Date: 2017-06-09
From: White House Landing

To: Crawford Pond
Miles today: 17.8
Weather: broken clouds

"You saw a MOOSE?!"Alpine, a skeletally-thin young nobo, was flabbergasted when we casually mentioned that a few minutes earlier, a moose had wandered onto the trail barely 30ft in front of us."I've been walking in moose shit for months and I still haven't seen one."It seemed unfair to mention to him that we'd actually seen three moose -- one on the IAT, one in the odd 12-mile bit of Baxter State Park between the official southern terminus of the IAT and the official northern terminus of the AT on Mt Katahdin, and now one in the 100 mile wilderness.With barely three days left before he was due to summit Katahdin, Alpine's chances of seeing his moose seemed unlikely.So far, the nobos we'd met had mostly defied the stereotype of speed-crazed antisocial solo hikers who saw Katahdin as something to be reached and dispensed with as quickly as possible.There were plenty of speed demons, but the group of hikers we met on or summit day, who were completing their goal of a 100-day thru hike with a day to spare, had seemed to be a close-knit team. Even Spice Girl, Princess Leia and Ramses -- with whom Alpine had hiked for weeks, until he opted to slow down as the end neared -- had taken time off from their onerous four-month schedule to enjoy the delights of White House Landing.Alpine, we discovered, had started his hike on January 1. More than six mooseless months later, he said he'd seen every single other type of creature out here, other than the obvious. He'd now booked his flight home and was already planning to join the military once he was done.We wished him luck with his moose quest, congratulated him on his upcoming hike completion and then we headed off in our respective directions.The morning so far had gone exceedingly well, in part because of the White House Landing breakfast. This featured all the usual artery-clogging favourites, with the addition of all-you-can-eat blueberry pancakes.The sumptuous breakfast came at the cost of a late start -- 8.45am -- since we gave space in the first of three boat journeys to the nobo crew since they wanted to reach Katahdin Stream camp ground that day.Then within an hour we'd seen our moose, disappointed Alpine with the news and then met yet another skeletally-thin young nobo named Rooster.The forecast has been for a day of scattered showers but it was also the easiest walking of the entire AT so far. This was not just 100 per cent Smeagol on my Smeagol-Gollum Index but Smeagol-on-a-first-date pleasant.There was plenty of the long green tunnel, but we were also regularly entertained by views of the lake, short sections of golden sand beaches and even views of Katahdin, still disappointingly close after four days of hiking.We had lunch at Antlers camp ground, sited on a peninsula jutting into the lake which would have made a perfect campsite had we been on a different schedule.We even managed to have a mini White House Landing reunion when Katbird and Trail arrived as we were having an early lunch with Elwood. For neophyte hikers, they were carrying waaaaaaaaay too much but had been doing the schedule absolutely right, hiking only a handful of miles a day and ensuring they were really enjoying themselves. When we corrupted them into coming to White House Landing, it gave them a daily mileages tally of just two miles -- and they were fine with that. I hoped to meet them again down the trail when they'd transformed unwittingly into uber hikers.Even when the rain began to come in around mid afternoon, the trail was still enjoyable. At Cooper Brook Falls lean to -- in one of the trail's best locations yet, next to a cascade that ended in what was clearly an awesome swimming hole -- Scout and I tempted and/or taunted the weather gods by putting away the umbrellas we'd been using until then. The response was predictable: within a minute of Scout leaving the lean to, thunder echoed through the valley and the skies opened. I opted to stay for a few more minutes until the worst of the initial downpour had passed before donning Poncho version 2.0, which was adapted from the $5 one I'd bought at the IAT trailside WalMart in Houlton more than a week agoThe trail was clearly a former bridle path or some other kind of improved trail, being far better engineered and consistently graded than the rocks, roots and mud to which we'd become accustomed. Smeagol was clearly having a good day and Gollum was nowhere to be seen.By the time we reached Crawford Pond, the rain had stopped and after crossing the outflow via what seemed like the most optimistic beaver dam in the history of beavers, I found Scout searching for potential campsites near the road crossing.We eventually found something workable in the waterfront forest, although definitely deficient in comparison to the campsites I'd seen earlier on the pond's sandy beach, where camping was at least nominally banned.AT fact of the day: We might be content with our mileage today but benchmarking came in the form of the superfit nobo trio of Spice Girl, Princess Leia and Ramses, who hiked 22 miles through this terrain to reach White House Landing by 12.30pm...