Date: 2017-06-10
From: Crawford Pond

To: Carl Newhall lean to
Miles today: 14.6
Weather: clear sky

Today we got to meet Smeagol and Gollum.Or at least we got to meet the head of the Maine Appalachian Trail Club and a coterie of volunteers as they were hauling in, by hand, the components of the new wooden privy for the Logan Brook lean to.The first sign of this came as I slowly ground my way up the ridge towards the lean to and saw someone ahead of me carrying nothing but four lengths of sawn timber.A couple of minutes later I met the rest of the MATC work crew as they were having lunch, at which point I was greeted with: "Rolling Thunder, would you like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?"D6, the crew leader and also the head of the MATC, had been at Scout's book talk in Portland a couple of weeks earlier. He also, I can now attest, makes a mean PB&J.And a mean PB&J deserves some reward, which is why I ended up hiking the rest of the way to the lean to* with a six-foot beam of timber over one shoulder to save them a load.(* Full disclosure: it was 0.4 of a mile)All this was a pleasant interlude to what was the most challenging climb since entering the 100 mile wilderness, although many of the nobo entries in the lean to registers suggested this was just the tiniest taste of what the next 200+ miles was going to be like.Climbing was the order of the day, beginning with Little Boardman Mountain from our sketchy campsites near Crawford Pond, but it was only 700ft or so from the road to the summit.That made it a mere tiddler in the scheme of the AT and the next few miles to the next lean to were generally cruisey on mostly flat ground. I crossed paths with yet another nobo thru-hiker, Rabbit, whose lack of interest in talking compared to clocking up miles conformed with the usual reputation for those way at the front of the herd and contrasted with the demeanour of most of those we'd encountered so far.The only impediment of the morning was the crossing of the East Branch of the Pleasant River. The river might be pleasant but the crossing wasn't, being in that in-between zone where getting across with dry feet via a dodgy log crossing was just about feasible but at the risk of a dunking and possibly worse than accepting the pessimistic option and simply wading through the thigh-deep water between slippery boulders. Having two hiking poles made all the difference to its feasibility for me.Once the trail began to climb, it was clear that Gollum had been in charge because it headed straight up with a directness that left me gasping and in low-gear truck mode. But after punishing the "nasty hikerses" sufficiently, he apparently handed over control to Smeagol, at which point the trail began traversing access the slope at a far more pleasant grade.This was where I met the trail crew, enjoyed the PB&J sandwich, carried the beam for the new privy and in time reached the lean to, where Scout was enjoying his lunch.We were then halfway up White Cap, the biggest climb since Katahdin and a particular landmark for nobos because the grandstand view it provided for the final 73 miles of their hike.Eskimo and his mother, Coach, joined us at the lean to. She was hoping to get to Vermont before her 30 day holiday was up and from the pace at which they hauled up White Cap after lunch was any indication, that ambitious goal might just be feasible. Eskimo had already hiked the first 170 miles of the AT northbound to get in shape before tackling these unforgiving Maine hills.Scout, of course, forged ahead and I slowly ground up at the back of the pack, which gave me plenty of time to marvel at the enormous amount of work that the MATC must have put into creating hundreds of metres of stone staircases that headed straight up the mountain.At least this brought us to the tree line with brutal efficiency, where the views combined with clear blue skies to be everything they'd been touted to be and it was gratifying for Katahdin to finally begin to seem more distant than in our previous few sightings. The steady breeze even keep the black flies and mosquitoes at bay, in stark contrast to the previous few days.From there, the trail followed the roller coaster ridge over a series of mountains, mostly on Smeagol trails but with a Gollum section thrown in every now and then to keep us on our toes.The miles cruised by, thanks in large part to Scout's reminiscences about his boy scout summer camp days on Catalina island. This achieved two things: (a) allowing me to keep up by occasionally asking one- or two-word questions that would elicit long tales from him about youthful hijinks and also (b) proving incontravertibly his belief in the essential goodness of people.We arrived at Sydney Tapper campsite to find sobos such as Bird and Toad, whose gentler pace meant we hadn't met them before. Eskimo and Coach opted to stop there but we camelled up on water from a spring just down the hill and took it another 1.8 miles to the next lean to.I'm not sure exactly how this works but the end of the day is when we desperately seek Smeagol trail but seem disproportionately likely to get Gollum trail instead.The first few hundred metres were bucolic, as if this was former farmland rather than intermittently-logged forests. Then we could almost see Gollum push Smeagol to one side and say: "I got this."The trail went straight up the side of a hill in a manner that had Scout asking: "Am I even on trail here?"The fact that there was a white blaze next to his hip showed both that the AT does indeed go this way and also hinted at how steep this was. But at least the climbs were short as we headed over every possible knoll, at the final one of which there letter K was painted onto the rock with an arrow, giving nobos their momentous first sight of the trail's northern terminus.The trail down to the shelter took a disproportionately long time and we arrived to find the familiar faces of Sheriff, Spiffy, Lindsay, Nine and Ryan already in situ. Before we'd managed to finish cooking, we'd been overtaken by darkness -- this was a long and draining day in which we'd only managed fewer than 15 miles.AT fact of the day: The view to Katahdin might be thrilling to nobos but the destiny view for southbounders was a little more sobering: array upon serried array of mountains which the trail -- and, thus, us -- is due to tackle.