Date: 2007-08-17
From: Crocker Cirque Campsite

To: Orbeton Stream, ME
Miles today: 9.8

We got away at 7 aiming for the railway line (disused) at Orbeton Stream on the other side of Sugarloaf Mountain. Sugarloaf is a ski field and being keen skiers we detoured to have a look at the field - this involved an extra 170 meters of climbing but it was worth it as we got above the bushline and were able to look around the facilities at the top of the field. Hikers can stay in one of the buildings there as it turned out, but we didn't know that at the time. It would have been the wrong time of day for us anyway but we met others planning to do it. The critical thing is water of course and because they turn the water off there is none up there except a small stream quite a long way before you get there. We met some people doing the 4000 foot peaks in Maine, and they said they'd stayed there and had caught some water from the rain in a pool on the roof. They said there was a bit left over so we passed this information on. The buildings all looked like ours on skifields in NZ - need a lick of paint and quite a bit of maintenance. Judging by our years of experience looking after our club's ski lodge on Ruapehu it is a constant struggle to maintain buildings in these environments.Then, on to Spaulding Mountain lean-to for lunch. The sleeping bench had been chewed on and made shorter, presumably by porcupines. We camped for the night down on the disused railway. Thunder sounded around us for a while, then down came the rain. I had to dig a trench out from beside the tent to encourage the water to flow away from us down the hill. As usual the ground is very hard and does not absorb the water fast enough. We are under both tent and fly and very cozy. More rain! Dinner was rice, coconut, nuts, and fruit with olive oil for Dave. Quite nice! Two blokes, "Dealer Dan" and Dave, arrived shortly after us and camped along the way. They are brothers and are thru-hikers, nearly finished the AT. They said keeping dry had been their biggest challenge on the AT so far. We thought that was pretty interesting, being from good ol' rainy NZ. There are some things to do that are pretty basic to keeping dry. We have noticed that some hikers don't even have their gear packed in plastic bags, and one woman had her sleeping bag hanging at the bottom of her external frame pack with nothing to protect it from rain at all!! Well, we don't have plastic bags any more either - we have graduated through dry bags to silnylon stuff sacks which we make ourselves. So we have several layers of protection from rain - silnylon pack covers, silnylon pack liners then silnylon bags for organizing. Each of these layers is completely waterproof. We think we are possibly over-prepared for rain. We have had a few comments about our tarp since it covers our tent and gives us two waterproof layers there as well. Oh, well, old habits are hard to break and I am not keen on cooking and packing up in the rain. As to rain, we haven't had much of it at all. Is this normal? We are not sure but in fact have only walked one day in rain, and that wasn't really rain to speak of either. Every time it has rained we've been holed up somewhere. Just lucky timing I think, but we have noticed that rain is more likely in the afternoons and we like to do most of our miles early in the day. That said, if it rains for days it doesn't matter how well prepared you are, you will eventually get wet.It was a big day today although not many miles, with 1055m of climbing and 1345m down. The high today was 22C and low 12C so things are improving as far as the heat is concerned.Tomorrow we are off to Rangeley!Trail near Spaulding Mountain lean-to photo by BOO-BOO/Rebecca