Date: 2013-09-13
From: Gentian Pond Shelter

To: Carlo Col Shelter
Miles today: 5.2
Weather: broken clouds

Today was one of the worst days on the trail, which sucks because I finally made it to Maine. The morning in the shelter was fun because no one wanted to leave, but slowly we all packed up and headed out into the rain. The rain switched back and forth between a light drizzle and a steady rain. At first it wasn't too bad, but then the trail was more like a river and at times a waterfall, and there were smooth rocks to climb up and boulders to climb. When I woke up, my shoulder was feeling pretty good, but within about an hour on the trail, it was hurting pretty bad. As the trail got more treacherous and the rain continued, we started to get colder and colder because we weren't moving very fast. I was hiking with Tiny Tim, Bootsy, Sun Peach, and Trillium, and to try and raise our spirits, we played contact, a word game, for a while. We were moving at about 1 mile per hour and feeling like we were never going to get to Maine. Finally, up ahead I saw a sign and knew it was for the Maine border. Despite walking from Georgia to Maine, we had to force ourselves to take pictures in the rain because we knew we would want them later, but really we just wanted to get dry. I yelled some choice words to New Hampshire as I crossed into Maine, but Maine had some surprises for us as well. Just after the border, the trail dropped about 50 feet straight down a rock ledge. Sun Peach was ahead of us, but it took Bootsy, Tiny Tim, Trillium, and I about 30 minutes to get down the rocks. We had to take our packs off and since I could barely use my arm, it made it especially difficult to get down. We all finally made it down, but we had been stopped for so long that hypothermia was now a concern. We started hiking as fast as we could to warm up and almost immediately ran into the shelter sign. The shelter was .3 miles down a side trail that we thought was a stream, but we finally made it to the shelter. Most of the people from last nights shelter were already in their sleeping bags trying to warm up. We decided to call it a day after only 5.2 miles and I was so happy we did. It took a couple hours to dry off and warm up, but the shelter ended up being really fun after all 18 hikers had piled in, despite the lowest group morale I've ever seen on the trail. The questions, "what the hell are we doing" and "why are we doing this" came up a lot. At this point though the answer was almost always laughter followed by something about this being stupid but needing to finish after coming so far. I also witnessed one person quit, when he came into the shelter and said, "I've hiked from Georgia to Maine and now I'm going home." It's amazing how much cold rain makes everything suck! After talking to a bunch of people who have already done Mahoosuc Notch, I've decided that there is no way I will be able to do that section of the trail because it requires a lot of use of both arms. After the rocky sections yesterday and how much they hurt and how tough for me they were, I've decided to skip Mahoosuc Notch and take a few days off to let my shoulder heal a little. I need to find out where all the rock climbing ends so that I can jump back on the trail there. It sucks to skip miles at this point after not skipping any, but I want to be able to climb Katahdin and if I keep messing up my shoulder, I won't be able to. Ultimately this trip has nothing to do with the miles, it's about the journey and my journey had been amazing so far. At least I can say I hiked from Georgia to Maine and I'll still be hiking well over 2,000 miles. I might just end up missing about 40 miles, which I guess isn't a big deal in the big picture but knowing myself, I'm definitely going to try and come back and do them.