Elevation and land, not the same

Archify this publication in the huge category of things that I did not completely appreciate before setting foot in the 114 days. As the usual readers will know, I am a planner, I do not love surprises and evaluate all the risks before making a decision. So I did a lot of investigations, I read the books, I spoke with former hikers, I made ready and reviewed them more than twice, sought by Soul, to be really ready for these indulgent six -month holiday. What New Hampshire (and Pennsylvania) taught me and Maine is being reinforced in a powerful way: the terrain is not absolutely the same as elevation and can hit you flat, even with good weather. This week included the strenuous section of 30 miles, including Mahosuc notch, which caused all other land to look like a paved road. All photographic credits this week: plus one.

To the box score

• Friendly People – 166/166
• Interesting wild creatures: frogs and toads!
• Errors – 0
• Injury report: Fortunately, there is no news!

Something curious happens at this point on a walk: hikers to the north and south begin to collide (not literally, mostly) and the conversations change. Nobo hikers have a mixture of sadness and emotion when they cross Maine’s border because they have worked very hard to get here and the beauty of the rest promises to be spectacular, but they are not necessarily ready for holidays to end. Sobo hikers have just completed the section of the path that is the most remote and strenuous: they love to talk about it and are very excited to reach the «cruise ships». On both sides, an emotion renewed for what will come.

However, the people who will remember the most of this section are the experts in the day. They are approximately 30 miles of extremely difficult land among us 2 in Gorham and me 26 near Bethel. Most hikers take 3 days to make their way through the mixture of rocks that dirty the road. We met a handful of hikers/runners who completed the distance in one day. Two had started at 4:30 am and expected to end head lamps after the sun set; Two trusted that they would be at the end despite the fact that one had fallen 30 feet in an ambitious fight for some high rocks. Two of them had bleeding wounds that had not bothered to stop and dress. These people are at a completely different level of suffering.

As the border crosses towards Maine, the amount of beautiful mountain ponds increases dramatically, so the call of the Toro frogs becomes a daily experience. Together with that, we saw a great increase in the amount of toads along the way, many jump creatures!

We take special care to avoid errors and injuries this week, given the land, very happy to inform the success here.

It wasn’t just Mahosuc

I guess him MAINE APPALACHIAN TRAIL CLUB (Matc) does not want the northern hikers to lose the challenges of New Hampshire, since they cross the border or perhaps it is only a one -time game between these two states, but in any case they serve some of the most difficult in the field in the first 30 miles. Mahosuc Notch is the area that receives all the attention because it is a mile of randomly scattered car size on the landscape without a clear brand of the best way to navigate. In addition, one and I took about two hours to travel through this section and in the end we were very ready to finish. I appreciated all the warnings of the land to come so that we could plan our day in the right way. We review it with beautiful sunny skies and we could not have asked for better conditions.

What arose as a surprise were the other sections of land that required us to save our posts and raise upside down (and down) huge rocks and rock faces. The AT is extremely well documented: most hikers use Farout or the data book to understand the knowledgeable things on the path. On any day, I can tell you with reasonable precision how many miles I will travel, how much elevation will win and how much loss of elevation. I love knowing these things, it helps me feel prepared. However, the land is different, because it cannot be measured. The terrifying rise of a person is the informal walk of another person. The comments that describe the terrain are notoriously terrible, so he learns to rule out most of what is written as a fear. I think that hikers need a better way to understand the difficulty of the land because comments such as «do not do this in the rain» or «do not lower that slope unless they have rescue insurance» are not useful at all. I want to know things as if it is an escalation of hands and feet or if the balance is spooky. Applications such as FARAUT can provide these descriptors through the crowd source without free text comments that are so subjective. However, I enjoyed most of the unexpected rock escalation that we address this week. The only thing that worried me a bit was the rise by Baldpate East Peak, but the views were worth 100% of my panic moments.

This was the first of several «caves» that were the best path through Mahosuc Notch.

In Mahosuc Notch, sometimes you upload the roots of the trees to reach the top of the rocks.

This is your humble author who strives a lot not to fall a complicated descent from Goose Eye.

This descent through the old Mota is really as steep as it looks, and despite being an extremely adherent land, it was still quite combed.

It is difficult to appreciate how steep it is this face of rock, but it is very clearly covered with slippery lichens without hand retention.

This type of land requires hands and feet to climb it!

The Alpine swamp is a new type of land delivered especially for hikers by the state of Maine. Some swamps have useful tables on them; others not so much.

Fried for breakfast

I promised in an early blog post that I would not write about food, poop or rain and mostly I have attached to that rule unless there was an opportunity to tell stories that made it impossible to resist. I have been selfless to track my body weight along the way because I am doing everything possible to eat large amounts of nutritious and dense foods in calories. Blue Bear helps a lot with this and I am very happy with how strong I feel as a result of paying close attention to what. What made some of my food options this week feel a bit out of place, in addition to pouring avocado oil into my cold ditch dinners, it seemed correct to have fried as my gift after breakfast. Actually, is it ever too early on fried day?

Curiosities of the path

Oh, silly hikers! It is a well -known tradition that through hikers mark the main miles by organizing natural elements in the form of the relevant numbers. When one and I encountered this, we only thought that I was marking the achievement of 600 miles from someone. But when you look more closely, you see that it is «peanut» spells in alces pellets, a poop. And he left me wondering, did the hiker use his hands for that? And who was the creative genius behind this?

Remember to look for beauty

Maine is famous for her blueberries and appear in large quantities throughout AT. They were perfect, without any intervention of people. The trick was to get to them before other hikers gathered them clean and several creatures that enjoy them!

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