Date: 2015-07-27
From: South Arm Rd

To: ME 17
Miles today: 13.2
Weather: overcast clouds

Today's hike was longer than yesterday, and included climbs up Old Blue Mountain and Bemis Mountain, a river ford, and a final climb up to the ending trailhead on ME 17. The weather was overcast to start, but no serious threat of rain until mid-afternoon and the sun started to pop through later in the hike. And it was a bit warmer than yesterday. I felt mostly like normal this AM, so I stuck to the hiking plan. We started at the same place as yesterday, but today we headed northbound instead. The climb up Old Blue started almost immediately and it was relatively steep in the beginning. Again, as yesterday, we had some climbing/descent aids - rebar mostly. Then the climb became more intermittent with some level sections. The final mile or so resumed the initial steep uphill climb. Old Blue was the highest peak for the day, but we didn't stay long and started down. The descent was as steep as the final ascent and some of the rocks in the shade were damp and slippery, so we were extra careful. We descended about 600 ft and then hiked across a series of shorter ups and downs. Over the course of about 3 miles we gradually gained elevation and the final ascent to Bemis was fairly short.We headed on down Bemis and soon realized that there is a second Bemis peak. The views were better there even though it's lower and we took pics with the summit sign. At a number of places during the descent from Bemis, the trail led over swaths of smooth rock, often wet and sometimes with lichen growth. In a word, it was slippery. We had to stay to the sides and use the trees and roots to gradually ease ourselves down. This isn't the only place where we've had to do this, but there was a lot of it and it seemed like one challenge after another. It took a lot of time and energy to work through each drop. Much later we encountered a work group from the Maine Conservation Corps that were putting stone steps in place, a very slow and labor-intensive process. We thanked them all for their efforts. Finally I reached the Bemis Stream. At this point I was flagging from the exertion and five to ten minutes behind the rest of the group. The AT Guide says that Bemis Stream is a ford - that usually means take off your boots and wade through. But I was lucky, the stream was low with a lot of smaller exposed rocks. And I could see wet footprints on some of the rocks that traced a path across the stream. I rock-hopped without getting wet feet. Then I started the last uphill, less than a mile long, but pretty steep. I was out of water in my camelback and I could have filtered some from the stream. But I was in a hurry to catch up with the group, so I pressed on. About 2/3 of the way up the hill I was beat. I really needed water, preferably with energy. I had less than 0.2 mile to go, so I stopped for a couple of minutes then pushed on. A couple of minutes later Princess showed up, she climbed back down with a bottle of Gatorade. I slugged most of it down and after a short breather, I had very little problem climbing the rest of the way to the trailhead. So the lesson for me to learn is drink more water all the time, eat, and refill my camelback when we pass a water source. Tomorrow we'll start at the same point where we finished and head north again to ME 4. We'll be staying at The Farmhouse just outside Rangely. We stayed there last year and really like Shane & Stacey and their family. And I'm loading up with lots of water tonight.