Date: 2016-07-05
From: Stratton, ME via Rt. 27

To: Little Bigelow Lean-to
Miles today: 15.3
Weather: moderate rain

I didn't sleep well at all last night. Some combination of beer from the afternoon and gas station noodles did not sit well in my stomach, and i ended up in the bathroom multiple times overnight. We were up by about 7:30 but stuck around the motel room cleaning and packing for a little before heading over to the Looney Moose, a breakfast and lunch spot that my three companions had gone to yesterday morning and said was pretty good. I got a big plate of corned beef hash and had some of Goldie's french toast as well. WE then walked back the motel and they all went to resupply. I spent a fair bit of time waiting around since I had done my resupply yesterday, but it was a pleasant morning in a little stand of trees outside the motel. As we got ready to head out of town, we stopped by the post office one more time. Seal Tree's package had shown up, but Goldie's and mine were not due until probably later that afternoon. But we were done waiting around and wanted to get back out there. We told the post office to try and bump the packages to Monson if and when they arrived, so hopefully they will be there when we arrive in four days. It's absolutely insane to think that we have one more resupply, one more trail town left. It's also funny thinking back to the beginning of the trip, when all of the places were just names on a map or an itinerary; each trail town has its own culture and things going for it, and now I've been to almost all of them. Right outside the post office, a man asked us whether we were headed back to the trail and gave us a hitch back up to the trailhead. And so we set off, i leading for a fair bit of the hiking. This is the first time I've paced with a larger group in a very long time. We passed a number of outdated signs marking 2000 miles, including one written on the pavement of a road, where we passed a group from the same girl's camp as the group at Spaulding Mtn. We successively split up with each other as the climbing became more difficult.It was a longer hike than I was anticipating, but not nearly as hard as Crocker yesterday. But we were also starting later. Lightning and I both hit a spectacular viewpoint at the same moment, from which we could see Horns Pond, a lovely little lake that hovers thousands of feet above the rest of the Maine landscape, surrounded by the Horns, twin peaks rising 600 feet from its shore.We took a break at a little day-use shelter near Horns Pond. When I arrived there was a man whom I recognized, but couldn't place him. It turns out it was Paul, whom I'd met taking a shuttle out of Hiawassee and seen last at Long Branch shelter, right before Franklin in NC! He had lost a ton of weight and grown a bushy beard, but I recognized him by his shirt, which just has a drawing of a rock on it. He had made it to Harper's Ferry about two weeks ago, and now flip flopped to Katahdin and was heading south. I applauded him for his tenacity, but my goodness, he is on track to finish the trail in like 8 months. I can't imagine spending that much time out here. Lightning and I paced each other up South Horn, which was pretty brutal, but had a lovely view to the rest of the Bigelow ridgeline. We descended and climbed again now up to the top of the highest peak in the range, West peak, where the Bigelows officially became my favorite part of Maine so far. There is an incredibly weightlessness to the ridge, as though we were floating high above Maine below us. Seal Tree and Goldie caught up and we all walked over to Avery Peak, where we had a very late lunch on the foundations of a fire tower. The peak is named for Myron Avery, the details man to Benton Mackaye's visionary. One of my absolute favorite peaks so far, with just some incredible views.By 4, we dropped 2 miles down to Safford Notch, and I was flagging. Lightning, Seal Tree and Goldie all got ahead of me. I also tried calling the Stratton post office to see if my package arrived, but ended up in some limbo of the phone and postal system, which just pissed me off. My lack of sleep caught up with me, and all I wanted was to get to Little Bigelow Lean-to, which was still 5.5 miles away. The climb up Little Bigelow was also surprisingly rugged, with tons of little rises that tired me out even more and annoyed me, because I was expecting easy climbing. To make things worse, the spring I was expecting halfway up was nonexistent (what with all the dry weather), and I had run out of the small bit of watered I'd filtered from a small boxed spring on the side of Avery peak. But push on I did, and I was heartened when I found the trio sitting on some ledges looking back at West and Avery, waiting for me. Lightning decided to take a short nap in the afternoon sun, the other three of us moving on. The hiking became somewhat easier at this point, and the company helped keep my pace up. The Ledges on the east side of the mountain were pretty glorious, one of those classic Maine moments of open slabs of rock with little dots of trees and moss. The descent down to Little Bigelow Lean-to was then pretty gentle. We found the lean-to already with a number of people at it, mostly section hikers, but a few sobos and one older flip-flopper named Timeline whom the other three knew but I'd never met. I snagged a spot in the shelter along with Timeline, while the other three decided to camp out. All three of them use hammocks, actually, and pretty much always prefer that to shelters. Me, I'm still in my old routine as a shelter rat. I was saddened that the river which flows next to the shelter - which is famous because it has carved out a great swimming hole called the Tubs - was barely more than a trickle. We had a pretty relaxed evening, except for one Sobo who made an ass of himself by claiming we had no idea the kind of terrain we were going to face in the 100 - the chairback range he referred to as "CATHEDRALS OF ROCK" - and also by insultingly telling Goldie - who was just trying to make conversation - that the fact that she had time for a thru hike meant she didn't have a life. Dude needs to let the wilderness in and relax. also: he was from canada! c'mon! don't give us a bad name! This is probably the most exhausted I've been after only 15 miles. But damn. Now we get a couple of days of much flatter, doable terrain!