Date: 2008-08-01
From: Hall Mountain Lean-to ME 

To: Bemus Mountain Lean-to ME
Miles today: 12.8

Day 166 Friday August 1 ¢ Bemus Mountain Lean-to ME - Miles Today: 12.8 Total Miles: 1938.5All the wet weather is taking its toll. The trails are just atrocious - mud, streams, lakes, ponds - they're all on the trail and it's making our miles come extremely slowly. We did about 13 miles today and it took us 10.5 hours! In addition to the atrocious trail conditions, we had 2 steep inclines, 2 steep declines, 1 landslide and 2 knee-deep fords, which were not scary.The landslide was about 7 or 8 yards wide and about 30+ yards in length, and it went straight up a steep hillside. The local folks in Andover reported that the landslide occurred about 10 or 11 days ago. It completely took out the trail. We climbed up the bank of the hillside beside the landslide, trying to follow the path that previous hikers had used. At one point, Grasshopper grabbed a log to boost herself up and we noticed it was not secure. She hollered down to Brakeman to clear out of the way just in case the log came loose and came crashing down the hill. That caused a little bit of anxiety for him - a 1 on a scale of 10 - as he wasn't sure if he was about to have an intimate relationship with a log or not. He had his escape route planned just in case it did. Ah, a bit of excitement. No one ever said hiking the AT was going to be boring!(Y A W N - I knew I would yawn during this recording, as I never quite seem to get through one without a yawn.) As we were getting nearer our shelter, we scoped out places to possibly camp on the rocks on top of Bemus Mountain, as we weren't quite sure if the tent sites at the shelter would be usable. The ground is extremely saturated and basically flooded in places. But we were able to find a decent tent site at the Bemis Mountain Lean-to and since the tent sites are located away from the shelter, we're looking forward to another quiet, secluded night with lots of sleep.Hopefully the forecast we heard a few days ago from a Canadian casual hiker is still accurate. He said the weekend was supposed to be nice. That would be wonderful. Our raingear is still wet, our rain pack covers are wet, our backpacks are wet, the tent, of course, is still wet, our shoes and socks are still wet and our feet are wet and wrinkly. We're still really hoping we don't get foot rot (AKA trench foot) before we finish this adventure. We have 18 more days of hiking and I don't think we can handle 18 more days of rain. There were brief moments for both of us today where we either grew tired of the wet, mud puddle trail or the rain. It's beginning to wear a little thin. We need a break from these conditions.It¢s 6:30 and guess what it's doing! Yep, raining again. But actually had mighty good weather for hiking today. We didn't have any rain until about 30 minutes before camp. It stopped by the time we got to camp and we were able to get the tent set up, water filtered and freshened up before the thunder arrived in the distance. It has now been raining for 45 minutes, but it sounds like it may be wrapping up. We ate in the tent again tonight because of the rain. We¢re waiting for the rain to stop so we can hang the bear food bag, which Brakeman says should really be called a people food bag, as the food is for people, not bears. (Y A W N - sorry, another yawn) Once the people food bag is hung, we are ready to climb into our sleeping bags for the night and go to sleep. Oh yeah, that's another thing that's wet ¢ our sleeping bags. The feet sweat at night, making the end of our sleeping bags wet and we never get enough dry weather for the bags to dry. Perhaps we should swim to Maine. Goodnight.