Date: 2010-09-16
From: Hanover, NH

To: Andover, ME
Miles today: 205.3
Weather: overcast clouds

Conquered New Hampshire, survived the White's and finally made it into Maine! Tried to get a strong start out of Hanover and was promptly derailed by another hiker's parents setting up trail magic 4 miles outside of town. We were already 5.5 miles out and turned around when we got word and hitched back to feast on bbq and beers. Ended up being a big hiker party and didn't make anymore forward progress for the day, or the next day for that matter. Woke up to a drizzly morning and hitched forward 1.5 miles to where we left off previously only to continue drinking beer under a tarp all day until a friend of another hiker came to pick us up and cook more food for us at the same spot we were the day before. So much for making good time in New Hampshire. Once we finally managed to get back into hiking mode, we set up a slack pack to get us to Glencliff on the southern edge of the White Mountains. Our first experience over treeline was Moosilauke, an impressive 4 mile 3500 ft climb to 4800ft. Although it is illegal to camp above treeline we were tipped off to an awesome stealth camping site just below the peak inside an old lodge foundation. Stayed up on top in 40+mph winds to watch the sunset and then sunrise in the morning, my first on the trail. It was so blustery the in the morning that we had to use both trekking poles on one side to stabilize ourselves to not get blown over. After an overnight stop in Lincoln we climbed up to Franconia Ridge, a 2.5 mile stretch of alpine ridge walking. Took us nearly the entire day to cover the ridge because it was so beautiful we felt the need to sit atop every peak and stare off into the mountains or nap in the sun. Scored another awesome stealth spot on Mt. Garfield (old weather station foundation) which seemed great until just before bedtime when the wind shifted and turned the gap in the rocks from a wind break into a wind tunnel. I had enough cold weather gear to be comfortable, but between the 4 of us we almost lost a sleeping bag, pant legs, long johns and a sleeping pad to the wind off the side of the mountain.After Franconia the next big goal was Mt. Washington, the highest peak in the Northeast and the home of the worlds worst weather including 231 mph record wind speed. Although not nearly that bad, we did experience some terrible weather for our summit. Steady 60 mph winds accompanied by 75 mph gusts and an 18 deg. wind chill made for an interesting climb and nearly impossible to stand still at the summit sign for a picture. Almost killed a tourist in flipflops when he tried to take my picture at the summit. Gorham, NH marked the end of the White's and also conveniently has two road accesses 20 miles apart so we stayed in town a total of 3 nights to dry out from the awful weather that moved in.Finally crossed into Maine a few days ago and were greeted by more rain and cold weather. After 3 days i was starting to think the Trail in Maine was nothing but a mud bog in the clouds. Our first day in the state 6 of the 8 hikers (myself included) at one shelter fell at least knee deep into various mud bogs, one girl up to her waist with both legs. Nobody reported finding the bottom. Next up was the most notorious mile of the Trail know as Mahoosuc Notch. Its conisdered the most difficult or fun mile of Trial depending how you look at it. Everyone had told us not to attempt it in the rain, but guess what, it was raining. We didn't want to zero in a shelter so we proceded to crawl over, under and through the wildest boulder field I have ever seen. It took us 2.5 hours to cover one mile of trail.Maine is definitally a wild but fun stretch of trail and I'm planning on enjoying it as much as I possibly can. Only 10% of the miles remain and I can feel the end is near but I really don't want this experience to be over.http://derek.ohlgren.com