Ford Fail

This morning (September 10), some of the people I’ve been hiking around lately were shooting to go from the Bald Mountain campsite all the way into Monson, which is 22 miles. Given the terrain, that's definitely doable, but I wasn't planning on doing that. My reservation at Shaw’s Hiker Hostel isn't until tomorrow night, anyway. I suppose I could have called, but instead, I decided to camp for another night and just sort of take it easy, hiking-wise. I’ve done 35 miles over the past two days.

So I just got up, ate some breakfast, and got going. There were a couple of river crossings I needed to do between Bald Mountain and the next campsite, which is called Horseshoe Canyon. Before long, I got to the first river ford, and the Far Out app was saying that there was no way to cross without getting your feet wet, but I easily made it across with dry feet, because the river was so low.

So that was a pretty easy one. The next one was the East Branch of the Piscataquis River. And again, Far Out was just like, You're going to get wet! and You need to beware! Sometimes, it's unsafe to cross that particular river.

Well, when I got there, I was actually able to walk about a third of the way across before I even hit water — it was that low. From there, I kind of rock hopped my way another third of the way across. And at that point, there was a rock I needed to hop on that was a bit pointy, and if I could make it, I’d be able to get all the way across and stay dry. So I decided to go for it, jumped, and didn't make it.

Well, I technically made the rock, but I landed on the downward sloping slide, which promptly dumped me into the river.

Fortunately, the only thing that got hurt was my ego, but I definitely got wet — wet feet, wet pants, wet shirt. I did my best to dry off a little bit on the bank and then tucked my tail between my legs and continued on.

That put a bit of a damper on my spirits for the next little portion of the day, but I’d gone about 10 miles at that point, and I’d only been planning on going 13. So from there, it didn’t take me too long to get to the Horseshoe Canyon campsite, which is where I'd chosen to camp for the night.

I got there at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon and took the opportunity to put up a line so I could hang up all my wet things and try to dry them out. I spent the afternoon rotating things around and getting them into the sun and the wind as much as possible. It’s basically dinnertime now, and no one else has shown up at the campsite yet. So I might have the place to myself tonight. It's actually been kind of a nice relaxing afternoon. I managed to get my stuff dried out, and I’ve definitely set myself up for a very easy walk into Monson tomorrow.