Date: 2008-08-02
From: Bemus Mountain Lean-to ME

To: Little Swift River Pond Campsite ME
Miles today: 12.9
Weather: light rain

Day 167 Saturday August 2 ¢ Little Swift River Pond Campsite ME - Miles Today: 12.9 Total Miles: 1951.4Just so you know, I'm not even going to attempt to get through this journal entry without a yawn because I've already been yawning. Last night in our tent about 7:00, we heard a hiker come in, pass our tent and head to the shelter. A few minutes later, we heard what we thought was the same hiker coming back past our tent, heading towards the AT mumbling and grumbling. We thought it was High Life but we didn't holler out to him, as we were not sure. Fifty yards later, when the hiker got up to the AT, we heard a loud scream of disgust, anger and frustration all coming out at once. Yikes, someone is NOT having a good day. We can certainly understand the emotions!This morning we had a great breakfast break on the Bemus Mountain range enjoying the nice open view with a beautiful blue sky. We thought, man, just what we need ¢ a clear, sunny, dry day. WRONG!! Although our second peak in the Bemus range at 6:45 a.m. showed a beautiful sky, we had a good hard rain shortly after lunch for about 20 minutes. More rain in the form of sprinkles arrived around 2:30 as we were entering camp. And then, once we got the tent set up, water filtered and us freshened up, we had another downpour. So, I guess that means we had 3 sets of rain today. And all of it would not have been so bad except it seems to be raining day and night and all of our stuff is wet. Our day stuff is wet - our backpacks, our raingear, our socks and our shoes. Our night stuff is wet - our tent. Our bags. Nothing ever has a chance to dry out. By the end of the day, Brakeman's feet look worse than prunes. We're still very afraid that if this wet weather continues, that foot rot might set in. We came across a plant on top of the Bemus Mountain range that looked like a blueberry plant. We cracked one of the berries open, hoping they were blueberries but we were a bit afraid to eat them based on our uncertainty of their identification. Other than that, today brought us a series of near misses. First we missed out on Trail Magic ¢ twice! At 2 different road intersections there were ice chests with Trail Magic but unfortunately all the soda, crackers, cookies and beer had been consumed before we got there. Bummer!The other thing we missed was seeing a moose. We were 1 minute too late. We were walking up the trail and noticed a hiker just stopped in the middle of the trail (Y A W N - see I told you I wouldn't get through this without yawning). The hiker was looking off to the side of the trail and said a moose was standing in the middle of the trail when he came around the corner. The moose moved off into the woods when he saw the hiker. And then when he heard us coming, he moved even further into the woods, where we couldn't see it. Major league bummer that we missed our moose. We have to see our moose before Katahdin arrives!High Life blew by us this morning with his headphones on jamming and his nose down just concentrating on booking down the trail unbelievably fast. When we got to ME Rte 17, he was standing along the roadside trying to get a hitch into Rangeley. He was trying to score a hitch before the post office closed at noon. He had a couple hour buffer, so I'm assuming he made it, however, these main roads in Maine do not have a lot of traffic and hitches are much harder to come by.We spent some time chatting with him before heading on up the trail. He said he got rained on 3 times yesterday and was very frustrated with the horrible trail conditions. Then to top off his miserable day, when he arrived at the Bemis Mountain Lean-to, a couple hikers had spread their stuff out all over everywhere making it difficult for anybody else to quickly come in and get set up. So with total disgust, he headed back to the top of Bemis Mountain range to camp on the rocks. It was his screams of anger and frustration we heard last night. The conditions are pushing all of us to our frustration point limit. He said he saw us walk by this morning as he was breaking camp, but we never saw his tent! I wonder if we had our eyes open?High Life confirmed for us that the berries we thought were blueberries, are in fact blueberries. Sweet! He remembers picking a gallon bag full and really enjoying them on his thru-hike last year. We're going to have to keep our eyes out these next few days for more wild blueberries. They would be a nice treat. It's amazing that we keep running into High Life. We first met him at the Galehead Hut in the Whites nearly 2 weeks ago, and we're still with him. You see, we¢re used to being passed by everyone, so this is not quite the norm for us. But he's hit the last 3 towns, which is slowing him down - the town before Andover for food, Andover for water tablets, and now Rangeley for another drop. And who knows if he really headed out of Rangeley this afternoon, given the bad weather. He may have just decided to stay in town. The terrain today was actually more soil than rocks and roots ¢ a nice change. However, because of the three times the amount of rain as usual - not two times as I inaccurately reported the other day - everything is very, very flooded. Most of the hikers are, I think, quite agitated with the trail conditions. We have yet to see a water bar or a water runoff ditch, which would help immensely in these conditions. Without them you get what we have now - huge, huge puddles right in the middle of the trail. There are not enough boardwalks to cover all the swamped areas. The boardwalks that are in place are not functional ¢ as we step on them and they sink to the point where the water is higher than our shoe and it just goes rushing over the top and right in it. Suffice it to say, the trail conditions are really quite horrible. When we got to our campsite, we met CyFi, a southbounder taking a break before pushing on further. He was most disgusted with the muddy conditions and figured since he was already so wet and muddy, he would continue on. He's a younger kid with cystic fibrosis. He said that he hikes real slowly - only about 1mph. As a result of his disease, he carries a ton of food to keep his calories up and stops basically at every town to resupply. He was sitting on a little tree stump eating graham crackers and peanut butter when we came by. He has a journal on TrailJournals.com. We'll have to check out it out when we get home. There¢s a pond at this campsite, which supposedly is good for moose sightings. Not sure if we believe that as we don't see any footprints or scat but when we head out early tomorrow, we'll take a quick glance around and see if we can't find ourselves our moose. We're a bit concerned about tomorrow's agenda. It's 15.5 miles and although the terrain looks pretty good for the first part of the day, we know that our speed will be hampered due to the trail conditions and the many ascents and descents during the last 9 miles. It appears that we have a mighty tough day ahead of us. We know that we're not making good time on these trails due to the poor conditions. In comparing our hiking times to Kathy and Craig, a 2006 mid-aged thru-hiking couple (trailnames Upload and Stitches), in the Whites when the trail conditions were better, we were able to match their hiking speed. In these conditions, we are now hiking 1-2 hours slower each day. That's how much the water flooded trails, the mud bogs, the wet weather, the fords and the washed out trails are slowing us down.Well, I think that's it for today. We're really hoping that these wet conditions and muddy trails improve but all the southbounders are telling us that it's pretty muddy to the north. However, CyFi gave us a glimmer of hope this afternoon when he said that today's conditions might be worse than anything he has seen. But regardless, we would really love some dry weather. We only have 17 more days and we would really like to have some more enjoyable weather. It¢s 5:30 and guess what it just started to do? No, not rain, yet. Just thunder for now. I guess we'll get ready for shower #4 for today. We prepared for more rain by rain proofing the gap between our rainfly and the ground with pieces of foam that we found lying around camp. Goodnight from soggy, muddy Maine.