Mahoosux

Today is August 30, and this morning, I woke up at the Full Goose shelter. The weather was pretty nice all night — it was cold — and just like when I tented at the Nauman campsite next to the Mizpah hut, whenever you stay on a tent platform with no overhead tree cover, you get totally covered in condensation overnight.

So this morning, everything was wet, just everything. The inside of my tent, the outside of my tent, the tent platform, my backpack, everything. So even though it didn't actually rain last night, I still woke up to a soaking wet campsite, ahead of one of the more difficult days I’d have on the entire Appalachian Trail. Not the greatest start to the day, putting away a bunch of wet gear, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

For breakfast, I stuffed as much protein powder and oatmeal into myself as I could. As I mentioned a few posts ago, I now cold soak my oatmeal. I make a thick slurry with water and protein powder and then dump as much oatmeal in there as will fit. Sounds wonderful, right? But I needed to get as much fuel in my body as possible before I headed out.

I was on the trail by about 7:15 and first had to go up a very, very steep incline, only to then go down a very, very steep descent into Mahoosuc Notch. Now Mahoosuc Notch, as I mentioned before, is considered the hardest mile on the Appalachian Trail.

And a notch is basically just a low point between two mountains, and I'm sure there’s a geologist around here who could understand and maybe explain this better, but my guess is that at some point, or maybe just over time, a bunch of boulders came down the mountainside and settled into this notch. The trail goes right through it, so it's an exercise in climbing over these enormous boulders or squeezing your way through a gap between them or jumping from one to another. It's not really hiking so much as navigating your way through a ton of large rocks.

As soon as you enter the notch, you put your hiking poles in your backpack, because you need your hands and feet the whole time. As I was starting to navigate the Mahoosuc Notch, I was trying to figure out who would be able to navigate it well, and I thought about the legend of Slenderman, who's supposedly something like nine feet tall and super skinny and has these really long arms.

So I imagine that Slenderman would have a very easy time getting through Mahoosuc Notch. You know, he’d have those long legs to get across the gaps, and he could easily reach up and over boulders and slip in between the rocks. But for the rest of us who are wearing backpacks and aren't nine feet tall and skinny, it’s really challenging.

I felt like I was making a pretty good go of it, though. A lot of people budget about two and a half hours to get through the Mahoosuc Notch, which is about a mile long. I've heard of people taking up to four hours, but I've also heard of people doing it in as little as an hour. So I decided to not rush things but not necessarily take it too slow, either, because I wanted to keep some momentum going. It's easy to really, really take your time and pick your way super carefully through the rocks, and suddenly, it's mid-afternoon, and you've only gone one mile. I didn’t want to do that.

The biggest challenge I had with Mahoosuc Notch is knowing how much my hiking shoes could grip. That's been kind of a theme for the past week, actually. You know, you go through a lot of steep descents and ascents, and sometimes your shoes don't slip, and sometimes they do. So it’s not always easy to determine when you can trust the grip on your shoes. Obviously, if you had total confidence in your shoes, you could move a lot faster. But you don't want to find yourself on the top of a 15-foot boulder that's sloping downward and slip, because then you're going over the edge. [Wife note: I’m going to need to pause here for a minute so I don’t freak out.]

I probably trusted my shoes maybe slightly more than I should have, but it all worked out, and I was able to get through Mahoosuc Notch in about an hour and 45 minutes. I don't know if I would label it the hardest mile, necessarily. I’d probably label it the most unique, for sure.

While I was working my way through, I passed Sleepy Joe, who was just not having fun. He was having a really miserable time of it. Usually when I encounter Sleepy Joe on the trail, it's when he's passing me. The trail could be going up, down, straight, doesn’t matter — he's just a much, much faster hiker than I am. So it was funny for me to pass him for a change, because it’s probably the only time that will ever happen.

After I got through the notch, I took a little break, and then the trail headed up Mahoosuc Arm, which is the steepest mile of the AT in Maine. Lots and lots of rock climbing and hand-over-hand technical stuff.

But I succeeded in making it to the top, and I ended up hiking alongside Groovy, Half Boot, Sleepy Joe, and a guy named Micro, who I've met before. The whole time, Micro kept saying “fish” as he was climbing up, and I was wondering why the heck he was saying that, but apparently, he just loves fishing, and just after the Mahoosuc Arm, you come to Speck Pond. It's this absolutely gorgeous pond nestled in among a couple of peaks, and reportedly, it's chock full of trout.

So Micro eventually passed all of us and rushed down to Speck Pond. And by the time we’d caught up with him, he already had his fishing kit out and had caught a fish! He was as happy as can be. While I took a break at Speck Pond, I took out my tent and dried it out, because the sun was out and there was a nice breeze.

After leaving Speck Pond, you've got to climb up and over Old Speck Mountain. And this is another trip that Pine Islanders go on, but I actually never went on Old Speck when I was a camper, or even as a counselor, because — just to be honest — it was intimidating. You know, the combination of the hardest mile on the AT and the steepest mile was a bit more than I felt up to. Maybe it was all just a mental game, but I felt pretty pleased with myself that I’d gotten through Mahoosuc Notch pretty well. I’d gotten up Mahoosuc Arm pretty well. Next thing was to tackle Old Speck. And I think it was ultimately more challenging than the Mahoosuc Arm had been.

Anyway, I finally got to the peak of Old Speck, and I bumped into a group of students from Colby College who were out doing a hike as part of their freshman orientation. It's not a mandatory thing, but I know a lot of colleges in New England organize hiking and camping trips for incoming freshmen to givem them a way to bond with their fellow students and get a feel for the area. Some of those students looked happy, and some of them had looks on their faces like they were really wishing they’d stayed back on campus.

After I went up Old Speck, I had to go straight down, and it's a 3.5-mile descent into Grafton Notch. About a mile down, I bumped into a woman named Moxie Mama, who is sectioning some portions of the Appalachian Trail. She asked me how I found going up and over Old Speck, and I said, “You know, some of that trailblazing seemed a bit irresponsible to me, because it just didn't seem safe.” And she was like, ”Thank you. Thank you for saying that, because I had the exact same opinion. And it's nice coming from a man.” So I guess maybe other people she'd asked hadn’t been as critical of the trail, but I certainly was.

When I had probably about a mile and a half to go to get down to Grafton Notch, my knees just decided that they were done. I would have liked to have consulted with an orthopedic doctor at that point. The tops of my knees were just screaming at me, and I knew the remaining mile and a half were not going to get any less steep. So I was practically in tears going down that last section, and I was very, very thankful to S. for encouraging me to go to the Pine Ellis hostel tonight rather than trying to hike another day, because I don't know if I would have made it.

I had enough food to make it one more day, but if I had decided to continue hiking, I would have had to have done another 2 miles out of Grafton Notch and partially up Bald Pate Mountain and camp there. And there was just no way. It was already approaching 5 o'clock, and those 2 miles were just straight up. I just didn't think I had it in me at that point.

So I was so glad I’d made arrangements to get a shuttle from Grafton Notch to the Pine Ellis hostel in Andover for two nights. When I got down to the pickup area, I bumped into a guy who was setting up some Trail Magic. He waved me over to a picnic table where he had some sodas and snacks, which was just great, because I had about 20 minutes before my shuttle showed up. And then he said, “Oh, hold on. I'm not in costume yet.” And I'm thinking, What are you talking about?

So he leaves for a little bit with his dog, and when he comes back, he's wearing a gorilla suit. Apparently, this guy hiked the PCT a couple years ago, and when he was in Washington, he carried a gorilla suit with him and would wear it when he was near towns or had a chance to encounter people who were out day hiking. I think he was hoping that people would think he was Yeti. He was an incredibly eccentric guy. Nice guy, but very eccentric. And so I sat at a picnic table with a guy in a gorilla suit while I had a soda and a banana and waited for my ride.

[Wife note: Okay, when I first came across this paragraph, I assumed Rob/Patch hadn’t gotten a pic of this, so I went to my trusty AI app to fill in the blank. At the time, I didn’t notice the part about the banana and soda and imagined there was probably a sandwich involved. So I’ll include my best updated result here, but at the end of this post, I’ll share some of the more hilarious results, so you can either enjoy the insanity, too, or just skip them.]

The shuttle came not long after and brought me to the Pine Ellis hostel, which, as I’ve said, is in Andover, which is a tiny little town not far from Sunday River ski resort. It literally has one store in it, called the Mills Market. The hostel is just an old house a couple streets over from the market, and it’s run by this very, very nice older lady named Eileen. She lives in a small portion of the house and turned the rest of it into a hostel. She's incredibly welcoming.

It's not the Hilton, but it's a nice homey place. I checked in and got a shared room, though no one else appears to be staying in it tonight, which would be nice. And then I popped over to the Mills Market and got a giant chicken parm sub and brought it back to the hostel for my dinner.

I met a nice couple from Southern Georgia who are staying here for a few days and are also hiking the trail. They’re about my age. When the guy introduced himself, I couldn't understand him at first. He said his name, and I was like, “Donkey Con?” “Donkey Cone?” “Donkey Gone?” and a couple other iterations before he said, “No, like the game,” and I was like, “Ooooooh, Donkey Kong!”

His wife said her trail name was Double Stuff, which was much easier to understand. I hung out on the front porch with the two of them for a while and had a couple beers and enjoyed the evening. I also made arrangements to get a ride to the trailhead tomorrow morning so I can do a slack pack. And again, I’m just so thankful to be here tonight. I’m absolutely exhausted from the hike today, and I think if I tried to get back on the trail tomorrow with a full pack, my legs would probably just buckle under me. So I’m super glad to be doing a slack pack tomorrow and staying here in a real bed tonight.

[Wife note: And for anyone who’s interested, here were some of the more unhinged and/or confusing AI image results I got…]

On Second Thought

It’s Technical

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