Date: 2004-10-08
From: Horns Pond Lean-to

To: Campsite near East Flagstaff Road
Miles today: 11.6

We did better with mileage today¢any day we stay above ten I feel is a good day, and today we were closer to twelve. Still not up to County¢s high standards. I think he thought we could get a lot farther. Our pace is picking up, too. The terrain is a lot easier. Our major problem of the day was water. That, and food. Our ramen-Little Debbie diet is just not cutting it. No matter how many fudge brownies and fudge rounds I eat I¢m still hungry. We were really skeptical of the water from the pond. Last night we boiled it, so it seemed doable, but we decided to wait and get water from one of the springs on the mountain rather than drink more moose-poop pond water. But the springs on the mountain were all dry. There was supposedly one 3/10ths of a mile up the mountain from the shelter, but it was dry, and two others just over the summit, both of which were dry. The views from the top were exquisite, though. It was another perfectly beautiful day. We met a guy out for a hundred miles on top of Bigelow and talked gear. He had worked really hard to go ultralight and was doing really well for a sectioner. Almost as light as County, which is really saying something. We sat in the sun on top of the mountain until I got cold, and I thought about how much I take this for granted when I¢m in it. My mom loves backpacking and loves mountains¢she¢s really the one who got me into it¢and I thought about how she would kill to be here, above 4000 feet, looking at Flagstaff Lake on the one side and the gorgeous Maine fall leaves spread out on the other, the alpine rock all around us. The feeling on top of these mountains is otherworldly, unlike anything else, and I get to experience it every day, without even noticing it. Sometimes I don¢t even stop to let myself really experience it. Today I did, though. I need to culture myself to enjoy every single one of these moments, to not take any of them for granted. Just like I need to do in normal life, I suppose. The trail is just teaching me, again, how to live. We eventually took off, still without water¢a couple of weekending couples were poking around at the campsite between the two peaks, also looking for water. County has hiked the Bigelows before, with one of his peak-bagging buddies, and it was a very cool feeling talking to and then walking past these people. They were up from the road, going to climb the two mountains and head back down, and here we were, climbing the two mountains and just keeping on going. How wonderful.It became increasingly less wonderful, though, as we felt the effects of dehydration, only one in two days on the trail when I¢ve really felt the lack of water. The other was in Virginia. We lost 1900 feet in two miles, and it was a fairly hairy downhill. County went ahead, looking for water, and I toiled along, increasingly despondent as the effects of water shortage became more and more apparent. We knew for sure that there would be water at the next campsite, in a notch, but the last half-mile into it was a real doozy, tumbled boulders everywhere, like a miniature Mahoosuc. I even had to crawl through caves in some spots, and slide down ten-foot stretches. I¢m not sure how bad it really was and how bad it was in my head¢another thing the trail really makes you realize is how much mental state affects absolutely everything you do. And how much physical realities affect mental states. If I was well-fed and well-hydrated going through that stretch, I might have been perfectly content and had fun with the bouldering, but as it was, it seemed like torture. When I got to the campsite at Safford Notch, County came bounding up from the side trail¢he had already done the 3/10ths there and back, and had drank two liters at the stream there. I drank two liters sitting there and ate some Little Debbies, and immediately everything was right with the world again. We had both been in really foul moods while dehydrated and it was crazy how immediate and how apparent our mood shift was, all thanks to water. We still had five miles and Little Bigelow to climb before we hit the next lean-to. We ran into Underhill southbound on the way. He and Knuckles were planning to stay at East Flagstaff Road, just past the Little Bigelow Lean-to, and we agreed to stop in to see them and drink a coke, whether or not we stayed the night there. County wanted to press on, thinking we could do more today, but I thought stopping there with them sounded pretty good. Especially as the climb up Little Bigelow seemed to take forever. It wasn¢t difficult, just a little bit tedious. I¢m not sure if it was because of the lack of water or the greater mileage than what we had been typically doing or just sheer laziness. Probably the lack of landmarks¢it was more than three miles from the campsite to the top of the mountain, without much gain in elevation, and hiking without landmarks always makes the miles feel far longer. But the mountain was finally summitted, and descended¢we passed the shelter by and then had 1.4 to go to the road. We found Knuckles and Underhill there, they gave us cokes, and I talked County into staying the night.It was especially easy to do when Knuckles and Underhill said we could have anything we wanted from their hiker box of sorts, the grab-bag assortment of leftover food from her hike and stuff he was never going to eat. We had about three dinners: Liptons, mashed potatoes, and the rest of our split peas, cooked for about an hour over the fire. That did make them soft, and I was glad for the protein, but it still wasn¢t the most scintillating trail meal. It was nice, though, hanging out with Knuckles and Underhill, in the starlight, by the small fire we built. And we¢re sleeping out tonight. The weather¢s great, it¢s not too cold, and we won¢t have many other times to do it. So might as well sleep beneath the open sky.