Date: 2018-08-13
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Miles today: 0.0

Mon Day 150 8/13 Mahoosuc NotchSo up and on the trail by five. We're heading for the Full Goose Shelter. It's more of the up and down, steady climbing. It's a foggy morning. After five miles we get to that final state, MAINE at mile 1908, the Maine - New Hampshire border. We take a break, eat, and take pictures. We are finally in the state of Maine. We have. hiked from Georgia to Maine. Another 281 miles and we will finish the AT. We're pretty excited. I hiked with PT for 5 or 6 weeks in the beginning. Now I'm hiking with PT again towards the end. Mount Katahdin actually seems like a possibility. Completing 2,200 miles was too big of a thought and challenge for me to really embrace. I just hiked a day hike each day that took me North. We are actually becoming thru hikers. A thru hiker is someone who does the entire Trail in one calendar year. It's way harder than that it sounds. The day is a series of up and down. There is no flat, there is no steady. You're either going up or going down and there is no in between. We get to the Full Goose Shelter by 12:30. It was eight miles and it took seven hours. Earlier on the trail I used to travel 2 to 3 miles an hour. There were times I would crank 4 miles an hour for 2 or 3 hours. Regularly, I would have 10 miles done by 9 a.m. in the morning. We now feel good that we're doing better than a mile per hour. We draw water, eat a big lunch, and all take naps. Another Northbounder comes in named Gazelle. She talks about taking a month off just for her mental health. She says she just lost her hiking partner. She'd hiked with him for a full month. He was getting off the trail to go see his girlfriend. Now she was hiking alone. It's different when you're hiking alone up in these mountains. It's also not as safe to be hiking alone. We make the decision to hike through Mahoosuc Notch, the toughest, hardest mile on the Appalachian Trail. We first have to hike an hour down to the Notch. We start the Notch at 3:20. You hear lots of stories and tales about hiking the Mahoosuc Notch. As we start through the Notch it is incredibly hard. Derwood said go low when in doubt. We really have to find our own trail through. It's marked in sections but it is a huge jumble of giant boulders. There are spots where you can fall 30 feet down in between the boulders you're standing over. So you're making some big steps and taking some big risks We were moving slowly, cautiously, and I'd like to say intelligently. I heard the story of a girl who broke her leg in the Mahoosuc Notch. There's no cell service. It was ten very painful, tough hours trying to get out of the notch on a broken leg to get medical help. I was not going to rush anything and put myself at risk or anybody else at risk. So far on the trail with every group I've been with, I've been the lead hiker. I set the pace. I pick the line of the trail. Everyone else can make it whatever speed they want and whatever line of trail they want to hike. Typically we all stay together and stay pretty close on the same line. There would be times in the Mahoosuc Notch I would come to a dead end. I would have ended up leading up to a cliff. Then PT or Ibex would branch out and find a way. Four or five times we had to take off our packs and crawl down under rocks and huge boulders to get to the other side. We then form a chain and pass the packs and trekking poles through. This was a lot of reaching, stretching and pulling to move forward. You had to take some big high steps and really put a lot of pressure on your knees. You also had to pull yourself up or slide down on your butt to get to the next rock and move forward. We thought we were probably halfway through Mahoosuc Notch when we checked Guthooks. It said we'd gone two tenths of a mile. There was a thousand foot rock wall on either side of us straight up. This Notch was about 30 feet wide and a mile long. You could hear water running and at times see water running. You would go through hot and cold sections where the temperature varied 20 degrees in a space of 10 feet. This was a very unique section of trail. We felt very good about taking this challenge on at the end of the day. We weren't really using our typical hiking muscles to make progress. We were moving very slowly with a lot of hard pulling or hard pushing up with our legs, very different than hiking. It ended up taking two hours and 40 minutes to go one mile. We got out at six p.m. . There was a large stealth area with room for 10 tents with lots of shrubbery in between. We said good enough and set up the stealth. Five other northbounders came through the Notch as well and set up after us. Two other northbounders passed us while we were in the Notch. One was a Dutch fellow that was moving quite rapidly. We talked a little with Firefly, who started in March. We didn't get to sleep right away because we were a combination of tired, sore and just jazzed-up from coming through the Notch. Tomorrow, we would start our day with the Mahoosuc Arm, one of the steepest climbs on the trail. We decided to just sleep in and get up at 5. Our goal is to be on the trail by 6:30.