Date: 2003-08-28
From: Stratton mountain

To: Bromely mountain
Miles today: 16.4

Everyone over by the ski lifts woke up by about 7:00 since we didn¢t know if anyone would be upset about camping up there, probably not but today was a town day and town was still 14 miles away.   I was woken up in my fire tower and we raced out toward town. Snot Rocket and I talked about our timing for the rest of the hike. We both knew that there was only a month and a half before we had to get to Mt. Katahdin and keeping steady progress north was important. There was plenty of time to get there, but not a lot of a buffer zone, unexpected delays could really hurt our chances of finishing. Snot was talking about finishing in little over a month. He wanted to be done a few days into October and especially by the 8th for a friend¢s wedding. I told him that was crazy and would mean huge miles through the toughest terrain on the trail without any zero days. He was set on it, but I didn¢t see it happening, I wasn¢t in a huge rush toward the end and certainly wanted to take my time through what many people regard as the best part of the trail. I had no problems, even conceded that I would finish a couple days before the mountain closed. I had never done anything on time in my life and why should this be any different? We cruised into town at about 3 o¢clock with all six of us that were by the roadside getting the same ride in a crowded truck.   Manchester Center was a nice little town that was built on tourism, outlets in the summer, skiing in the winter. It was all business in this town, no one was staying the night.   I went to the post office to pick up my food drop while the others went to the grocery store and the outfitter. This town had a McDonalds where each of us ate until we felt like puking and ate some more. We ran into Chief who was hiking with Iceberg Slim, a crazy character from Vermont, and Moose a former army guy who was now with the CIA. The five of us along with the crew that was on Stratton last night made plans to meet on top of Bromley Mountain, another ski resort that was just out of town. Hikers were allowed to stay in the ski patrol building at the summit. We hit up the package store on the way out of town to pack a few beers to the top along with extra McDonalds to enjoy at the top. There were six of us again on the way out of town; four guys, two girls. We figured we¢d put the girls by the road while the rest of us were partially concealed in the background. Lots of cars were going by until a nice lady in a Land Rover pulled over. She saw two girls but when she stopped there were four more guys standing there. She was nice enough to allow all of us to squeeze. There may not have been more that a couple square inches of free space in that car, but we all made it. I can only imagine what it smelled like to her, none of us had showered in this town. We made it back to the trail near dusk, thanked the woman profusely and headed the couple miles to the top. It wasn¢t that bad of a climb except that my pack weighed in the sixty something range with all the extra weight, which I appreciated from the summit and observation deck of Bromely where we appreciated the last minutes of waning sunlight.