Pretend View
So this morning (September 9), I woke up at Pierce Pond campsite with a relatively long hiking day ahead of me. It was pretty cold when my alarm went off, so I ended up hitting snooze a few times. My goal was to hike 19 miles today, and I was on the trail by a little before 7:30. The terrain was supposed to be a little more challenging today than yesterday, but definitely nothing extreme.
The big excitement of the day was going to be crossing the Kennebec River. Pierce Pond is the last campsite before the crossing. The Kennebec is wide and pretty fast flowing, which means it’s not safe for hikers to ford it on foot. So I don't know exactly who pays for this service, but there’s a canoe operator who shuttles hikers across the Kennebec every day between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. Apparently, after 2 p.m., the dam that’s upstream sometimes releases water, and that can create quite a hefty current and particularly unsafe conditions.
I got down to the Kennebec at about 9 o'clock, and there were already some hikers waiting to cross. One of them was Sleepy Joe, and another was a hiker named 11. I’d actually met 11 at High Point State Park in New Jersey. Sleepy Joe and 11 went across first. And then two guys named Hurricane and Lobo crossed, with Lobo’s dog, Indiana. [Wife note: I zoomed in on the dog’s tag, and his full name is Indiana Bones!]
And then Lost and Found and I went third. The way it works is that the canoe operator brings two hikers over at a time, so someone sits in front and paddles, someone else sits in the middle, and the canoe operator sits in the back. I ended up sitting in the middle.
Note the white blaze
The Kennebec River is super low right now, but the current is pretty rapid. The operator was remarking on how low the water was. It's been pretty dry in Maine, so I'm sort of thanking my lucky stars about that. Wet weather in Maine equals lots and lots of mud and just miserable hiking conditions. So I guess that the hot, dry summer we all experienced is kind of paying dividends now, because we're not having to deal with a ton of extra mud or super high river crossings, which have been a problem for some hikers in the past.
[WN: I believe this pup belongs to the canoe operator.]
About 10 miles into the day, I hiked over Pleasant Pond Mountain, which is kind of a mountain in the middle of nowhere. It's only about 2,400 feet, but maybe because I’ve gotten used to hiking at a pretty low elevation lately, it ended up feeling like sort of a tough climb. But the views at the top were lovely, and apparently, on a very clear day, which we kind of had, you can see Katahdin. Salamander and I were up on the peak together, but we couldn't tell where we should be looking to see Katahdin, so we just pretended we saw it.
From there, I started hiking down, and I was getting really tired at that point, so I was just going to stealth camp. But unfortunately — or maybe fortunately? I don't know — there were no good stealth spots, so I had to keep walking. Luckily, the trail wasn't too challenging, so I ended up making it all the way to the Bald Mountain campsite, which was a good 19 miles. When I arrived, I heard some hikers chatting in their tent and knew it was Donkey Kong and Double Stuff, because they've got very thick Southern Georgia accents. I didn't bother them, though. I’ll wait till the morning to see them.
I didn't get here until close to 6:30, and it was already getting dark. I saw that Sleepy Joe was here, so I set my tent up next to his. I ate a quick dinner, and now I’m going to listen to a podcast and probably be asleep before it’s done.
