Date: 2013-09-11
From: Full Goose Shelter

To: Speck Pond Shelter
Miles today: 5.1

I didn't sleep worth a darn last night. In fact I woke up at 12:30, and I thought it was 4:30. It was a hot, restless night. By the time it was time to get up, I didn't want to. My knees hurt. I felt a little grouchy. Maybe I was already wound up thinking about Mahoosuc Notch.Any who, there was a pleasant climb up to Fulling Mill Man. It was sunny and beautiful. Then the steep descent down into the bowels of the mountain began. I whined all the way to the bottom. The air temperature dropped at least 20 degrees. Pressure-D and Tough Cookie decided to dedicate today's hike to their friend, Glen, who perished in the WTC on 9/11. It seemed like a very worthy dedication. And then we began.The first section was pretty easy. We crawled over a few rocks, and then the trail flattened out. We joked that it wasn't too hard. As it turns out, the trail doesn't like to be mocked. A blast of cold air hit us. The mountains closed in on either side of us. We were being funneled down through a narrow chute of boulders. Some had holes beneath them that seemingly dropped down forever. I strapped my poles to the outside of my pack. Game on. My strategy was to have as much body surface in contact with the boulders at all times. We had to crawl up and over, down and through, over and around, sometimes clinging on to tiny ledges. It took me far outside of my comfort zone. I was surprised that I didn't hesitate or freeze up. There were a few times when I didn't think I could make a step or pull myself through some narrow passage way, but I did. Then trouble struck. We were only about 100-200 yards into the Notch (maybe 30-45 mins). I heard a "Whoa" and then suddenly sliding noises. I hate sliding noises. I looked up to see Hobo sliding down a rock and then flipping over backwards and upside down. His feet were straight in the air, head straight towards the ground, his belly button at my eye level. He fell head-first down into a hole and crumpled with a "THUMP!" Oh shit! Apparently I ditched my pack (I don't remember doing this) and rushed to him. He was still upside down, holding his head. I frantically dug at the hip belt of his pack, trying to get his pack off. He was alert and talking. My heart was pounding. I asked him to tell me what to do (he's an RN). He stayed so calm. Without thinking about it, I looked up to the sky and asked God for a favor. I don't know when was the last time I prayed. Please let my friend be okay. Miraculously, he was. He had a small cut on the back of his head that he tied up with his bandana. Other than that and a sore neck and shoulder, he was okay. I was pretty freaked out after that. We wall were. I knew that accidents could happen. But to see this one and to see Hobo walked away relatively unscathed was simultaneously reassuring and terrifying. It took us over four hours to work our way through the Notch. We reached a point where the rocks disappeared and a flat dirt path appeared, and I started to cry. I'd spent a large part of the day wanting to call Tom. I've realized that when I get stressed out (and Mahoosuc Notch definitely stressed me out) I want to talk to Tom. But it wasn't to be. Instead, Hobo and I hugged, and I cried. We walked 25 more steps and realized that the Notch wasn't over. I wanted to cry again. Shit.We stopped for a late lunch, but I was spent. I'd come down off my 4-hr adrenaline high, and now I was whipped. I could have easily stopped there and taken a nap. It was such a glorious, warm, sunny September day. I walked down to the stream to wash the dirt from my hands. I spent as much time on my hands as I had my feet and butt. We still had a helluva climb up Mahoosuc Arm. We crossed a beautiful, wide white stone stream. The water flowed wide and shallow as it slid easily down the mountain. Mahoosuc Arm was the evil twin of Mahoosuc Notch. It shot straight up the mountainside as a stark white stone vein. There were impossibly agile spruce and birch trees that webbed their roots into cracks in the rocks. We clung to those trees and used their webbed roots as stairs to climb ever higher. Honestly, I don't know how someone could possible climb down the route that we climbed up. The thing is, we covered far me vertical distance than horizontal distance. It took us 1.5 has to cover 1.5 miles. We could hear thumder rumbling in the distance as we got closer to the top. The top seemed to allude us forever until it could allude us no more. We walked along the striped rocks. The trees got shorter and shorter, and we could see the Whites rising in the distance like blue banners on the horizon. A huge thunder cloud rolled in, so we didn't linger. We trotted quickly along the boardwalks and over the marshes. There were blueberry bushes and mountain cranberries and dusty, silver curly-haired shrubs. It was a lovely downhill, the nicest in a long, long time. Speck Pond came into view, and Tough Cookie and I made a pact to get in.Once we reached the edge of the pond I wanted to crawl straight in, but we still had to skirt along its edge for almost a mile. It started to drizzle, but we weren't deterred. We got to the shelter and Sonny was there. I hadn't seen him since the Waynesboro ER. I dropped my pack and grabbed my camp towel, and I headed down to the water. I tucked my clothes under a little logg bench to keep them dry. The water was cool and tanniny, and it felt so good. I swam for a bit, but the lake wasn't too deep so I was afraid of swimming into a rock. Back at the shelter, the sky opened up. It poured down and it hailed. First Walking Stick showed up. Then Solo and Abe. A trail runner came through, soaked, hurt and disoriented. We watched him run away into the ever-darkening woods, and we all had a bad feeling. He came back 5 minutes later. I gave him my headlamp, but we all encouraged him to stay. Thankfully, he agreed. We pitched in to get him dry clothes, food and a sleeping bag. He'd have been in tough shape otherwise. He seemed nice enough, but he was shockingly unprepared. So tonight, I'm sharing a sleeping bag with Tough Cookie. Hobo has bad leg cramps. Another hiker just came wandering in in the rain. It could be an interesting night.