Date: 2009-07-20
From: Monson, ME Rt. 15

To: Long Pond Stream
Miles today: 14.3
Weather: overcast clouds

Easy to wake up when you know the kind of breakfast you have ahead of you. We toned it down a little this morning and pop and I both had 6's. Reeve or Whetherman (his old trail name) stuffed down 3 and could not understand how we did it. Using wheatherman's car (great inventions) we did a few necessary errands before hitting the trail. We drove ten miles down the road to Greenville, ME and went to an outfitter there to get some more Aqua Mira (water treating chemical) and to replace two sections of our poles that were severely bent. We also shopped for some various lunch foods at the grocery and pop picked up a perscription for some serious pain killers at the drug store. We then left the car at Shaw's and got a ride to the trail by 10:30 am. Whetherman's tenth step on the trail was straight into two feet of mud (welcome back said the AT). The weather was again great so the day started off pretty well anyway. About two miles in we were crossing a rather large slanted sheet of rock when whetherman did a theatrical slip landed flat on his rear and then slid 20 feet down to the bottom of this rock. With only a little blood here cheerfully jumped back up and said "well that went well" and started trudging again. We took a few breaks along the way including a nice lunch in the middle of the trail but did not make the miles as fast as planned. We all forgot how hard it is to just come back out on the trail and do miles in Maine. Whetherman also has to carry the eight days of food that it requires to get through the wildnerness so as you can imagine he was a little tired. Incredibly enough Birdman had used his vast connections to actually make it possible for us to stay at a house our first night in the wildnerness. This is supposed to be the most remote spot on the whole AT and we know someone who lives 3/4 of a mile off the trail. So we had to get to a specific stream crossing and take a side trail to meet the friend at his car. Unfortunately the day was taking us a longer time than expected with a number of fords and some pretty rough trail. At around 6pm an hour before we were supposed to be finished, Birdman decided to push ahead and meet the friend and tell him the others would be late. I stayed with Whetherman and we slowly made our way along a tough section of trail. It got incredibly difficult when we lost the last hours of day light and were hiking via head lamp through deep mud. Fully exhausted whetherman was probably wondering what he had gotten himself into but kepted on trudging. The last hoorah to a long end to the day was a stream ford made much more difficult by the dark. Rocks under moving two foot deep water are hard to see at night. We did in fact make it across without falling in. The only casualty was a bottle that fell out of a pack and was quickly slept away. The side trail to a road was just on the other side of the stream and so we stumbled along that through foot deep mud and found the car around 9:45 pm. The friend was so nice to even allow us in his car and he took us back to his camp to feed us dinner and give us a bed. Trail magic arrives in many forms...couldn't have been more relieved to finish the day.ME birds: 3 New species: 1 Mourning Warbler ME list: 70 Trip list: 157