Date: 2013-06-17
From: West Branch of the Pleasant River 

To: Long Pond Stream Lean-to
Miles today: 15.2

DAY 8MILES ON AT FOR DAY= 15.2MILES TOTAL FOR DAY= 15.2Well I woke up and thankfully there was no rain! It made packing up everything A LOT more enjoyable. Had coffee and my trifecta of oatmeal (1 packet cinnamon spice, 1 packet apple cinnamon, 1 packet maple brown sugar) and we were off around 8am. A later start than we wanted for such a long day but oh well.Our hike started out pretty much the same as the previous day... right off the bat with a steep uphill. We headed up to Chairback Mt. and as we rounded the corner to the steepest part I almost literally fell back being startled by a woman and her dog sitting there. I guess I had gotten so used to looking at my feet and not seeing people too much. Scared the crap out of me! She was sitting there because she wasn't about to go up the rock scramble we were about to go up. It was our first climb since Katahdin that was like that. Up we went.The day continued again just like the previous, but instead of 4 peaks we had 5 peaks to go over. Chairback Mt., Columbus Mt., Third Mt., Fourth Mt., and finally Barren Mt. Most werent too bad of a climb but Chairback and Fourth had some very steep rock scrambles. Somewhere between Third and Fourth we were walking along the trail and a Partridge decided to just come bustling out of the woods and across the trail right in front of us. The thing sounded like a wintering dog. She followed along side us on the trail for a while like that and hobbling around like she was injured. She was faking being injured to get us away from her nest I suppose. I swear I had seen more animals than humans on the trail, and that was the truth! I had seen only a handful of people, especially in the last few days. And the last few nights we had been at camp by ourselves, which we would be again tonight.We continued up to Fourth Mt. Where our plan was to stop and eat... and then it decided to downpour. That really slowed us down. Thankfully it only lasted about 15-20 minutes. Last peak of the day was Barren Mt. and it was beautiful!! I think it had the prettiest views I had seen yet. The rain had cleared and the skies were so blue! It has a cool tower on top of it as well. After Barren Mt. It was down to the Barren Ledges and we still had another 4 miles to go to reach our Lean-to for the night. It was already 5:30pm. We had really miscalculated our day, especially with it having the most elevation changes of any of the other days and being 15 miles. We had barely taken more than 45 min to break total too!We ended up getting to our Lean-to right before 8pm. A 12 hour hiking day was toughhhhh. After a hot, sweaty day I officially was becoming a smelly hiker. My shoes had been wet since Day 1 and smelled like wet dog and then there was me. We wont go there. We filtered water (which note to hikers... Long Pond Stream definitely has the clearest, tastiest water I've had so far!), cooked, and settled in. We made Shepards pie as our last meal for our last night on the trail together (Dad and I), and now that we had shelter we made my Dad's Father's Day chocolate cheesecake We assessed the damage from the day. My Dad's toenail that he stubbed back on Day 1 and consistently kept stubbing wasn't looking so good. For me this was the driest my shoes and socks had been so far on the trip and I think I was better off with wet shoes and socks. Since my socks were stiff and scratchy from being soaked in mud and water, they gave me abrasions in my arches. My toenails from my second, third, and fourth toes were all digging into each other so I had to wrap each in band aids. I also had two big sores on the back of each of my Achilles I think due to them being swollen which I didn't realize was so bad until now. Especially my left one was very swollen. No good.Regardless of injuries we were both wiped. Both of us knocked out around 10pm. Another big 15 mile day tomorrow, and we would be in Monson, ME and out of the wilderness!!!