Date: 2008-08-03
From: Little Swift River Pond Campsite ME

To: Popular Ridge Lean-to ME
Miles today: 15.5
Weather: light rain

Day 168 Sunday August 3 ¢ Popular Ridge Lean-to ME - Miles Today: 15.5 Total Miles: 1966.9We had rain throughout the night but by the time we got up it had stopped. We headed down the trail at 5:45 as we had 15.5 miles to do and that is a lot of miles to do in these muddy, swampy conditions. But we did pretty well today. We got to camp about 4:10 and we even had 3 mountains to cross over today, so we were pleased with our progress. We're actually getting used to the muddy conditions. We now just pretty much walk right through whatever water or mud is on the trail. One of the puddles in the middle of the trail today was quite lengthy and quite deep ¢ perhaps 10¢, as it was 1/2 way up our shinbones. Because Grasshopper's shoes are mesh, the fine silt dirt filters in and cakes to her sock and foot. When the volume of silt gets too high and starts to crowd out her toes, she has to stop and empty it out. This happens a couple times a day. When we hit a stream of water on the trail that is running with clear water, she hops right in and swishes her shoe around to try to get the dirt that's inside the shoe to go back out. I¢m thinking this is not quite how mesh shoes are supposed to work! But whatever. We climbed 3 mountains today - Saddleback, The Horn and Saddleback Junior.   On the last 2 we were fogged in so we didn't have any views but for a brief period on the top of Saddleback, we had some nice 360 views. The views were very brief - probably 30 seconds or a minute - before the fog rolled in again. Today goes down in the record books - for the first time, ever, we passed 4 hikers and held off a young hiker, which would be hiker #5. Two of the hikers were section hikers. The other two were in their 50s, - Foot Machine, a former thru-hiker and Old Dog, who started at Delaware Water Gap. We smoked them all. It was totally unbelievable - such a weird feeling. It's a feeling we've never actually had before. LOL. Just think, we hiked faster than somebody. What's the odds? It only took us 1960+ miles to have this feeling. Wow. We almost missed the opportunity to have the feeling of passing several hikers in one day.About an hour from camp, the thunder arrived. (Here goes a yawn ¢ Y A W N - I do that just for you so you have more fun transcribing.)   We arrived at camp at 4:10, beating the rain. We¢ve had limited rain today, so far. It rained a little in the morning. At camp tonight, we were able to get the tent set up and eat dinner before the rain arrived. As the sprinkles started, we rushed through brushing our teeth, hung the food bag, quickly gathered our raingear that was hanging on trees in an attempt to dry and dove in the tent.It's a bit scary where we've pitched the tent. It was the only non-saturated spot around the lean-to. In a torrential downpour we are concerned that the inside of our tent could be flooded. Brakeman has done all he can do to dig ditches and make sure water is routed around us but he's not so sure if the fortress will hold. Let's hope it does. We hardly ever dig trenches around our tent, as it¢s against the ¢Leave No Trace¢ philosophy, but we thought it would be in our best interest to do so today.For some reason tonight, although our feet were wet all day long, they don't look quite as pruney tonight. Perhaps we will make it through these next 16 days without foot rot. Old Dog and Foot Machine, who were in Rangeley last night, updated us on the 10-day forecast. Yep, you got it - scattered or isolated showers every day, but one. He couldn't remember which day was supposed to be cloudy but dry. I'm not quite sure what the weather system is doing here but, as I said before, all the locals are talking about how the last 2 months have just been very abnormal. It's simply impossible to stay clean in these conditions. There's dirt underneath our fingernails that just seems to live there for days. Toenails - I'm not sure if they will ever look white again. There's dirt splattered up to our knees by the end of the day. There's dirt all over the tent from the rain splashing up. When we freshened up in the streams, we have specks of dirt that stick to our skin and won¢t come off. Our shorts are extremely dirty compared to normal. Although we rinse our socks out every night, after we walk through a couple puddles the next day, they're dirty again. I have the feeling that the next two weeks or so will just be more of the dirt, but we're actually sort of getting used to it. It's a way of life out here.The floor of this shelter is rather unique. It¢s called a baseball bat floor, as it's made out of small diameter tree trunks instead of milled lumber. Not quite sure why you would want to do that. I can¢t imagine that it would be comfortable for sleeping!It¢s 6:40 and guess what it's doing again!! Yep, you got it - raining!! We only had that one crack of thunder, so at least it looks like we¢re just going to get rain rather than a lightning storm. One of the hikers that we ran into today said that it has rained 10 out of the last 15 days. We're thinking it might be a bit higher than that, but without going back and checking the journals, we're not quite sure.   We are hearing that this is the wettest year for Maine in 10 years though! Tomorrow we may have a few challenges. We need to ford both Orbeton Stream and South Branch Carrabeassett River, both of which are ford crossings under normal weather conditions. We can only imagine how deep the ford will be under these rainy conditions. We have a little anxiety about them.I guess we'll call it a night and talk to you from, hopefully, sunny Maine, one of these days. Goodnight.