Date: 2018-04-20
To: Little Hump Mountain
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: overcast clouds

It was a brutal and scary day to say the least. After waking up and checking on John and the dog, it was really clear that we needed to get them out of the woods. The best option was hiking 6 miles backwards to a gap and trying to hitch a ride from there to his car.  This was back over 3 knobs, which meant hills and sun on our way back. I left my pack near the shelter, and then I carried John's pack while he looked after the dog.  He contrived a sling out of his sleeping back to carry the dog, which would work ok for 1/4 to 1/2 mile at a time, then the dog would squirm out and run on his own for a 1/2 mile.  This was an OK pace (if heavy on John's back) for a while and seemed to work.  However, I really began to understand how bad things were when we were 1-2 miles from the gap and John went to put the dog down. Instead of running ahead, the dog didn't move at all and just laid down directly on the trail. Not a good sign....We got the dog to the gap, and luckily we found a ride to the other gap immediately.  They got out, which felt great. I had seen many friends hiking the wrong direction who were puzzled "Stretch - Katahdin is the other direction!"  I then had the daunting task of hiking back into the woods without my pack (first time on the trail like this), which initially felt good to be hauling mileage, but then I ended up getting well over a mile off trail since I was going so fast.  So I wasted another couple hours getting lost on an already intense day.  I finally got back to my bag at ~5PM, and I was determined to make some forward progress that day, so I did one more hill and 2 more miles and found a place to camp. Joined a fire with some very discouraging section hikers from Maryland - "it's so cute to meet hikers like you just starting!" "Uh.... I'm hundreds of miles and over a month in" "yeah... but.... you really just started!!!"Frankly, this whole experience was very eye-opening for me. Firstly, the most important thing is that my friend and his dog are healthy and at home.  I would have done everything in my power to facilitate that, seriously considering contacting emergency extraction at some points. I'd like to think that weather, not my planning, caused this incident, but I have to realistically look now at how I plan visitors on the trail and make sure I'm not pushing anyone (or any animals) harder than they can go.  John is a marathon runner who was blowing us hikers out of the water climbing the mountain, so I kept thinking everything was OK, but I should have paid more attention to the dog. I have learned from this, and will be trying to set more realistic expectations for visitors.  Please remember when you read this that I've been training months/years for this experience, and that even after that it's taken me more than month on the trail to get up to 15-20 mile days.  Thru-hiking is absolutely a sport (more on that in another entry), and it's life-or-death out here with every step, campsite choice, and water filtration. I do hope people are inspired by this journal to go hike and exercise, but PLEASE do it in a healthy, responsible way!