Date: 2006-08-03
From: Speck Pond Campsite

To: Full Goose Shelter
Miles today: 5.1
Weather: light rain

Today is Mahoosuc Notch day. Marta and I have heard that it takes a good two hours or more to hike one mile and so we leave early allowing ourselves plenty of time to make the 5.1 miles to the next shelter. Of course it is raining! Huff, the caretaker, gave us some good advice about the Mahoosuc Arm and Notch, so Marta and I set out. Aside from being poorly blazed and raining, the arm was not too bad. It wasn't as scary as nobos had told me it might be. The trail was a river and parts were steep, but there was vegetation to hold on to for support. We meet to nobos, Conductor and Eagle Eye, and they tell us we are not far from the notch, that it is a good upper body work out, and that it is well blazed. When we actually get to where we believe the notch is beginning, we meet a section hiker coming out of the underpass that we are about to enter. This is a pass under boulders. He tells us that we don't need our poles and that it took him less than two hours to complete. I put my poles in my pack and Marta and I continue on. The Notch is not that bad. It is wet, parts are cold, in fact, some loe lying areas have ice still in them, and it does require a lot of pull ups and throwing your body up and over boulders. There were times when we weren't sure how we were going to get up and over or under or through the rocks, but together we figured it out. At times, we thought we were finished with the mile as it looked like we were returning to normal trail, but we were fooled. Finally, a sign marking the southern end appeared. It took us 3 hours to cover 1 mile and I only had to take my pack off three times. The whole time, I had Jack Johnson's Curious George soundtrack song, "The City is My Jungle Gym" in my head, only it was "the Mahoosuc is my jungle gym...up and over, crawling through, so much fun for me and you..."Two more miles to the shelter. I won't say they were easy, but they weren't terrible either. Finally, I hear voices. We are near the shelter, hope there is room for two more. There is!Staying in the shelter are a couple finishing last year's thru-hike, a couple doing a section hike for their honeymoon, and two single guys also finishing their thru-hike. Everyone is very friendly and it is a social evening with lots of laughs. My hair is so tangled. I have now found three ways to begin getting a set of dreadlocks. The first, was in the hundred mile wilderness. I had braided my hair into two pigtails the first time we went up Katahdin. I did not take the braids out for eight days. Eight days of sweat, rain, sleeping, hiking, etc. produced one narly rat's nest at the base of my neck and several nice looking dreads. I was hiking with Lee/Buddha at the time who is trying to dread his hair and I think he was a bit jealous. It took hours to comb through that mess. The second time my hair got all dready was after leaving Stratton. I had it in a low pony-tail and when the rain came, my hair kinked all up forming more dreads and tangles. After coming down South Crocker mtn that day, therewas no way I was going to come my hair. The next morning, I had another mess to comb through. Well, I had worn my hair up in a bun coming up and over Old Speck. It was wet and I was tired, so I did not comb it out when I got to the Speck Pond shelter. So today, going up and over all these boulders, my hair kept getting stuck in the zipper pulls of my pack. (Had I had my pack cover, this would not have been a problem.) So coming through one of the boulder tunnels, completely frustrated with my hair being yanked by my zipper pulls, I stopped to put the bun up higher on my head. I realize that all the past yankings have knotted up the hair pretty good because I can't even get the rubberband out of my hair. I manage to get the hair pulled up, but that night at the shelter, I had the worst tangles I have ever had. Marta took a picture of it, so it may be on her trail journals web page. The other hikers had fun coming up with a trail name for me based on my predicament, and Patches, a young male hiker, was not envious of my long hair! Again, it took a while, but the hair was combed through and the dreads were vanished.