Date: 2008-07-10
From: Piazza Rock Lean-To

To: Spaulding Mountain Lean-To
Miles today: 16.9

It seems that my home state is starting to lighten up a tad bit. Maine has been an unpredictable state. The terrain is hard most of the time, although there can be nice stretches from time to time. But there are still mountains to climb.This morning was fairly typical. I should note that my pack weighed roughly 4.4 tons leaving town yesterday. I had some hope that eating five packets of oatmeal would do something. Anything. I was looking forward to traversing the ridge Saddleback Mountain sits on. When I broke tree line I discovered that the wind was gusting 50MPH and that I was, for the moment, walking in a cloud. It was an absolutely amazing experience. There's a certain thrill that comes with the unknown, not knowing what to expect when that strong wind gust comes at you.The ridge started to clear up, and I had fantastic views of the surrounding mountains and valley, it really did look like a valley taken straight from a picture of some kind.The descent off the ridge was a painful one. It seems that Cookie has developed a system to determine how severe my falls are based on how loud I scream, what I scream, and the tone I scream it in. In this case I screamed "shit!" at the top of my lungs in a tone that sounded sarcastic, so Cookie marched on assuming I was OK, which I was. I was simply given a small scratch on my leg due to rubbing against a wet rock at a high-speed.Lunch today was at a shelter where there was a history of the area, provided by the section maintainer. It was fascinating to read the reasoning behind the MATC not building any bridges over any streams.After lunch in the shelter Cookie, Dynamite, who was at the shelter when we rolled in, and I marched towards Orbetin stream, which was a tricky ford. Cookie decided to plow straight through it, while Dynamite and myself decided to go in crocs. During the ford I had a close call, and I'm fairly confident Cookie took a photo of the close call.I spent the rest of the day trail 100-200 yards behind Dynamite and Cookie as the continued their march up Lone Mountain, which was a pointless lump the MATC deemed worthy of traversal by America's footpath. The climb was long and tedious, and I'm fairly confident Dynamite was ready to take a nap when I rolled through the summit, which apparently is labeled. Somewhere. Somehow.The highlight for tomorrow will be the traversal of the Crocker Range, which will include the third tallest mountain in Maine. We will have the option to the climb a side trail to the top of the second tallest mountain(Sugarloaf), but I doubt we will. The trail does not actually traverse the Sugarloaf summit because the summit is privately owned, and the MATC(I think), has a goal of having the trail traverse through land that is completely owned by some government entity. Please correct me if I'm wrong.Tonight I am tenting at the shelter, but there's a SOBO here who took a zero at the shelter. I asked him if it was because he wanted to enjoy the simplicity of nature, thinking this might lead to an interesting conversation. He said he took a zero because he felt like it.And that's the way it was.Kirby