Date: 2008-08-29
From: 1 before Mahoosuc Notch, ME

To: Grafton Notch, ME
Miles today: 8.3
Weather: light rain

Beep beep beep beep¢¦..*click* (sound of me hitting snooze for the 4th time).Gosh what does it take to get the body onto a morning schedule? Oh well..hadto get up, today was the day to face the infamous Mahoosuc Notch.We were all loaded up and on our way back to the Notch Trail head by 7:05 a.m.We dropped the car off at Grafton Notch for A.M. to have when we finishedtoday. Oh¢¦now I can¢t remember if I mentioned this (probably did, but the daysare running together by now). A.M. and I found a small hiking bag of dogfood onGoose Eye Mtn. a few days back, and we knew a seasoned AT hiker named Mala andhis dog were ahead of us, so when we finished that day¢s hike, we stopped atGrafton Notch, I left a note in the register there and left the bag hanging onthe sign at the trailhead, knowing he¢d be there sooner or later. Well, thismorning, the bag was still there, so I do hope he is planning on coming thisdirection, or whoever it belongs to.We were all hiking up the Notch Trail by 8:13 a.m. It was so great to haveKaren with us. She has been chomping at the bit to get out here, and it wasanother perfect morning, with a few hazy clouds. We headed up the trail,stopped and enjoyed the beautiful stream some more and the moss comes in 2 maincolors, a darker and a lighter green, but it¢s so brilliant. I sort of expectedthe Green Mountains to look like this, but it wasn¢t this intense.We all talked and just had a great time hiking the 2.2 miles back up to the AT.Again, I loved this side trail, it was only a slight incline, which was a nicewarm up for us. We all joked and laughed, we got to a tiny little drainagestream that you just step over, but we all called it ¢Karen¢s first ford,¢ andtook pictures while laughing our asses off.By 9:30 a.m., we were back to the AT. We took pics, I immediately stored myhiking poles on the back of my pack and put on the leather-palmed bikinggloves, because the ¢real¢ Mahoosuc Notch started just around the next bend. Itold Karen goodbye, and she turned around to hike the 2.2 miles back down to thecar and take some pictures on the way down. A.M. and I took lots of video clipstoday of this whole experience. Upon reviewing them tonight, though, my clipssuck because the microphone of my camera is lame and doesn¢t pick anything up,but hers came out great.We went around the bend and saw our first boulder field with slabs of rock thesize of cars and blazes painted on them..saying, ¢Yup, this actually IS the wayyou go.¢ I was SO excited to do this. See, you are in the butt-crack betweentwo very steep, basically straight-up, mountain sides, so you look up and seethese sheer rocky sides going straight up, but you can see the slope of themountains too.Today, I felt like a little kid playing on a jungle gym. We started the Notch(1 mile long) at 9:57 a.m. Uncle Tom gave us the advice to stay on the tops ofthe rocks when possible, instead of going down and around and back up. We keptthat in mind and I¢ll admit there are a few places you simply can¢t do that,but we did try to stay on top. It was up and over and around, hopping onhouse-sized slabs of rocks, grabbing onto ledges, wedging your foot into smallcracks, sliding on your butt to the edge of a ledge and sliding your body overa total drop off until your foot touches the edge of the next rocky boulder soyou can grab it and pull yourself over. A.M. and I helped each other out by¢spotting¢ the trail. You can¢t always tell which is the best way to go, underor over or around, and what¢s on the other side of a huge boulder determineswhere you can get through, so I¢d climb way up on top and give direction, orshe¢d hike ahead and tell me. We made a kick ass team today.Folks, I absolutely LOVED this. Also, as soon as you go around the first bend,you see the prayer flags left next to the moose carcass. Someone has placedthe skull (it¢s all bones now for those of you who have a vision of what itlooked like last year) on a ledge, but the bones are all in a pile at thebottom of this hole, but you go right past it, because you have to climb downand then back up. I took some pics of it, and I don¢t know, it was a solemnfeeling and one where I felt almost honored to be witness to this singleanimal¢s end. I know hikers last year had to deal with seeing thedecomposition of this moose, and the smells related to that process. It didn¢tseem to smell any longer, but there was an earthy musty smell that I oftenrelate to the smell of death, still lingering. I just sat there on this rockledge looking at it, wondering where else, during it¢s life, it had roamed, andwhat on earth made it choose to try to go through this area. I can¢t confirm,but I think someone observed last year that it had broken a leg or something,which would make a ton of sense to me considering the terrain. For sobo¢s,you¢ll know you¢re essentially in your last scramble when you see this moose.We moved on and here¢s the deal. For long distance hikers who are tired,impatient, and sick of hiking, I¢d have to recommend taking a differentattitude towards the Mahoosuc Notch. Don¢t look at it as the ¢hardest mile onthe AT¢ because it¢s simply not a ¢hiking¢ mile. For this 1 mile, you are nolonger a hiker, but you get to enjoy bouldering. If you see it for what it is,then it¢s enjoyable¢¦a break from hiking and a time to climb and twist and crawland bend and slide and reach.   I liked this because it wasn¢t all just usingmy legs. I got to use my upper body and that made me feel strong too. I wasSO glad for the gloves too by the way. It just made it easier on the skin.I got this fantastic picure of A.M. sitting on a ledge, her right hand on a hugeslab next to her, her leg extended over NOTHING and reaching¢¦reaching¢¦to get herfoot to step on the rock ahead. It¢s my favorite picture of the whole day.There was only one spot where I had to lay on my side and squeeze through asmall hole, and with a full pack, I would have had to remove it, but with mypack only loaded for a dayhike, I never had to remove my pack.There¢s a place out of Grafton Notch that is trying to become a hostel and theyoffer slackpacking of the notch. For the sake of enjoyment, I totallyrecommend slacking this, because the lack of a loaded pack increased myenjoyment immensely.There was also one small spot where a tree is laying over a drop off, and youhang onto a large boulder, and side-step across the tree, and one othermemorable spot was where my legs weren¢t long enough to slide and catch thenext boulder (A.M. did it though), so I had to scale a small ledge, go down,and back up a huge slab, hiking my leg over the top (which came to a fine edgebecause it was steep on both sides) and while hanging onto a tree branch, slideover to the next slab. Folks, I loved this so much, I¢d go back and do it overand over again for a fun dayhike, except in order to hike out (NOBO) you haveto hike up the Mahoosuc Arm to get to the next sidetrail, and let¢s just saythat thing is not something I want to do over again, but we¢ll get to that in amoment.So, we ran into some hikers A.M. knew, but one of them (Wildflower I think)hiked in from Grafton Notch for a slackpack and had run into Mala and we knowfor sure the dogfood belonged to him and that he was headed to Grafton Notchthis morning, so I¢m super happy he¢ll get his dog¢s food bag back. Wildflowersaid Mala could not figure out how a NOBO got to Grafton Notch with the foodwhen he knew a nobo had not passed him, but nobody knew we¢d exited on asidetrail and drove to Grafton Notch. Pretty funny¢¦.perhaps I¢ll get somereputation of being magic huh? Wildflower said the bag was still hanging therethis morning.When we ran into her, she said we were almost through. There are caves you cango into as well, and we ran into a college group that had 6 people back in acave. I¢m not 100% comfortable exploring caves without proper gear¢¦not thatthese probably go back that far, but who knows right?Finally the terrain started changing a bit, there was a stream running at thebottom of the notch, which was beautiful. Sometimes you could only hear it andnot see it. There were probably 2 places of flat friendly trail, but theseparts just led you to the next boulder section.We got to a steal campsite, and V8 had told us this was at the end, so weassumed we had completed the 1 mile. What time was it? 12:04 p.m. We hadmade it through in two hours and 7 minutes INCLUDING breaks, so if you countactual climbing time, it was about 1 hr 3 min! We were really happy withourselves. We¢d heard so many horror stories of taking 4 hrs just to getthrough this thing. This is not the hardest mile on the AT in my opinion. Ithink it¢s definitely the most technical mile, but again, it¢s not an aerobicexperience as much as a thinking problem-solving experience, which is what Iloved about it. How to get around or over or through this?We stopped for lunch and I pulled out my celebratory pumpkin whoopee pie (soI¢ve never heard of these things till the day I bought that one on top of Mt.Washington). A.M. and I shared it, but we couldn¢t finish it¢¦huge and full ofsugar. We ate lunch and then looked at what was next.It was a total of 1.5 miles climbing up the Mahoosuc Arm to the first summit ofOld Speck Mtn. The first .5 mile wasn¢t bad, it was normal climbing that ledto a beautiful rock bottomed stream. I got more water and we were off for thesteepest part of the Arm. Oh my gosh¢¦this was the never ending freakingclimb!!! For only being 1 mile, I am almost tempted to label THIS the hardest1 mile on the AT.   Yes, we¢d expended energy in a way that we weren¢t used towith all the rock scrambling, but this was a verticle mile, stepping straightup most of the time, so think of climbing 1 mile up a ladder where the rungsare 18¢ or more apart. Man was it exhausting.We kept going up¢¦up..up¢¦up¢¦all the while we were just sure the top was aroundthe next bend, and then all we¢d see was more sheer rocky slabs where you usesmall cracks or bumps in the rock as traction, or more bouldering straight up.Wow, and we were using daypacks, can¢t imagine what it would have been like witha full pack¢¦.and I don¢t really want to imagine it.It took us as long to do this mile as it did to do the notch. So once weFINALLY reached the top, it had taken us a total of 5 hrs (which of courseincludes multiple breaks and lunch) to go about 3 miles! I¢ll take the notchany day over the arm.We DID get to the top though, took a short break, the views were stunning againand there were some clouds in the sky today, but it wasn¢t supposed to rain orstorm, so I didn¢t care.Now we had 1 mile down to Speck Pond Shelter. The descent wasn¢t too bad butwow was this place eye candy. A spectacular clear rock-bottomed huge pond withlilly pads floating on the edges, surrounded by these incredible spruce andhemlock trees. Really something to see. A definite place to revisit or atleast do as a day hike folks. We met 2 women who are flip-flopping fromDamascus, Just A Little Shady (NC) and Florida Craker (FL). They were greatand seemed pretty hard core to me. We talked for a bit and all went ourseparate ways. We told them there were 2 nice stealth campsites right beforethe notch and a stream.   Oh, so for nobo¢s, the indicator you¢re pretty muchfinished with the notch is a stream off to the right of the trail. There¢sregular trail and then one little boulder to get over, but you¢re not in that¢notchy¢ stuff anymore (A.M. and I started making up words..and this is one ofthem).We went to the shelter and I walked down to the sidetrail to the pond. It¢ssomething out of a storybook¢¦the beauty of this place. But, because the pondis not a bog with weeds on the bottom, no moose come around here like you thinkthey would. Moose eat the weeds and stuff on the bottom of boggy ponds (I justlearned this). I met the caretaker, Michael, a very nice guy who looked likehe was sort of ready for a day off. Even on his days off¢¦he climbs down themountain and lives in a tent at the bottom. He has no car and if he needs aride, he has to call a local person with the MATC or something to get him.Talk about isolated huh?We took a small break and headed up the NEXT climb, about 1 mile long with asmall flat spot in the middle. This would be our last significant climb of theday, but we were pretty pooped with aching feet by now. Again, a lot ofstraight up stuff, and the trail is nothing more than a smooth slab of rock inmost places, which tells me it is old trail that has been eroded of its dirtover many years, so what is exposed is the rock from the mountain.About 20 minutes from the top, we stopped for a break and a snack. We weren¢thungry, but needed to keep some sugar in our blood to keep us going. Ifinished off my whoopie pie and A.M. ate this stuff called Gu, that she¢d beencarrying for 3 months, which is used by cyclists as an energy booster. Shesaid it tasted horrible, but thinks it helped.As we sat there, 2 tiny humans on the side of this giant mountain, surrounded byother mountains, miles of forest, and wow did it make me feel small,insignificant, humbled. I appreciated where I was, what this place was about,and in a way, it allowed me to really understand how amazing of a feat it is tohike 2175 miles in these mountains. In our real worlds, we are the alpha, thetop of the food chain. Everything is designed and built to accommodate US, tofit US, to serve US. Out here, we don¢t matter really. The mountains, thetrail, the animals, the weather, the trees, the streams, everything is what itis, and none of it takes US into consideration. Granted, trail crews makecertain choices and decisions with us in mind, but not even they can modifynature all of the time, in a way that accommodates us.We got up and made the final push, you are literally climbing up the rockyexposed smooth top of a mountain with the world behind you. The pics will tellthis best though.We got to the final summit of Old Speck Mtn. and at 4:57 p.m., we still had 3.5miles descent all the way down to Grafton Notch. Ugh¢¦.although, we¢d heard itwas a pretty nice downhill, but 3.5 miles of anything straight is tough at theend of the day.We started down and it was a little steep at first, but when you get to thispoint in the day, the body goes into a different zone. See, normally, I wouldbe in camp or close to it if I were camping. My body and energy are used toholding out for a 9 hour day, but we still had a few more hours of hiking aheadof us. I can always tell when I flip into this zone (and this sounds a littleweird) because it¢s a coated feeling I have¢¦my skin feets coated (probably bydried sweat and salt) but my mind and thought process changes, I¢m reachinginto a different part of myself for the energy, which for short periods oftime, is abundant, but then I always know I¢m going to crash hard when Ifinish. The trick is¢¦can I make it before I crash?I think A.M. and I were both in this zone. No energy for talking really(although we did end up getting into a pretty intense conversation for a bit),and even though you want to stop for breaks¢¦you don¢t want to stop..you justwant to get where you need to get.I¢ve been out here long enough to no better than to ever push myself into thiszone if I have to set up camp or even hike the next day. It wipes me outcompletely, but since this was the end of a 3 day haul, A.M. is leaving metomorrow, and I¢m using the weekend to get ultra-organized for the last push toMonson, I knew I could push like this safely.It doesn¢t matter so much the # of miles you hike, but the terrain difficulty iswhat makes a day long. I was doing 18 milers back in VA, but here (ever sincethe Whites) a good day is like 8-10 miles, often using more energy than an 18miler back in VA.Down and down and down¢¦.seemed like it would never end. There was one tinylittle bump up, which allowed me to know exactly where we were and then thenext landmark was the junction with the Eyebrow Trail, which meant we had 1.2miles left. We only stopped twice on the way down¢¦to let blood enter our feetagain. It¢s that pounding pain, like someone has taken a baseball bat and hitthe crap out of the bottoms of your feet, after a day like today.I could start hearing an occasional car on HWY 26, and that¢s both a tease and arelief, because sometimes it¢s miles before you reach the road. The sun wasgetting lower, and shady areas of the forest were starting to get dark. I¢dasked A.M. if she¢d ever nite hiked before. With the exception of getting intocamp at near dark, no, but we both had our headlamps. I did not, however, thinkwe¢d need to nite hike. I guestimated we¢d be in Grafton Notch by 7:00 p.m. andwe emerged from the woods into the parking area at 7:15 p.m. Oh wow¢¦.sooooohappy to see the car and know a hot shower and pizza were waiting for us thisevening. We did it!The dogfood bag was gone too! I went to the register and T-Dawg (Mala¢s dog)left an entry thanking us for his food bowl. Happy ending for everyone.We took a pic and I told A.M. that I was so proud of us for today. Perhapsothers have done this leg with full pack and found it to be easy, but I¢m nottoo proud to admit this was really hard today. I feel like we did somethingpretty huge today. It was 11 hours of hiking¢¦which is a lot for us.We hopped in the car, at got back to the room. Karen had cold drinks waitingand put them in our hands. Took showers, ordered some great pizza from Pat¢sPizza, and then followed that up with some pie and vanilla icecream Karenbought for us.I noticed there was a little white box with one of the great postcards showingInga-One, the cat that lives with the meteorologists on top of Mt. Washington,sitting on my pillow. Inga had gotten caught outside in a storm and the end ofevery hair and whisker has ice on it.   Karen said it was a gift to mark thisday, this time. I¢m in Maine, I got through the Mahoosuc Notch, I made itthrough a stomach virus, I have been privileged enough to hike with V8 and A.M. I opened the box, and it was a Geode! I had been talking about how I managedto convince myself that I was seeing them out on the trail, and I¢ve alwaysloved these rocks. Karen found this awesome little store and museum called Mt.Mann in Bethel that has precious gems and amazing minerals that many of whichthe owner has mined himself. She also learned and then told me that the Geodeis only in S. America, which made me die laughing. My good ole¢ imagination isin overdrive again huh? What a wonderful gift to receive today. Thank youKaren.The rest of the evening we all chilled, elevated our aching feet, and Karen hadexplored the area going to Screw Auger Falls (just past Grafton Notch) and tooksome amazing pictures of this beautiful place.Whew¢¦exhausted to say the least, but excited to have faced another legendaryplace people like to talk about (and also like to induce fear in those of usewho are unknowing). My mantra for most things in life is: Fear nothing, faceit, experience it for what it is, and learn something in the process. Now¢¦myeyelids are closing up shop for the nite.~Certain