Date: 2008-07-29
From: Gentian Pond Shelter NH

To: Campsite past Mahoosuc Notch ME
Miles today: 12.2

Day 163 Tuesday July 29 ¢ Campsite past Mahoosuc Notch ME - Miles Today: 12.2 Total Miles: 1902.3We got an early morning start today so that we could push on past Full Goose Shelter to the Mahoosuc Notch, if time permitted and our muscles felt strong. We were a bit delayed this morning due to a very unfortunate incident. Our hiking poles forever seem to fall to the ground every time we rest them against a tree during our breaks. Well, today, they fell again. Not too bad, except this break was a nature call break. And guess what? Yep, you¢re right. One hiking pole handle fell right in the pile of doo-doo. Gross! What a mess! Of course, we didn't have a water source next to us to assist in our cleanup. We cleaned the handle the best we could with vegetation and then hiked to a water source (i.e., a mud puddle) to clean it better. We also poured a lot of antiseptic on it. E coli is not something we want to deal with out here! Hopefully we've done a good job cleaning it and will remain healthy. About five miles from last night¢s campsite, we entered our last state - Maine!!!   YAHOO!!!! We are coming down home stretch. We can now say we have walked from Georgia to Maine! We took our picture at the ¢Welcome to Maine¢ sign, grinning ear to ear. The southbounders did not have an official sign that said ¢Welcome to New Hampshire¢, so instead someone wrote one for them on a piece of tablet paper. It said, ¢Welcome to New Hampshire; Sun-Fri 6:00-10:00pm; Closed Saturday.¢ Pretty funny. Sorry SOBOs! We did well with our hiking today. We arrived at Full Goose Shelter before 1:00 and took a break to eat lunch and relax, before pushing on. With us at the shelter was Smokey, a SOBO from Knoxville, Tennessee.   He did not have a good day. In addition to not feeling well, he slipped off a log into a bog. A very deep bog. He was muddy up past his knees! Luckily, he had his sense of humor with him, which is quite amazing since he was not feeling well. He's running a fever and is afraid he has Lyme Disease. I think we're past that season, but who knows?Smokey asked us ¢how long are you out for¢.   An odd question, as usually we are asked if we are thru-hikers. It turns out that Grasshopper¢s new mesh shoes threw him for a curve. You see, they are WHITE (I won¢t mention the pink trim)! What respected long distant hiker wears WHITE shoes (with pink trim)? Despite all the mud on the trail, they still glow too bright for a hiking shoe, thanks to the puddles, which rinse them clean. Look north tonight. I bet you can see them glowing as they sit outside our tent.We had some pretty views today. We were on some mountain summits, above the tall trees and could see a 360 panoramic view of many ridgelines. We saw lots of cloud formations - rows of dark, rainy type clouds and lots of white, puffy clouds. But, for the most part, the weather was good. We escaped rain except for a wee little 5-10 minute shower in the Mahoosuc Notch. Speaking of the notch, we made it through the slowest mile on the trail in less than 1.75 hours! We had heard stories of hikers taking between 1.5 hours and 5 hours. It was not too terrible. It was really just a huge rock scramble that was slow going, but we were in no mindset to hurry too fast. We entered the Notch after already hiking 11 miles. It was our last mile of the day, so it wasn't extremely fun and exciting, because we were not on fresh legs, but it wasn't horrible either. We've been through worse. Halfway through we had to stop to put on rain gear for our brief shower, which unfortunately just made the challenge more difficult due to wet slippery rocks. We also had to stop to let a group of 10 southbound girls go through. They had been in the notch 4 hours at the time we passed them! WOW. In one place, we had to take off our packs and fit them through a narrow crevice, as there was not enough room for both the pack and our body to fit. Another time we were supposed to take them off, push them through the hole and then climb through ourselves, but there was a path going up and over that area which we chose instead. We're not big fans of taking off the packs and having to toss them or lower them and ding them up more. Grasshopper did manage to add 2 new bumps to her right shin, one on top of the other! How she managed to hit the same spot twice I have no idea, but she said it HURT. Looks like it would. It¢s bloody. In the Notch¢s rock crevices, we could see some year-around ice as well as the bone remains of a moose that fell to its death. Hikers have made a memorial for the moose. Its skull has been placed up on top of the boulders where we hike and there are prayer flags hung.In the Notch, High Life pushed on past us. He was racing last year¢s time and was hurrying in order to get in 20 miles, having 9 more miles to go and it was already mid afternoon! He mentioned some night hiking was in order. He¢s trying to catch up with some of his friends. So this is likely the last time we will see him. With the little shower, by the time we got to camp, it was a tad chilly. Camp is just passed the Mahoosuc Notch, perhaps around mile marker 1902.3. Others have used this site, but there is no shelter, tent platform or caretaker here. It¢s more on the unofficial side. It¢s a little off the beaten path and not easily found. We're sitting around camp with our #3 tops and our #1 bottoms. It's about 60 degrees and feels quite delightful. The water that we filtered by the creek at camp is from the Mahoosuc Notch and it is extremely cold. Remember, there¢s year-around ice in the Notch. Brakeman did not enjoy using that cold water to freshen up! The air is a bit chilly so we¢ll use our sleeping bags as designed tonight for the first time in a long time. Brakeman said he saw a clutch of grouse, which in this case means a mother, father and 3 children. It's a little after 6:00 and since it appears that we're going to have this site to ourselves tonight, we¢re already planning on going to sleep at a really early hour. Yeah!   So life is good although we're not quite sure if we'll have a dry night. We hope so though, as we do not have a lot of confidence in the tent anymore. It would be really nice to have a dry night. When we came back on the trail after Grasshopper¢s medical issues, she had mentally prepared for 10 more raining days. Oops, we just passed that number today and we still have all of Maine to go. Sorry, Grasshopper. As a matter of fact, we have 274 more miles to go and tomorrow the Mahoosuc Arm is our last really difficult climb besides Katahdin. But we have about another week of lots of ups and downs, which will be slow going. We're probably still only doing about 1.5 mph. It¢s slow going still with all the rocks. Goodnight from our first night in Maine! We¢ve walked from Georgia to Maine! WOW.