Date: 2008-09-06
From: Near Holt's Ledge, NH

To: Tenting near Eastman Ledges, NH
Miles today: 11.9

I woke up at 5:45am, but I didn't roll over and stick my stove outside till 6am. I looked at the animated radar while my coffee was brewing. It showed me that I was getting rained on. :-) I ate a couple muffins I had packed out and enjoyed 24.2 ounces of fabulous Stumpknocker's Blend Coffee. I had a little time on my hands, so I figured out that so far this year, I've averaged just under 7 miles a day on the AT. I have to average just less than 11 miles per day to finish the AT by October 15th, so I'm really going to have to start picking it up a little somehow. :-) I was feeling lazy....and it was raining, so I started reading the book I found in a shelter on the Long Trail. It's Tom Sawyer written by Mark Twain and I have never read it before. I have to make one exception on "The Leaf Catching Game". When I disqualified all the people whose trailnames start with an "L", I forgot about Lipstick. She hasn't caused me any grief like Liteshoe...oops! I didn't mean to say Liteshoe's name. Darn, I just did it again! :-) I stopped raining, so I packed up and started walking north on the Appalachian Trail at 10:45am. Guess what, it started raining again as soon as I started walking. I was closer to Holts Ledges. I got to the overlook in just 5 minutes. I took a picture in the rain of the view from the ledges. I passed by the side trail to Trapper John Shelter without stopping. I got to Lyme-Dorchester Rd and walked up to the house that lets you use their water spigot and filled up a bottle. Free WaterIt stopped raining after about an hour. Mrs Gorp asked me to check out a granite AT marker in this area. I found it just 2/10th of a mile before I got to the northern crossing of Lyme-Dorchester Rd. On one side of the granite marker it says 1,730 miles and on the other side it says 412 miles. The first one is the mileage to Springer and the second is the mileage to Katahdin. They are both wrong by over 10 miles. That just shows to go ya that you can't even count on it being right EVEN if it is written in Granite! :-) AT Granite Marker put here by some Dartmouth AlumnusI stopped about half a mile up the 2,000+ foot climb and sat on a rock for half an hour and ate lunch. I continued the climb after I was done eating and got to Lambert Ridge. I walked along that for over a mile before finishing the climb up to the summit of Smarts Mtn. Lambert RidgeIt rained on me for about 30 minutes on that climb. I took a picture of the firetower, then climbed it to see no view. I'm going to send in a picture of no view from the firetower. I hope Mrs Gorp posts it. :-) Smarts Mountain Firetower View from Smarts Mountain FiretowerI walked over to the fire warden¢s cabin and there was a hiker there. He said hello Stumpknocker. It was Dirt...a friend of a really good friend by the name of Greyfox. I went inside and laid down on the floor an we talked while I ate a snack. It started raining again. I waited about 20 minutes, then I put my wet pack on my wet body and I started walking in the wet rain. Sure am glad my ol' buddy Chief is back home in his recliner. He'd be dialing up Carlene to come pick his sorry wet self up...because it's "horrible" out here. ;-) I ran into a sobo by the name of Fats, then a little while later I ran into Zen...another sobo. It was raining hard so I didn't talk to him long. I ran into two more sobos...Waterloo and Lieutenant Dan. I got to South Jacob's Brook and filled up three water bottles for the night and drank a liter, then I started heading on up Mt Cube. I only went about half a mile before I found a good flat spot well off the Trail. I am just north of Eastman Ledges. It had been raining for about an hour and was raining pretty hard when I set up my tent. It felt good to crawl in and get dried off. I ate a cold dinner and called it a day. Another great day on the Appalachian Trail. :-)