Date: 2018-09-12
From: Flagstaff Road 

To: Maine Rt 27
Miles today: 16.6
Weather: light rain

This morning started going UP. Hugs and I knew we had 3 BIG UP¢s today and we chose to stick together. There would be some mountain climbing, and steep Downs. To top it all off everything is still wet.  So began our hike over the Bigelows. The first climb was Little Bigelow Mountain at 3025ft. The climbs were hard, but the payoff was grand!  I enjoyed and photographed every single view. At times I thought this has got to be what heaven is like!  What goes up must come down.  As the trail became boulder going down, my boots lost traction and down I went. Mostly I just slid on my butt, and other than the jolt to my body, there was no real injury. Hugs was ahead of me most of the day. Always within shouting distance, but ahead. Just as I caught her and told her about my fall, she took a fall too. These wet downs are tricky. Literally we inch our way down with most of our weight on our trekking poles. That means we are bent over going down moving our trekking poles forward then shuffling our feet up to our poles. Then move our poles forward again and so on. Sometimes this goes on for miles.  There¢s usually a plateau of some type between mountains. In Maine it¢s generally a boggy area. Then the journey UP begins again. Today¢s UPs will total approximately 5200ft elevation gain. We started the very long trek up Bigelow Avery Peak at 4088ft elevation. This will take many hours. Today was a physical challenge. Hugs threw her poles up over a boulder and worked her way over. I started behind her and got part way up when my boots lost traction again....down went McGinney! This one hurt! An abrasion on my left shin and a big ole goose egg under my left knee, nice and purple. Ugh! It wasn¢t 10 minutes later before Hugs went down again. She still had no injury, but that jolt is enough. Continuing up we noticed the trees. There are trees here with white bark that peels off. I¢ve noticed it for some time, but today we talked about it. It reminds me of the cardboard roll that goes around a can of biscuit dough. It peels off and kind of rolls back up like that.  Today was really all about the views, but I did see a couple of fuzzy caterpillars. They were black and yellow like a bumblebee. Then I heard a scuttle off to my left. I looked over to see a little red squirrel with some of that tree bark. It was hilarious watching him try to manage it! The bark was like curling ribbon. He had it in his mouth trying to get a grip with his ¢hands¢, but it kept curling back around his hands and he was so aggravated!  I met about 5 or 6 NOBOs getting excited to hit the 100 and summit Katahdin. One of them was Giggles. The last time I saw her was at 4 Pines Hostel in Catawba VA. She looked great, and she was excited for her finish.  We came to some ledges with a nice view and sat down for lunch. It was already 2pm. This terrain makes for tediously slow hiking. We sat for 20 minutes which eventually became our ONLY break for the day.  We hiked on up Bigelow Mountain. This mountain has two peaks. The first was Bigelow Avery Peak at 4088ft elevation. Wow wow wow!!! The views! All of the literal blood and sweat was so worth it!! Onward to Bigelow West Peak at 4145 ft elevation. The trek down from Avery Peak was more of the same painstaking steps. This will take a while!  Once again the views were awesome! We had views all day long! Spectacular views! But time was ticking and we had to move on. One more big climb to go.  On to South Horn 3831ft elevation. Again it took forever. By the time we got there we had to pull out our headlamps for the descent. We knew we would be doing some night hiking tonight. Papa Big Swig was scheduled to pick us up at 8:30pm. It¢s pretty dark by 7:30 now.  Looking at Guthook¢s we realized we still had 6 miles to go. I rescheduled Papa Big Swig for 10pm. Ugh!  We began our descent. The sun was setting quickly and off to the right were brilliant red, orange, and pink colors. It was like fire in the sky. So beautiful.  This was a great night for night hiking. No rain! The temperature was perfect, just a little crisp. I like that. It was pitch black with no moon and moths kept flying to our headlamps. At one point we saw a light coming towards us. It was another hiker. He had already made camp, but came out to check on us when he heard us. I¢m sure he wondered why two girls were out at 10pm. Yes it was 10pm! Papa Big Swig has to be rescheduled again.  Hugs and I switched off leading. I noticed how certain white boulders sort of glowed in the night. It was nice. They were like beacons on the trail. I was coming down off of one of them when I slipped again. By the grace of God I fell backwards onto a small tree that had just enough give. I didn¢t get hurt. We still had a couple of small ups and downs, then one giant down left to go. One of the small downs lead to another bog. The ATC has split logs and makes a boardwalk of sorts out of them.  Hugs had the lead here and stepping from one log to another she slipped. It was a hard fall. She was hurt. She said she just wanted to cry, but she didn¢t. We carried on. It¢s what we do.  As the night hours crept into early morning hours we were exhausted. We had taken one 20 minutes lunch break all day.  As we came upon a stream I got my second wind. Hugs was still recovering from her last fall. I told her ¢We are strong¢ and ¢We are brave¢... because I honestly think we are! We will do this!  At 1:30am we made it to the parking area where Papa Big Swig (a bit worried) waited for us. It had taken over 15 hours to hike only 16.6 miles! Hugs said ¢not all 16 miles are created equal¢! I laughed knowing she¢s right. We certainly underestimated this 16!  Until Next Time Blue Raccoon (2018) Where¢s your faith?