I expect worse to come from stories I’ve heard.

In the afternoon we had more rough trail leading to another pretty river this time with a shelter by it. (M: Rainbow Stream, a great place to take off your shoes and dangle your feet in off the foot bridge).   We met up with Aussie and the Ninja Turtles and took a break with them, still haven’t really gotten their stories yet so I can’t say much more than they’re fun to hang around with.   We next hiked up a little mountain but beyond the sweat there wasn’t any view so we just pounded down the other side and met up with some more hikers at the next shelter, including a guy with a massive pipe, and another guy carrying a tomahawk… We decided to move on but almost immediately ran into a nice lake with a campsite right beside it, so we called it a day.  A very quick, brisk swim later, we are ensconced in our tent with most of the black flies on the outside.   Happy campers!

Our first full day on the trail started with a big rain storm overnight that bounced drops off the ground a foot up the mesh of our tent and got us a bit wet and sandy. Fortunately the day dawned sunny so we were able to pack up carefully and mostly keep the sandy mess of tent contained.

The majority of the morning was blessedly flat and decent trail until we got to the first river ford.  We took a careful look around and decided to go around on a detour that completely avoided the river.   On the AT there are white blazed trees quite often to let you know you’re on the right trail.  When you get on a side trail like this one, it has blue blazes instead.  Traditionally you’re supposed to only hike the official trail but our hike will be more about connecting steps from Maine to Georgia than following the exact “correct” route.

Anyways we ran into Pete again about 3 times as we hurried past him then took breaks.  We also met a guy hiking in an America t-shirt named Dan, along with 4 guys calling themselves the Ninja Turtles.  We had actually seen then on top of Katadhin but hadn’t realized they were thru hikers.

We had our last taste of civilization for awhile in Abol Bridge, where we had a sandwich and Coke, then headed into the 100 Mile Wilderness.  Which means it’ll be 8 or so days before we get out to another town.  The first shelter in the Wilderness had a logbook and there was an entry from yesterday written by Vocal, a hilarious gentleman I met in Montana in 2011 while hiking the Continental Divide.  I hope we catch up to him at some point.

Once again we are pretty tired from lack of sleep. The rain kept us up last night as we assessed how wet we were getting, so another early night is called for!