Date: 2012-08-05
From: Full Goose Shelter and Campsite

To: Baldplate Lean-to
Miles today: 12.0

Today was the notch! Mahoosuc notch is supposedly the most difficult (or fun!) mile of trail depending on your outlook and experience. There was a lot of build up surrounding this section of trail mostly with SOBO¢s telling me that it was sooo hard, or easy peasy, but the general gist was that whatever attitude you bring into it will determine your experience and I actively tried to bring a positive one. Whatever it was to them individually, they were all talking about it and using their timing through it as a yardstick measurement. Alrightly boys, tuck it away, you¢ve got many miles to go. I actually really enjoy talking to the sobos because they are so excited and when you talk to them it reinspires you. Also at this point in the trail everyone just sort of congratulates the Nobo¢s on what we have accomplished. A huge difference between the same thing happening in GA is that now I feel and I think a lot of us feel we have earned it. And I feel like we can very comfortably , and modestly I hope, accept these comments confident that we have accomplished something great but aware that it doesn¢t make us special so much as lucky, blessed, and let¢s be honest just slightly off our rockers too. But let¢s get back to the trail.My final assessment of the notch was the most terror filled fun I¢ve ever had. Basically the notch is a giant ravine that has experienced some cliff collapse and those giant boulders fell down to loosely pile on one another. And the At, once again showing the slightly psychotic and sadistic nature of trail blazers goes right through it. These are big boulders and I guess because it hasn¢t really been worn down yet there are fewer smaller rocks to scrabble onto and you find yourself climbing under them in the pockets of air and caves yet to fill in or else doing some finger climbing and strength climbing shimming up between massive ones. Poles are useless and I let them hang as I scrambled. Just starting out I was quite shaken up by a fall I had trying to get over the first major hurdle. As is now pretty much normal, the rocks were wet from last night¢s rain showers and the early morning dew. As I was climbing up a great slab, my feet both slipped at the same time and I fell a good 4 ft down flat on my back. Oooaaaffff the wind was knocked out of me and when I finally got it together enough to assess damage and take in the sharp irregular rocks I had landed on, I briefly considered taking up a religion revolving around the worship of my pack, cause it saved me from breaking my back today. I had a very real fear put in me that I could get seriously hurt in here. During that same fall I landed on my pole and ended up bending it to all hell. Well that was not the way I expected to start this morning¢s hike and I was quite badly shaken up. But as in all situations out here the only way you¢re getting anywhere is by walking. So I stored my poles and set out again accepting that this was going to be interesting. Following the advice of one of the trail maintainers I¢d met in the whites I was trying to stay high as I went through this place. And ended up on a rock with 15 foot drops all around me¢¦¢¦.or not then, time to try going under. I quickly came up on Duffer, Instigator, Expediter, and Chicken Feathers and having so recently seen my life flash before my eyes, decided it may be a good thing to take the rest of this with others around me. I am so impressed with these guys who I can only describe as tenacious. I relied mostly on billygoat jumping my way through most of the notch relying on my hiker legs and muscle memories to make the jumps and landings. Fact of the matter is that¢s a benefit of being young, but I watched as these amazing people navigated and slide and quite literally crawled through some of the trails best obstacles. Having all of us there was very beneficially in a lot of places where you had to take you pack off and we would form our assembly line chain to pass all the pack through and then send the people on through. I stayed in the rear for most of this taking pictures and actually quite enjoying myself. Some rocks really just became slides because that¢s the only way to go down them. Thank god for tough as nails pants but I will say I was less well off with my diminished butt cheeks.   I did enjoy myself between the bouts of terror and kept laughing, and smiling, at every now ridiculous drop, giant dark crevice/hole/cave that we went through. More hilarious was the placement of the whiteblaze. I think someone might have been having some kind of fit during that process. there was evidence of campfires and sites in some of the caves where other hikers must have bailed. Below your feet you could make out giant caves and darkness and emptiness that suggested a misplaced foot might have you fall for sometime and if you kept slipping could easily end up in a bad position. And beneath it all the faint sound of running water could be heard. All told it took our party 4 12 hours to go 2 12 miles. I left with rough bruised hands and ass to remind me of the notch from all the gripping and sliding. I refilled water and then pushed on hard as I left the group to climb the very steep ascent out of the notch. Great shots here and loads of fun. I found signal to call my folks and also called leki about my poles. Awesome cause they are sending replacement parts out asap. From there the trail leveled out nicely and I was flying again. Stopped at a shelter and chatted with some cool middle-school aged girls out for a summer on the trail. Now they were roughing it because while their summer program brought them food they had only streams to clean up in. smelly girls, but awesome and quite mature and really cool to chat with. I decided to push on to the next shelter and although rain was coming in, there was no evidence of any dangerous storm byproduct so I scrambled over the next two exposed ridge lines. Maine is so darn pretty with slabs of rock and blueberry bushes all around. I love being back in this state that started this whole journey for me. And more and more I realize how prepare I am, how I never could scrabble up these mountains as I do now without these months of conditioning my body and mind.