Date: 2014-08-25
From: East B Hill Road

To: Bemis Mountain Shelter
Miles today: 18.8

Great night sleep. Blue berry pancakes, bacon, milk and oj for breakfast. How does Gerry stay so thin with Carol's great cooking? Must be all the work he does tending to his beautiful flower gardens. Carol thanks for the turkey and cheese sandwich too! Long but manageable hike to top of Wyman mountain over 4.5 miles and an elevation gain of 1400 feet. Trail easy to navigate, but the backside was a whole different case. A lot of hard rocky scrambles were tough on the knees. I did run into the hiking family again and it was Jessica's 16th birthday so I gave hef one of David Burn's trail Magic snickers bars and she was delighted. Trail wise things went from hard to extremely difficult as I moved very, very slowly up Moody mountain. The degree of the slope was 60 degrees or greater in some places. To help there were re rod steps and handles. My legs ached and burned by the time I reached the top of this and boy I was not in a good mood! The saving grace of all of it though was the spectacular views. There were ponds and mountains as far as the eye could see. This was definitely another place I could have stayed all day and if I had known what the decent was going to be like I probably would have! It was rugged and treacherous and my knees were complaining. A lot of drop offs and slides required careful foot placement each time which really slowed me down to a crawl. Decents like these are tedious and stressful both mentally and physically. As I got to the bottom I could hear people talking on the other side of the creek and thought they might be campers who would have a cold drink to spare. But as I climbed the bank thinking about how I was going to approach them this loud voice shouted out "Trail Magic!" Old Buzzard had cold drinks, hot dogs, snacks and quite a few good tales of hiking. It was a great place to relax and have something to eat and drink and it would have been a nice place to camp for the night. The only problem was it was only 2 pm and I had my eye on Bemis Shelter another 9 miles away. However standing in the way was "Old Blue Mountain" or as Old Buzzard would call her, "The B*^@#". It was a 2200 foot climb over only 3 miles and made Sawyer notch where I had just come from look like a kids playground. It was as steep if not stepper and had stone stairs, re rod in several places. It seemed like it would never end and I was getting ready to call someone cor a pep talk to get me through it. But after struggling for 3 hours I finally topped off and was glad to be done with it! Since there were n9 views I made my way up Bemis mountain which did provide some awesome views and a great ro k walk. The only problem I faced now was I was running out of daylight and was pretty tired. I felt like I should be coming to the shelter but the trail just kept on going. Just as I started to think I would have to find a place to cowboy camp the trailhead finally appeared! There were 3 other people there DTa being one of them and 2 women I did not know. Another hiker came late but tented. Needless to say I quickly ate that super sandwich Carol had made and so greatly appreciated and got into my sleeping bag.Again Gerry and Carol thanks for all your kindness. Still no moose and more and more bogs are showing up. I do enjoy the smell of the fir trees sweet scent at the top of the mountains and glad I had my new mini sawyer as water was an issue and when I came to a stream I was able to drink some right away. Thanks David. Oh yeah and my attempt to keep my days short was blown out of the water with 18 plus done today!