Date: 2004-09-12
From: ME 15 near Monson, ME

To: Day 134: Long Pond Stream, ME
Miles today: 14.3
Weather: clear sky

On AT Day 134 Hot Chocolate and I got up at 4:00 a.m. and ate breakfast in our trailer at the Hidden Springs Campground in Millinocket, ME and then drove to the long U-shaped path to the AT trailhead on ME 15 near Monson, ME in time for me to start hiking the famed ¢100-mile wilderness¢ by 7:30 a.m. As the stern warning sign at the trailhead explains, this segment gets its name because of the absence of paved roads and easy to reach re-supply opportunities for the next 97.2 miles when the AT crosses the Abol bridge over the West Branch of the Penobscot River and its nearby store at the private campground.The skies in the morning were mostly clear and the temperatures were in the low 40¢s, but by afternoon it had warmed to near 60-degrees in continuing clear conditions. What struck me most at the start of the hike was the abundance of near-by ponds ¢ some small, but many quite large and all quite lovely. In each case I looked hard, but was disappointed to not see any Moose grazing along the shorelines.At the 6.6-mile point in today¢s trek I met a couple of elderly day-hikers as they and I took in the spectacle of the turbulent 60-foot high Little Wilson Falls ¢ simply gorgeous. A quarter-mile later I paid the price for the beauty of the rain-swollen volume of this falls by having to carefully wade across the rapidly flowing Little Wilson Stream ¢ cold and knee deep, a good warm-up for what was to come! I say this, because all day (actually for the past three days during my between segment break) I was worried about how hard it was going to be to ford the Big Wilson Stream. Well, about three miles further down the trail I got to find out...Fortunately, because of the lessons I learned in fording the West Branch of the Piscataquis River during the last segment, I did some exploratory path finding excursions in the cold, rapidly flowing and sometimes crotch-deep Big Wilson River before I very, very carefully crossed with my pack hip-belt and sternum strap unbuckled and my hiking poles locked into my hands as stabilizers and depth finders. Boy, I wish I was taller! The whole process took more than a half-hour ¢ good thing the sun was out to warm things up, otherwise...About 4-miles further down the path, the increased confidence I gained in fording the Little and Big Wilson Streams came in handy as I then needed to wade across the smaller, but much faster moving knee-deep Vaughan Stream at the top of a 20-foot waterfall, and then a half-mile later the much bigger and deeper (mid-thighs) Long Pond Stream. One unplanned drawback of all of these exciting stream fordings was that I fell way behind schedule and I actually had to rush to cross the Long Pond Stream at 6:40 p.m. before darkness fell. I did not want to put off this final fording since I knew that if I reached the other side in time to set up camp atop a small bluff (after a total day¢s hike of 14.3-miles) I wouldn¢t have to get wet the first thing in the morning.As expected, I completed virtually this entire 14.3-mile hike without seeing anyone, but as I climbed a 500-foot high slate ridge between the Little and Big Wilson Streams, I met three mid-50¢s section hikers who were backpacking the 100-mile wilderness as a celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of their AT through hike. Naturally, I joked that I hoped I would be able to replicate their impressive feat as a 90-year old.