On Second Thought

I woke up on the morning of August 31 after a delightful night's sleep at the Pine Ellis hostel. And I'd arranged for a shuttle to take me back to where I’d gotten picked up at Grafton Notch so I could do a 10-mile slack pack over Bald Pate Mountain.

And the day before, I’d gotten a ride from a guy named Iron Mike, who’s a retired landscaper who lives in the area and drives hikers all over the place. Normally, the person who drives the shuttle for the Pine Ellis hostel is a nice older lady named Gloria. The Pine Ellis hostel is kind of an interesting operation, because Miss Eileen owns the house, Miss Gloria is the shuttle driver, and Miss Naomi — who is Gloria's sister — is sort of the scheduler and operations person. So these three little ladies who are all retired widowers work together to run the hostel, and they're just nice as can be. It's just a great place.

Every day, Eileen sets up the coffee pot for the hostel for the following morning, and there's a sign next to it that says something like The first person awake, please turn on the coffee pot. And every night, Naomi bakes a bunch of muffins for the guests at the hostel, and then Gloria brings them in with her in the morning when she comes in to start shuttling hikers around. So there's always fresh coffee and muffins in the kitchen in the mornings, which is nice.

Double Stuff and Donkey Kong have been staying at the Pine Ellis for a couple days now, because Donkey Kong hasn't been feeling very well, and they've been taking a few zeros. At this point, they've practically taken up residence here. So Double Stuff has been getting up and turning the coffee maker on. At about 7:15, I went down to the kitchen and had a cup of coffee with her. There weren't many people at Pine Ellis the night before, but supposedly, a lot more would be coming throughout the day.

After breakfast, Gloria drove me to Grafton Notch, which was about 30 minutes away. I didn't realize it was so far, but apparently, it's much further than usual right now, because there's a bridge out that was knocked out by a storm a couple years ago. So you have to go way out of your way to get around that and back to the trailhead. We had a nice chat during the drive.

I happened to get dropped off at the same time, oddly enough, as Groovy, Half Boot, and Micro, but they all had full packs and full resupplies, whereas I had just a tiny backpack with my lunch, a jacket, and a first aid kit. So I went ahead and didn't see them again for the rest of the day, because I could move a lot faster.

It was a cloudy morning, so when I got to the peak of Bald Pate, there wasn't much of a view. Up there, I bumped into another group of incoming freshmen from Colby College, and they seem to be in much better spirits than the Old Speck group had been, because they had a much, much easier hike. They were having a good laugh about that.

There isn't actually much to discuss about the hike, because I had a very light pack, it was only 10 miles, and fortunately, once you’ve gotten to Grafton Notch, the remainder of the trail in Maine is not nearly as challenging as the first part. I mean, there are certainly challenging portions of it, but as a whole, the terrain gets a lot easier — until you get to Baxter State Park and have to go up Katahdin, of course.

I made it down to the pickup spot by about 2 o'clock. I actually could have gotten there a little earlier, but I took my time. Along the way, I met a guy named Lynx, who was headed to the Pine Ellis hostel and had coincidentally scheduled a pickup at about the same time as I had. So we both made it to the hostel by 3 o'clock, which was fantastic.

It had rained a little bit on the trail during the day — nothing too bad — but once we got back to Pine Ellis, the skies really opened up. So Donkey Kong, Double Stuff, and Lynx and I were just hanging out on the porch, waiting for the rain to stop so we could get over to the Mills Market and get some food. And while we were sitting there, Donkey Kong was texting with people and happened to mention that he was texting with Astronaut. And those of you who have been following this blog might remember that I hiked with Astronaut and his crew for a little while.

So I told Donkey Kong to tell Astronaut I said hi, and about two minutes later, I got a text from Astronaut myself. He was about 30 miles ahead, but he said he's really taking his time and trying to soak up as much of the trail experience as he can along the way. So there's a chance I could catch up to him before Katahdin. He was talking about possibly summitting about the same time as me. I really hope I can catch up with him and maybe do the 100 Mile Wilderness with him. That would be a really nice way to finish the trail. Let's hope that comes to fruition.

Shortly after that, Rainbow called me, and he's actually been calling me pretty regularly, because I'm a couple days ahead of him now, and he's wanting to get intelligence on what he's about to encounter on the trail. So Rainbow and I talked for a little while, which was fun.

Finally, the rain stopped, and we all went over to Mills Market. This was on a Saturday night, and the place was an absolute zoo. It's just the hub of activity for the town of Andover. It's kind of a funny place. It probably belongs in a sitcom. I ordered myself another sandwich and got a few things to eat for the next day, because I’d decided that afternoon to do another slack pack. You know, my knees were feeling weak and kind of worn out, and why not? I’m gearing up for a stretch to the finish when I’ll be literally in the wilderness for almost a full week, so I figured I might as well do another slack and spend another night at Pine Ellis. That evening, I hung out a little more on the porch with Donkey Kong and Double Stuff and eventually went to bed.

When I got up this morning, I went down to use the restroom, and my knees were still feeling fairly stiff. And a couple had come yesterday afternoon who were talking about just skipping the next 10-mile section. Donkey Kong and Double Stuff had already done that section, and they were saying that there's nothing remarkable about it. It's just 10 miles of not particularly challenging and not particularly noteworthy trail. So as I was hobbling my way back from the restroom, I made the judgment call to take a zero today instead of slack packing and just skip those 10 miles.

If I skip over that section and give myself the day to rest my knees some more and recover from my general soreness from the Whites and the Mahoosucs, I could stay on schedule and still get to Baxter State Park when I need to. It just feels like it would be much better for my body to do that. So technically, as I’m recording this, I should be out slack packing, but instead, I’m sitting on the front lawn of the Pine Ellis hostel enjoying the shade and a small breeze.

Actually, it's funny. A bunch of the hikers here were talking about the fact that so many people who are thru-hiking the AT skip sections here and there for various reasons, and it's just something that people do. It's fine. Hike your own hike and all that. But no one seems to like to talk about it or own it. But I'm like, All right, whatever. You know, I need to take some time off to recover a bit, and I don't want to lose the day, so I'll just skip ahead. I wouldn’t skip anything that's meaningful, but if I can skip over a boring 10-mile stretch and not get behind by a day and save my knees a bit, I'll go ahead and do it. And really, all the extra miles hikers do to get to and from off-trail water sources and shelters and down to the road and such ultimately make up for the occasional skip here and there, so personally, I think it’s fine.

Earlier today, Hootie, Not Yet, and Bouge showed up at the hostel. It was nice to see them all again. I met Not Yet and Bouge way back in New York at the Lost and Found hostel in Greenwood Lake, and S. actually met Hootie when she and her friends were doing some Trail Magic at Beagle Gap in Shenandoah National Park. So I guess I’m keeping a reasonably similar schedule to those guys.

Later in the day, a group of ladies arrived, one of whom is named Tripping Turtle, and I met her at High Point State Park in New Jersey. It’s kind of funny how all of us are sort of converging on Maine at the same time. So Tripping Turtle and her crew — that's four. Bouge and Hootie and Not Yet — that's another three. Add me, and we're up to eight. And then Lynx is here again today. And so are Donkey Kong and Double Stuff. That's 11 hikers who are staying here tonight, versus two nights ago, when it was was just me and Donkey Kong and Double Stuff. The kind of ebb and flow at Pine Ellis is interesting to watch.

For tomorrow, I'm planning on going full pack, and I'll just resume the trail where I would have left off slack packing today, had I gone ahead with that. And for the rest of the afternoon today, I'm just going to try to relax and get my mind straight and rest my knees and organize my gear and all that fun stuff.

One of the things I'm kind of struggling with right now is that I have enough food to do a four-night, five-day trip from here to the Maine Roadhouse, which is just an iconic hostel. And I want to get to the Maine Roadhouse on September 5, but if I hike from campsite to campsite, I’ll get there on the 4th, and those would be some long days. When I was hiking between Trident Col and Full Goose a couple days ago, there was a campsite every 5 miles, so I had lots of options. But starting tomorrow, the campsites are about 17 miles apart, so just going from one to the next is a lot more challenging.

Actually, there's a campsite tomorrow about 8 miles, and then the next one is at 17, but I'm not going to do just 8 miles. Maybe the sites being further apart like that is a clue that the terrain is a lot easier. I’ve heard some reports that that’s the case. At any rate, I'm going to try to cover the full 17 miles tomorrow. And if it looks like it's getting late before I reach the campsite, I'll just find water and stealth camp somewhere. We'll see how it goes.