Date: 2017-06-21
From: Stratton

To: Spaulding Mountain lean to
Miles today: 13.5
Weather: broken clouds

The AT today did this: up 3,000ft, straight down 600ft, straight up 500ft, straight down 2,000ft, cross a river, straight up 2,000ft, an undulating ridge walk amid the usual mud, rocks and roots, then 500ft up and 500ft down to the shelter. Easy, right?It seems like all our trail legs are finally kicking in because we managed this without feeling entirely wrecked. It's about time.It helped that the biggest climb was steady but well-graded and even avoided unnecessary ups and downs on a level section of ridge part way up Crocker Mountain by traversing to one side rather than keeping to one side. This was definitely Smeagol rather than Gollum, although the only person I passed was Poppa, who'd taken the first shuttle from the motel to the trail. But this was still the AT, which meant Gollum punished our level of comfort by sending us a blast of cold rain that came in as we neared the 4,000ft summit, taking most of by surprise and forcing us to don our wet weather gear then to keep moving to stay warm. We'd checked the forecast barely two hours before as we left Stratton and there was no mention of this.My plan had been to get to the next shelter, which would leave just 19 miles, but the rain had me reassessing this schedule in favour of camping at Caribou River, five miles short. But then after half an hour of chilling downpour, the rain stopped as I reached the pass between Crocker Mountain and South Crocker Mountain and the skies cleared once more as if the squall had never occurred.We'd been warned particularly about the next two miles, which involved a descent straight down to the Caribou River and then straight back up the other side to The Sugarloaf. What made it doubly galling was that the map showed that there was a gentle ridge that headed south east from the Crockers to Spaulding Mountain lean to that would have avoided all this exertion.The descent was steep enough and blocky enough to be slow going. At every downward step, I tried to keep about 80 per cent of the weight on my hiking poles, without which I suspect this hike would long since have destroyed what remains of my knees. The trail grade briefly eased off as it neared the river, which I could hear roaring through the trees and which I'd assumed we'd have to ford. But as Beast, Rare, Dirt and I arrived, we found a plank had been put in place between two boulders, spanning the main channel and allowing us to boulder-hop across with dry feet. A ford would have been possible, but with huge boulders in the stream bed, it wouldn't have been much fun.If we thought the downhill was tough, the uphill put it into perspective by going from merely concerningly steep to requiring some bouldering moves to get up a stepped rockface.All this has been hard on our bodies. Shortly before the rockface, I'd run into Dirt and Rare, with the latter stopped because of short and painful twinging on some tendons in her hips. This was hardly surprising. Climbing straight up and down hills in the classic AT style uses tendons that rarely get used in normal life and we're not just using these forgotten ligaments but doing so with full loads and for hours at a time. It'd only be surprising if our bodies didn't ache and protest.The grade eased off a little after that and then took an almost conciliatory angle traversing a high shelf to intersect with The Sugarloaf. Maybe the AT designers had concluded that they'd punished us enough for the day because the trail didn't take us over the summit, which was available via a half-mile side trailAfter that, the trail undulated along a ridge, featuring a series of short climbs and descents through a thick forest of stunted pines. Without the trail, this would have been incredibly difficult to shwack through this kind of vegetation.A final 500ft climb up to near the summit of Spaulding Mountain -- again the summit was available via a short side trail, showing the AT was in a rare beneficent mood after a day of punishment -- and then there was a long and slow descent to the lean to, where the exertions of the day showed in my tiredness more accurately than the mileage. As was becoming the norm, I'd slept much worse in town than on the trail, getting only a few hours of sleep.Tiredness always had an effect on my perceptions and I kept thinking I was hearing voices just off the trail, to which I ascribed to being near the shelter. Each time I'd hike on and no shelter appeared, showing my perceptions involved flawed optimism.When the shelter finally appeared, it was good to find Jake and Wrong Way in attendance, with four nobos also settling in. One, an Australian furniture maker named Goose, was from Melbourne and we compared notes about when I lived there back in the 1980s, when people of ordinary income could still afford to live in places like North Carlton.Over the next couple of hours, Rare, Dirt and Blazer rolled in too, having coped with the strains of the ascent.Life is good.AT fact of the day: The summer solstice is, of course, hike naked day. I'd done this on my own in the Sierra on the PCT in 2006 (while my two companions said, and I quote: "NOOOOO! It's just wrong."), again with five of us while resupplying Scout and Frodo on the PCT in 2007 despite the latter's original claim that she would "absolutely not" take part, and most recently with Mike in 2010 on the CDT while Wing It and Don't Panic acted as barely-willing photographers and entirely-unwilling witnesses. I'd been reticent to mention this on the AT, in part because it sounds just creepy from someone my age, but today featured seven of us outside the Stratton Hotel, on the main street in town. I'll have to wait to photoshop the result before sharing it, but this tradition is alive and well.