Granny Mode

Today is Labor Day, although you wouldn't know it on the trail, and I woke up this morning at the Pine Ellis hostel. Last night, a decent number of hikers came in, so this morning, things were quite a bit busier around the hostel than on the previous mornings, so people kind of had to jockey for spots on the shuttle.

And when I say “shuttle,” I mean a little Honda SUV driven by a nice lady named Miss Gloria. She takes as many trips as she needs to to get people to a couple different places around the AT. The Pine Ellis is located sort of in the middle of three trailheads, so there’s some negotiating that has to be done among the hikers to determine which drop-off spot the shuttle goes to first, and then you have make sure there are enough spots in the car to fit everyone who wants to go to that spot. There was a group of four women in a tramily who needed to go to the same drop-off location as I did, but there wasn't enough room in the car for all of us. Luckily, I was ready to go much earlier than they were, so Gloria just took me to the trailhead on my own. That meant I got a good head-start on everyone.

When I got to the trailhead, I bumped into Groovy and Half Boot, who were just starting out for the day. It's funny. My timing has overlapped quite a lot with those guys over the past couple of weeks, which has been interesting. We've kept completely separate agendas, stayed at different places, and all that, yet we keep running into each other at the beginning of the day. It’s been kind of fun.

With Half Boot and Groovy

So the first order of the day was to hike up a mountain called Old Blue. It wasn't terrible, but it was a pretty healthy climb up. And as we were setting out, I asked Half Boot why he only had one trekking pole, and he said he’d broken his other one in the Whites. And then Groovy looked at my poles and said, “You have your poles in granny mode.”

And granny mode, according to her, is when you keep the rubber stopper on the end of your pole, instead of switching to the point. It doesn't stick into the ground that way, and it gives you much better grip on rocks. She compares that to a walker that has rubber stoppers at the end of the legs. So I guess I've been hiking in granny mode for most of the AT so far, but I definitely prefer it.

After we’d gotten over Old Blue and were making our way down, the skies opened up a little bit. Typically, when it rains during the day when you’re hiking, it's not that big of a deal, especially if it's not that cold, which it wasn't today. But in this particular instance, the trail happened to be very rocky, and descending off of mountains over wet rocks tends to be fairly challenging. Along the way, I bumped into Shenanigans. He and I were trying to descend Old Blue with the wet rocks, and it was going less well for me than him for whatever reason. I was slipping and sliding all over the place.

Generally, though, the day was not eventful at all. It was just one of those days where you had to get from point A to point B. Old Blue didn't have any particularly good views. And I think we also went over Bemis Mountain — again, no terribly special views. [Wife note: The views look pretty nice to the rest of us, I’d say!] We were just covering distance and getting a little closer to the more interesting terrain in Maine. I had been planning on doing 17 miles today, but I didn't have any energy, and I don't really know why. Sometimes, after spending time in a hostel, I come out energized, and sometimes I don't. I guess this was one of those instances where I didn't end up feeling energized.

The weather started to get chilly, too. I got to Route 17, which was about 13.5 miles into the day, and there were a bunch of hikers already at the road crossing. It was me, Shenanigans, Groovy, Half Boot, and a handful of other people, and as we were climbing up from Route 17, a bunch of us started talking about calling it a day and just finding a campsite on the side of the trail. I was on board with that plan. I managed to locate a good tent site pretty soon after that and decided to end my hiking day there.

That puts a little pressure on me to put in some additional miles tomorrow, but I'm glad to be off the trail now and in my tent and nice and comfortable and warm. So we'll see what tomorrow brings. Not the most exciting day today, but that happens sometimes.