Date: 2003-10-15
From: Speck Pond Shelter

To: Home
Miles today: 4.0
Weather: clear sky

Today is my 35th birthday. I was up last night at 2:00am to pee and it was windy and rainy. The sun took a good extra hour to penetrate the heavy clouds and dark of the shelter this morning. I was awake at 6:45 to use the privy and then went right back into my sleeping bag. Every time I had woke during the night I laid awake trying to decide whether I should hike the steep Mahoosuc Arm and treacherous-when-dry Mahoosuc Notch in this wet and windy weather or retreat down the Speck Pond Trail and Success Pond Road into Berlin New Hampshire and go home a day early and ten miles short of the State Line. I eventually decided, because I¢ve already hiked this section of Maine twice before and because of the danger and certain isolation I would face, to go to Berlin which could¢ve ended up being a 15 mile walk anyways because Success Pond Road is just a private logging road with sparse traffic on a nice day. I cooked breakfast from the warmth of my sleeping bag and ate slowly. I even enjoyed a rare cup of tea. The college group was slow to wake. When the man sleeping next to me woke (he is also celebrating his birthday today) I told him if he and his group wanted to avoid retracing yesterday¢s hike over the exposed shoulder of Old Speck they could also take the Success Pond Road to Route 26 near Grafton Notch State Park, which is where their cars are. Yesterday some of their group had asked me if there were any alternate routes and I¢d mentioned the road but none of us had any understanding of what kind of weather was coming. Except for the temperatures in the mid 40¢s everything about today was moderately extreme. The rain was steady and very hard at times; the wind was strong, approximately 40 miles per hour with gust into the 70¢s. The small pond behind the shelter had white caps. We watched a tree in front of the shelter slowly fall over in the gusts and those gusts were enough the shake the sturdy framed shelter. The info about the road seemed to interest them, as some were not prepared for the rain. I think the group was going to divide evenly and meet in the middle. The group heading for the car has a shorter hike and should be able to pick up the other group on Success Pond Road. I hope it all works out. They are a great group of people but despite having some experienced hikers in the group they never checked the weather and some came out unprepared. I set off around 9:00am just as the over the mountain group was gearing up to hike. The route down to Success Pond Road was certainly beyond any normal definition of wet but except for one mistake I made was quite safe. The trail was almost always in water, sometimes shin deep; I quickly gave up on rock hopping and treated the hike as one long ford. I passed one nasty tangle of blown down trees, which must have come down last night. It was a swath of downed trees about 100 feet long but only a couple trees wide. Luckily it crossed the trail at a right angle and wasn¢t hard to crawl over. I couldn¢t see any evidence of other hikers climbing over so I figured it had come down last night. I watched the trees around me carefully for sudden, violent, hike-ending movement until I was off the ridge and below the worst wind. It wasn¢t long before I was below the ridge and sheltered from the wind then the hike was just very wet. The water would run down the trail for a while until it reached a working water bar and then I¢d have a few steps of dry trail before a new river covered the trail. In some places the water was springing up right on the trail, from some subterranean aquifer that only fills during torrential downpours. After traversing the hill side for a mile or more the trail reached a gully with a gushing, surging river of white and brown water. According to my map the trail would turn downhill and in a short while cross this normally small brook. Today it was so high I wasn¢t sure if I could get across. In places it dropped steeply and the current was quick and strong- from time to time I could hear rocks being tossed about in the water. Anticipating a crossing at anytime I was always looking for a downed tree to bridge the rapids or a brief break in the current where, although much wider and deeper, I might be able to ford. But the trail continued downhill for much longer than I anticipated. I began to think the map was wrong; that the trail had been relocated to avoid a crossing. Eventually I relaxed and figured I wasn¢t going to have to ford. I decided I wanted a picture of this bloated brook and all its fury. I found a point where the water was especially wide and impressive and stepped towards the bank and that is when I spotted the blazes on trees in the middle of the water. It looked like a crossing. The brook had split into five separate channels and I felt I could cross safely since each channel was only a fraction of the total torrent. The first channel was easy to cross it was only shin deep. The second was only five feet across but waist deep and I had trouble climbing up the steep banking on the far side. I had to reach with my arms and dig into the mud with my hand to pull myself up. Once on this island in the stream I noticed the blazes turned down stream and followed the long thin island. I followed the blazes. In about a hundred feet I was horrified to see the trail crossing back to the bank I¢d started on. Shit! What a waste. I looked over this crossing and it was not worse than the last one. I waded back in, waste deep, and picked the trail up again. Within a minute I was on Success Pond Road. I was concerned about the group coming down the trail behind me making the same stupid mistake so I bushwhacked back to the first ford and with a stick made an arrow and simple note in the mud. I hope it will send them in the right direction. Wet and a bit shaky I was nevertheless relieved to be on the gravel-logging road. The rain had actual stopped and I could see blue skies to the west. I walked for about an hour and at about the point I expected to cross the Stateline into New Hampshire a truck pulled onto the road from a side road and I stuck out my thumb. They pulled over and actually said I could ride in the crew cab. I was muddy and wet and would¢ve been happy to ride in the back of the truck. After being in the truck with them a while I was glad to have the seat. They were a couple of local carpenters who, because of the rain, weren¢t working today. But to avoid going home they were cruising the remote logging roads of Berlin with a six-pack of beer. The driver had a tendency to exceed the national speed limit. That¢s the interstate speed limit. They calmed down a bit once we got back on paved roads and I got a ride all the way to Gorham, plus a couple beers too. I found it ironic that I¢d bailed out of the woods to avoid dangerous weather but to get back to town I had to survive a couple of joyriding carpenters. In Gorham I stopped by the Post Office and had my mail drop returned to my home address. I then grabbed a coffee at Dunkin Donuts and started walking to route 16 where I hitched a ride to the Pinkham Notch Visitors Center. At Pinkham I called my girlfriend, she was excited to hear from me a day early and was happy to come pick me up. I showered, grabbed a snack and sat down in the pack up room to write in my journal. The calmer weather I saw from the road in Berlin was only a brief interlude and the heavy rains and winds returned. The worst of the storm hit parts of Maine east of the mountains.