Date: 2014-09-03
From: Trident Col Campsite

To: Carlo Col
Miles today: 10.1
Weather: broken clouds

In which my theme song for the day was "Slip sliding away."I woke up a little after midnight to a flash of light, rolling thunder and rain gently pinging on my rain fly which quickly crescendoed to a down pour. The thunder rolled around the mountains for a bit but thankfully stayed at a distance. At it's closest it was a mile or so away. I laid awake for a while listening to this symphony of sounds and eventually drifted back off to sleep.This morning my tent was soaking wet to pack and heavy to carry. It's been a while since I've had to pack up wet so I won't complain. I had a really nice walk up this morning. Everything was very slippery and muddy. Things quickly got messy on the ascent to Mt. Success. I thought I had already reached the peak and took a break for lunch. Come to find out I wasn't where I thought I was and there was more climbing. This is where it got messy.I now approached some boggs with wooden boards to walk across. They were either submerged in mud or water. The tree roots shiny, slippery and worse than ice. I did go sliding a little bit a few times. The best thing was the trail now went straight up the rocks which were a waterfall from last night's rain. Did I mention granite is slick when wet? It was a steep long climb up hanging on to tree trunks and roots, crawling on all four of my limbs, wedging my knees on the rocks for leverage and digging my poles into the earth to hoist myself up. It was exhausting and my body is revolting. By my first lunch I had only walked 5 miles. That's defeating.The next descent was likewise tough but not as bad as the climb. The trail was poorly marked and I only saw one blaze over the next few miles which had me questioning whether I was on the right trail, but there were no other trails!Around 1ish I saw the trail sign for the next shelter still 2 miles away. Not too bad I thought. I still could make it to the following shelter. WRONG! This is where things got really good.The first descent was steep rocky, wet rock and crevasses. Ugh. At this point I ran in to Walk About who said the fun was about to begin...and it did. Nubbins was hiking in front of him and we hollered hellos to each other. I met her on the Vermont line and here we are now on the Maine line! It's cool how things work out here.Now back to the crevasse. At this point I had to throw my poles down the mountain to free my hands which where hugging the trees for dear life. While hugging the tree I had to put one foot over the crevasse then swing my other feet over the boulders. Then there was a lot of butt scooting and more hanging from the trees and roots. This is how it went until the Maine line....a sign of things to come. It was only 1500 and only a half mile to go to the shelter.Things got ugly again. This descent was even steeper, very intimidating looking a vertical descent down the boulders. I threw my poles down again to the bottom of the climb. I was using my arms and feet to shimmy myself down and squeeze through the rocks. I am happy to report we all made it down the rocks without incident.We made it to camp around 1630. That took forever! I'm exhausted, full of pine needles that fell down my clothing as I was swinging from the trees and sore all over. It literally was raining pine needles throughout the day. My butt and legs are covered in dirt and I added a new cut and bruise to my collection on my right knee and some scratches to my left leg.It didn't get as far as I expected today. 10 miles in 8 hours. I'm beat and glad to be in camp with a great bunch of people. It's going to be a cold night. The wind is blowing, the clouds have cleared and it's been cool today. The water from the creek was ice cold too!