Date: 2009-09-30
From: Chairback Gap Lean-To

To: Logan Brook Lean-To
Miles today: 17.1
Weather: light rain

I slept in all my clothes again last night; a street person minus the cardboard box. Slept well though, waking at 4:55, checking the time, rolling over and the next thing I knew light was seeping through the walls and it was 6:15. Time to shake a leg. I had a big day planned and after yesterday I wasn't sure I had 17 miles in me.I took my time finding the trail. Precious time it may be but rushing off in the wrong direction wouldn't help and so I went down, up, round and down again before finally picking up the trail proper and descended a fairly large boulder field.I found a great breakfast spot at 7 o'clock. Just another flat rock but what a view. A sunrise to savour. The sun having risen above a sea of low level cloud was now obscured behind a solitary but substantial mid level cloud. The effect left the impression of the half light of morning, the nearer landscape emerging from the gloom, but also bathed great swathes in sunlight, the sun's rays reflecting brightly from the lower and more distant clouds. Add to that, the hidden sun reflecting from the still surface of a large pond, the lower clouds creeping (rolling) over the lower hills and what I though must be Whitecap Mountain pierced the sky, and it was quite a sight. Pretty awesome: the right place, the right day, the right time (everything occurring during a magical 7 minutes).Not a bad start to any day and although the rest of today didn't match this particular high then neither did it descended to anything like yesterday's lows.Down to Katahdin Iron Works logging road. Easy walking on smooth trails. A bite to eat on the banks of West Branch Pleasant River. A warm sun. The necessary ford: wide not deep, cold not freezing.Three Mountains lay ahead: Gulf Hagas, Hay and then White Cap. It was the usual roller coaster but nothing like yesterday and I made unexceptional progress although the weather started to deteriorate - the rain Amero had predicted (well that whatever website his phone had accessed) arrived on cue. Really just drizzle, but in the last day of September, with the sun obscured by cloud, at somewhere over 3,000ft, and when you are actually in the cloud, well then drizzle is quite enough, thank you very much.I reached for my pack cover and poncho to keep the combination of wet and cold at bay and while the poncho was pretty useless I thought the pack cover could only be to my advantage. This was the first mildly chilly and wet day I had encountered for a long time and so, this close to the finish line, I was keen to be extra cautious.Whitecap was completely misted in and I hurried across its exposed bouldery top, not wanting to leave myself exposed any longer than necessary, and keen to get back below tree line, to find some protection from the wind and to reach tonight's planned destination.I arrived at the shelter to find Chris, a woefully under prepared and under equipped south bounder. He was ex-army and seemed to be using a lot of army style gear, only it seemed to be army style summer gear, and while I truly believe there are as many ways to walk the trail as there are hikers out here I couldn't help but think that he had failed to factor in the conditions peculiar to hiking in Maine in October. He said that he hadn't slept to much so far, I thought that without a radical change to his approach that that was likely to continue.