trailblazer

The smell of beer and cheap cologne is wafting toward me as I sit at the little computer terminal in the corner of the lodge @ Northern Outdoors. It is a rafting company/everything else you can imagine located near Caratunk, ME. There are dozens of people floating around the bar, waiting for a local band to start playing, and generally drinking themselves silly. No need for us, as getting a shower for the first time in a week and a good meal is all we needed to feel a little bit silly this evening!

We started our morning last night I guess. Let me explain. As we were snuggled into our sleeping bags around 9, it dawned on us that there wasn’t even a hint of a breeze coming off the lake and everything around us that could produce sound was strangely amplified. I tried to count all the things I was hearing @ once and came up with: My breathing, Mel’s breathing, my heartbeat, the breeze in the trees (only ever so gently and very seldom), the mosquitos buzzing around our mesh home trying to get inside, the loons on the lake, the small rodents in the leaves, the large animals crashing in the brush, an airplane overhead, pine needles falling on our rainfly, Sunny snoring, the howling of distant predators, and the squeak of even the slightest movement on our sleeping pads. Needless to say, the stillness of the night made for more distractions than you can shake a trekking pole at and neither one of us slept very well. There was a moment of excitement though, as we heard the unmistakable clomp of the hooves of a large mammal crashing through the trees near our tent. I grabbed a light to look for my first actual moose sighting, but he was already gone. We woke up groggy and tired shortly after 6 and took our time getting ready. Sunny and Share left first, and we were out of camp by around 8. The terrain promised to be flat for the 14 miles into town, and we made good time, really good time. We actually had finished a 10 mile stretch over roots and rocks and mud (but at least it was flat) by 11:20! We waited for a little bit @ Pierce Pond Shelter so we weren’t too early for the ferry man on the Kennebec, and headed off for the final 3.6 to the river just after noon. We made it to the water’s edge by 1:30 and waited for the little red canoe to make it’s way across the steadily rising dam release river @ around 2. Once we crossed, thanks to the skillful navigation of a nearly toothless Maine native in his mid 30’s with huge earrings, we did the final .4 to the post office, picked up our mail drop with enough food to get to Monsoon, and called for a shuttle to Northern Outdoors. We arrived around 3:15 or so, got checked into a room (1/2 off for hikers but still over priced), got a shower, grabbed some dinner (cheeseburger for me, fish-n-chips for Stubbs), and then went back to our room to relax. We’re off to bed soon, as the band doesn’t sound intriguing, a large man with a tight shirt is looking menacingly at me for being on the computer too long, and the 15 person hot tub looks like it has more bacteria than a tray full of petri dishes! We have no cell service here so I am thankful to have found this little black computer so as to indulge in all of my blogging pleasure, and I hope we’ll have service tomorrow so we can keep this party rolling! 150 miles and counting! Hope you’re lucking enough not to be watching old people trying old pick-up lines on other old people, but if you’re seeing it too, at least have some fun with it. I know we are! Goodnight and God bless.

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September 4 (17.4 miles)

September 5th, 2008 by joe

The sing song conversation of two loons is coming across the gently crashing waves of West Carry Pond as we prop ourselves up on our tired elbows in our tent with the broken pole. Even though they are easily two or three miles away, they have a sound about them that makes you half uneasy and half completely at peace. If you have never heard it, it is hard to adequately describe. Suffice it to say, we are feeling lucky to be in this place. The pond is actually a lake several miles across, and once we stopped for the night, we could see the sun slowly descending behind the mountains we crossed today. I would be hard pressed to come up with a better ending to our longest day since we entered The Whites. Today we crossed the Bigelow Range and reached a major milestone in our journey. We can now officially add “hiking over 2000 miles” to our resume. We reached that mark just before lunch, in the midst of an ugly (fitting, I think) up and down section as we were trying to reach the top of Little Bigelow Mountain. We also put the last 4000 foot peak (Mt Avery), with the exception of Katahdin, behind us in our journey. We still have mountains to climb, but only one more as high as we did today.

We woke up a little earlier than normal, grabbed a power bar, and were hiking by 7:30am. Our first climb, up to 3800, was up and over South Horn. From there, we could easily see the profile of the ridgeline we would soon be walking that had our final two 4000 footers, Avery and South Bigelow. We’ve seen a lot of daunting terrain on this hike and I’m at a loss to think of any that looked more fearsome than the Bigelow Ridge. Each peak was bald on top and required a rock scramble up a precarious angle with the wind blowing across us every step of the way. The sky was hazy for the first time in several days, but we still got fantastic views of the chain of lakes to our north that stretched on for miles and even included the one we are sleeping next too this evening. In spite of the views, it was a body and spirit tiring section of the trail and we didn’t make it to our lunch break at Little Bigelow Shelter until almost 1:30 pm. We also made a stop before heading up Little Bigelow for some water froma stream .3 off the trail. I opted to make the trek and the other three got the chance to take a hard earned break. We stopped 4.9 miles later at our lunch break for about thirty minutes, took off our shoes to rest our feet, and shared a common hope that the next and final seven miles of the day would be as easy as our book showed them to be. The first two miles after lunch were almost other worldly they were so easy, and we couldn’t believe our good fortune. Next, we were brought back down to earth by an unlisted climb of what we guessed to be around 500 feet, all of which we gained only to come back down! Our final 5.3 miles, after a short water break, took us back up 600 and again back down the same. This morning was all about nasty climbs and this afternoon was all about nasty rocks and roots. Our feet were beginning to feel like they had been chewed on by rabid trail badgers by the time we arrived at the cut off trail for the shelter, so we were more than happy to come home for the night. Stubbs and I headed for the lake for a quick bath (she even washed her hair) and then set up camp, cooked dinner, built a fire, and enjoyed talking with Sunny, Share and Slightly. We were in our tent, tired but happy about a great day of hiking, by 8, and are thinking of our first shower in five days tomorrow when we hit Caratunk. We will also be taking the Ferry (a glorified canoe) across the Kennebec River tomorrow and are excited as we have heard of this milestone our entire trip. It is also the only section of trail where you can get credit for “hiking” while you are being powered by someone else! We are starting to feel like this whole journey may actually have an end, and that’s both sad and exciting at the same time. I may have said this before, but plan to hear it some more. We still don’t really know what to think as we near the completion of our dream. Please keep us in your prayers as we still have to hike roughly the distance from Indianapolis to Chicago, over roots, rocks, mountains and streams. We hope you are enjoying as wonderful a night as we are, and be sure to tune in tomorrow to see what else is new. God Bless.

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