Date: 2013-08-27
From: Carlo Col Shelter, ME

To: Bull Branch campsite, ME
Miles today: 7.1
Weather: broken clouds

Happy Anniversary Mom And dad!!! Wish we'd been able to call you. Service is so bad. Tell Cindy Verizon is weak up here! Hope you had a nice one. How was that restaurant? Great morning...Cash, BooBoo, Sky Pilot, Odat, Bluebird and Bomber are here. The sun broke thru the white-blitze sky. Rough sleep due to the college orientation group which chose to sing Christmas carols all night. They got up at 6 and woke the whole camp up. Anyways it was great to see good friends. Headed out to the very hardest part o the AT...Mahoosuc Notch. First we had to climb the very vertical GooseEye Mt. It has four false summits to fake us out and wear us out. There was a lot of thick, black mud and thankfully planks over much of it. Cub slipped off a plank and her leg went in up to her knee. She said she never felt bottom either. There was a big sucking sound as she pulled her leg out. She stayed so calm and laughed about it. When we walk the planks Cub always sticks her poles in to see how deep the muck is. She rarely hits bottom. We finally got to Mahoosuc Notch at 4:15. We busted our butts in there and didn't get out until 7:15. We were getting so scared because it would have been impossible to do in the dark. It was the hardest thing I've ever done and frightening to have my kids in there. It is basically a gulch with huge boulders haphazardly strewn about. It's so deep and it's very cold. Caves of undetermined depth, black holes, abound. The rocks we had to jump on over these black abyss spots were covered in moss and mist, rendering them into slip and slide. The cliffs of the two mountains press down on us and are quite intimidating. If we didn't have our packs it would have been easier. We had to crawl under boulders that formed caves. At one point the girls pushed their bags up to me. I was in the blackened cave. I pulled with all my might to get the bags in, then dragged them though the cave on my butt and then had to push them up and out of the small opening. Then I had to push the girls out and then climb out myself. All day I had to give the girls tush pushes up the rocks and then try to get myself up and over. I fell very hard 2 times backwards slamming into the rocks. I was scrapped and bleeding by the end but all in one piece. Whew! Half way thru water began to run under the rocks. We could hear it for about half and hour until we began to crawl over the rapidly flowing crystal clear water. We climbed on our knees, slid down on our bottoms, scooted and clung to rocks. Our arms were as tired as our legs. The girls were amazing. They were scared but also thought it was fun. We were scrapped and filthy but we made it. We camped right beyond the notch finding Buddy backpacker and family and all the guys from the am. Cub found noodles in a bear box today and we gratefully ate them with our other foods. We are running low on food because we are eating so much. We are just burning out the calories. BooBoo said he didn't want to say anything but after I commented on his weight loss he said he was shocked to see how skinny I was. The girls looked taller and in good health to him. I just can't get the calories I need. Will keep trying. This morning I got dizzy and sick. The girls stopped and I ate a bunch of food and felt better but now we are low on food. In Maine it is going to be hard to get food. The towns are very small and far from the AT. I don't like hitchhiking with the girls but that's our only option at times. I'm sure well figure it out. I felt fine all day after that. No worries