Day 158: The End is Near!

August 12: It rained most of the night but stopped by morning. The tree snot, however, would continue to fall a bit longer, but it wasn't too bad.

I wanted to get an early 6:00 start but I delayed my departure a half hour or so because the sun had such trouble burning through the clouds and it wasn't light enough to take any photos. It was still on a dark side when I finally left, but was quickly brightening by that point.

The weather was persistently overcast obscuring views of Katahdin, although I did get a small peak of the top across this lake. That ridgeline above the clouds, it's Katahdin!

The trail was largely flat but unlike yesterday, I didn't make good time over it due to all of the roots, rocks and mud. Perhaps the overnight rain ruined the trail, but it was absolutely awful today.

The weather stayed overcast and depression for most of the day, obscuring viewpoints of Katahdin in the distance. Late in the day it started burning off and turned into a more joyful walk, but even then Katahdin stayed elusively in the clouds. I wondered which thru-hikers were hiking up it today. Undoubtedly, there were some. They definitely didn't get any views, though, which has got to be a little disappointing after coming so far.

Since weather forecasts looked promising, I stopped to camp between shelters at the Rainbow Lake Campsite and was dismayed to see what seemed like a dozen or two people who had already set up camp. It was going to be crowded here! I was tempted to push on and find somewhere else to camp, but it was nearing sunset and I wanted to be near a location with a view of the sky, and the edge of Rainbow Lake had a very nice view of the sky.

I set up camp, next to the trail at a slightly open area where the AT crossed the path to the lake a hundred feet away. It wasn't ideal ground, slightly sloped, but it's all that was available.

The reason I was so insistent on camping at or near a good view of the sky was because of the Perseid Meteor Shower which was expected to peak tonight. The skies had cleared up nicely and I was far away from cities, small and large alike. The nigh-time skies are spectacular and I wanted to take full advantage of it during the meteor shower. =)

I went to sleep at my normal time but at around 2:00 in the morning, I woke up and quietly walked out to the edge of the lake. A couple of people were already there, and I asked how the meteor shower was going.

"It's amazing!" they gushed. Talking didn't feel like the right thing to do, though, and we quickly fell silent and just enjoyed the views. They soon left and I was by myself again.

The meteor shower was absolutely wonderful! From my edge at the lake, the horizon was wide open towards the north which isn't the ideal direction to face, but I was still seeing a shooting star or two every minute. Swoosh! Swoosh!

I watched for about a half hour before slinking back to my campsite. I did need some sleep, after all. Even through the small hole in the tree canopy where I camped I could still see the occasional shooting star, so I would watch that small window to the sky whenever I woke up during the night. I slept well. =)

Somewhere out there, a trail maintainer is laughing at us.

The trail was bad! Bad, I tell you! Flat, but bad!

Several of us stop for a quick snack break at this shelter--just in case it decided to rain. (But it didn't!)

Young Blood admires the view from Nesuntabunt Mountain.

Got the canoes at this pond, but I couldn't find any paddles. Oh, well!

The Rainbow Stream Lean-to is unusual for its floor.....

It's got a 'baseball bat' floor! Which is fine, I suppose, if you have a lot of padding. It's more problematic for people like me that don't carry a pad to sleep on. =) Just another reason not to use the shelter tonight!

This is me nearing the end of my 2015 thru-hike.
I was pretty excited to find this little log, because
I remembered it from my previous thru-hike!

This is my nearing the end of my 2003 thru-hike.
Can you spot any differences? =)

This is Good Man, who I met for the first time at the Rainbow Stream Lean-to mere minutes before this photo was taken. He has an unusual way of carrying water... by attaching them to his trekking poles! It seems like it would be awkward to me, making the trekking poles top-heavy and weird to use, but I'm not going to criticize. Nope.... if he could hike all of the way from Springer Mountain to here with water bottles arranged like that, it obviously works for him! But I was fascinated with it because it was so different than anything I'd ever seen before.

Young Blood gives his feet a soak.

The trail follows alongside Rainbow Lake for quite a while and late in the day, the sun came out again! Katahdin, however, stubbornly refused to come out to play. That's Katahdin hiding in those clouds. It's big enough that it generates its own weather system!

Sunset over Rainbow Lake.... get ready for the Perseid Meteor Shower!

Day 157: A Ghost In the Night

August 11: Late in the night, a lone hiker arrived at the shelter. I had been dead asleep upon her arrival, and she quietly set up in the shelter at the opposite end as me. I didn't get a good look at her and, in fact, didn't even realize it was a her until the next morning when the other fellow in the shelter told me that. Being so late and dark, I didn't say anything. I figured I'd introduce myself properly in the morning when we started waking up.

Except when I woke up, she was already gone. She managed to slip away before dawn without my even noticing. A ghost in the night. Later in the morning when the other guy in the shelter told me it was a woman, things started clicking in my head.

Anish stayed true to her "ghost" moniker, arriving long after dark and leaving well before sunrise. I'd have thought I'd imagined her if it wasn't for the other guy in the shelter who assured me that I hadn't. =)

I had heard rumors that someone "big" in the hiking community was planning to do something "big" on the Appalachian Trail, although details were scarce. I'd learn more about Anish later, setting a new AT unsupported speed record a month or two later. And although I never talked to this person or even recognized it as a woman, I'm absolutely convinced it was her. She was the ghost that fleetingly stopped in our shelter for the night.

Later, I'd learn when she finished the trail and the new record she set, and I counted back to when she would have started the trail which would have put her directly around this location. The fact that she arrived so late in the night and left so early in the morning--you have to do that if you're going to be setting speed records on the trail. In all of my years of backpacking, I'd never seen anyone arrive so late then immediately leave so early. And it was a woman, hiking alone. It had to be her.

I'm a little disappointed now that I didn't talk to her when she first arrived, but I hadn't exactly been looking for her on the trail and I had no reason to expect she'd be gone before I woke up again in the morning. I'm not even all that into record-setting hoopla. I don't really mind that people like to set records, but I'm not terribly interested in them myself.

No, but I had another connection with her: She had thru-hiked the AT in 2003 and that was the first time I met before. Before she was famous. Before she had set any PCT records. And here we were, crossing paths 12 years later on the trail where I first met her. It would have been fun reminiscing about our time on the trail in 2003, and I completely missed it.

When I read in Backpacker magazine the article A Ghost Among Us, it says she did the triple crown of trails without fanfare and at an "unremarkable pace." Which made me laugh at the time because the only reason I did remember her was for her very remarkable pace! But admittedly, without fanfare. I had crossed paths with her in Connecticut--or rather, she caught up with me in Connecticut after doing a 20+ mile day. I reached the shelter late in the evening and she was already there having passed me early in the day when I went into Kent to resupply. I had assumed she was in the for the night, but no, she wanted to get a few more miles in and stretch her legs a bit more. Even then I didn't think too much of it, until she told me her start date with more than a months after my own start date. She must have been averaging 25 or 30 miles per day! Holy crap! I'd talked to her for all of about five minutes before she continued on, wanting to stretch her legs a bit more for the day despite the fact she'd already done more than 20 miles that day and dusk was around the corner. It made an impression on me. *nodding* Little did I know that she'd later be setting new speed records on the AT or PCT.

So I was a little disappointed to realize I had missed her this time around. Even more so to realize how close I was actually seeing her--we shared a shelter together!--but not really seeing her. I don't know if she remembers me or not from 2003 since our meeting was so unremarkable, although she did comment on my stamp having seeing it in the register for over a thousand miles so if she remembers me, that would be the reason. The stamp. She probably had no idea I was thru-hiking the AT again myself, but I wondered if she'd start seeing my stamp in the shelter registers and put two-and-two together and realize it's the same person or not. But now I'll never know....

Anyhow! Enough about the ghost that I failed to meet! =)

The trail, finally, started becoming easy again. Oh, it was still muddy with lots of slick and slippery roots, but the steep climbs and drops had come to an end and I moved quickly and (relatively) easily over the trail. It was wonderfully freeing! By 3:30 in the afternoon, I had covered a whopping 23.1 miles, my first 20+ mile day in a month and my second longest day of the entire trail! And by 3:30 in the afternoon! I could still get in several more miles before dark if I really needed to!

But I didn't, mostly because the weather took a turn for the worse. Dark and ugly clouds rolled in, and the air was heavy with moisture. It was going to rain--I'd bet the farm on that. And I wanted to get into a shelter before that happened.

Near the end of my day's hike, I passed by Antlers Campsite. I stopped at the privy to take a photo of the double-seater privy known as "Fort Relief," and not 30 seconds past that I caught sight of a bear running across the trail, maybe 50 feet ahead of me.

A bear! A bear! It was running fast and nothing more than a blur, and even though I had my camera already in my hand having just taken a photo of Fort Relief, I couldn't get it up and aimed in time for a photo. The bear was a flash, and gone as fast as it arrived.

But I saw a bear! Which pumped me up because bear sightings are always fun. =)

But it looked like a rather small bear, somewhere between a cub and a full-grown bear. I was a little concerned that maybe it was closer to being a cub than a full-grown bear and, if so, then where was mama bear? I stopped in my tracks and looked around, waiting to see if mama bear might have been following behind.

But I saw nothing else.

"Hello!" I said into the woods. "Anymore bears out there?!"

Nothing.

"I just want to pass through on the trail! Please don't freak out and attack me! I'm just passing through and minding my own buisness!"

Still nothing.

I continued down the trail, walking slowly and deliberately hoping not to startle any other bears in the brush, and after a few minutes when I felt like I was away from the danger zone, pick up my pace again.

By the time I arrived at the shelter, a light misty kind of rain had started so I was a bit wet, but the heavy rain held off until I was safely in the shelter.

In the 100-Mile Wilderness, I got it in my head to start writing "confessions" in many of the shelter registers calling it my "100 miles of confessions." I don't remember what all I wrote in all of them, but it included such interesting tidbits as my being the love child of Jimmy Carter but I had been paid hush money not to talk about it.
I don't remember what I wrote in which registers because I didn't really keep track of that, but I do remember writing in this register that I had accidentally burned it down during my 2003 thru-hike. The reason this stuck out in my head was because when I wrote that, I was a little concerned that what if the shelter had burned down in 2003 by persons unknown and now they had "proof" it was me? I'd hate to be busted for something I really didn't do, but it seemed like the chances of it having burned down in 2003 were extraordinarily low. I'm sure there was a shelter somewhere on the trail that burned down in 2003--it seems like shelters burn down with surprising regularity--but the chances of it being this one seemed very low.

But the real reason this register entry stand out in my head is the privy--which looked like a little log cabin. Very cute! And I made some sort of comment about "You did a great job rebuilding the shelter, and I really like what you did with the privy! Top notch!" Or something to that effect. The privy even had toilet paper--about two dozen rolls of it. Usually, you have to use your own.

So I wrote, confessing to accidentally burning down the shelter for some stupid reason. Then drew my last maze. Having arrived at 3:30 in the afternoon, I had a lot of time to kill, so I drew my third and last maze in the shelter register title "Help the Tortuga find Katahdin!" I'll let you work that out of your own, though. =)

And Katahdin.... I had less than 50 miles to go to the end of the trail now. The fun and games would soon be coming to an end.....

Lots of lakes in Maine!

Beaver dam!

Jo-Mary Lake

Fort Relief is a two-seater privy. What is up with Maine and their two-seater privies?! If I'm remembering correctly, this is now the third two-seater privy I've seen in Maine! This privy also had a register (also something only seen in Maine), but the pages were torn up and scattered around the privy. I don't think I'll sign it!

It was here where I saw a small bear run across the trail. A bear! A bear!

Home for the night at the Potaywadjo Spring Lean-to, which would be quite full tonight! Most of the hikers were out for a few days, though--not many thru-hikers around anymore. Northbound or southbound! Some, but not a lot!

One of the cutest and nicest privies of the trail! =) It even had a dozen+ rolls of toilet paper inside.

The last Tortuga maze of the trail. (If you click on it, you can show a larger version of it and solve it yourself.)

e knew that she’d hiked the Appalachian Trail, Continental Divide Trail, and Pacific Crest Trail (the Triple Crown of hiking) once before, but without fanfare and at an unremarkable pace. - See more at: http://www.backpacker.com/trips/long-trails/pacific-crest-trail/a-ghost-among-us/#sthash.mWh00J2P.dpuf

Some knew that she’d hiked the Appalachian Trail, Continental Divide Trail, and Pacific Crest Trail (the Triple Crown of hiking) once before, but without fanfare and at an unremarkable pace. - See more at: http://www.backpacker.com/trips/long-trails/pacific-crest-trail/a-ghost-among-us/#sthash.mWh00J2P.dpuf"

Day 156: The Gulf Hagas Detour

August 10: I got another early start to the day. The very first thing I had to do in the morning was ford the west branch of the Pleasant River. Normally, I'm too lazy to take off my shoes to ford a creek barefoot, but since I had--quite literally--camped right beside it, I didn't have to take off my shoes to cross barefoot. I just didn't put them on!

First obstacle on the trail today: the west branch of the Pleasant River. (Notice the Gold Bond I sprinkled in my shoes? I was totally ready to put my shoes on.... just as soon as I got to the other side!)

The water was cold and the river bottom slippery and full of rocks so I went slow, taking my time and trying to be careful not to slip. It was a little awkward to cross, not just because of the bear feet, but also because I was carrying my shoes in one of my hands that would have otherwise been used to grab my trekking pole and help balance me while walking through the creek.

I made it to the other side without any mishaps, then sat down on a bench to put on my shoes and shoes for the day.

Shortly therefore, I reached the trail junction for the Gulf Hagas. The Gulf Hagas is often described as the "Grand Canyon of Maine" and is known for its multitude of scenic waterfalls. I skipped by it during my first thru-hike since it's not actually part of the Appalachian Trail, but I've already regretted that decision. When would I ever have a chance to visit it again?

So this time around, I intended to take the side trip. The Gulf Hagas loop would add an extra 5.2 miles of hiking--which is not insignificant!--although it would allow me to reconnect with the AT 0.7 miles down that trail so overall, I'd be hiking an extra 4.5 miles. And switching out a relatively boring 0.7 miles for a spectacular 5.2 miles was totally worth the trade-off! When would I get the opportunity to see the Gulf Hagas again? I already told Amanda to shoot me before allowing me thru-hike the Appalachian Trail for a third time, so it's not like I can do it next time! =)

The connecting trail required a short ford, and I started following the trail past a serious of waterfalls. The trail itself stayed along the rim of the Gulf Hagas and almost none of the wataerfalls are actually visible directly from it. You have to go off the trail a short ways to the viewpoints where the views were located. Some of them were easy, but most of them required a fair amount of scrambling and the going was slow.

You can see Young Blood and Loon's camp on the other side of the river, where I had also camped for the night. Salty Dog is also camped there, but his tent was hidden in the trees to the left of the others and isn't visible in this photo.

And most of the waterfalls I found somewhat disappointing. They were nice, but they weren't nearly as large as I had imagined and the amount of effort scrambling up and down cliffs to get to them was infuriatingly slow. And every ten minutes or so, there would be another side trail for another view or waterfalls, and I'd loyally go off to check it out.

It was kind of a relief when I finally covered the few miles to the head of the Gulf Hagas and the trail finally looped around to return to the AT. The loop back moved away from the Gulf Hagas rim and wasn't as rugged as the trail along the rim making that part faster, but it was comparatively boring as well since it had no waterfalls or viewpoints. Just a walk through the woods.

The entire time, I never saw a single other hiker. I'd been told that the Gulf Hagas is filled with countless day hikers, as you'd expect from a 'Grand Canyon' of Maine, but I didn't see a single person the entire day. I knew most thru-hikers won't stop for a 5-mile detour so I wasn't surprised to see them, but not even any day hikers kind of surprised me. Perhaps it was just too early in the morning for them.

About three hours after I left the Appalachian Trail, I finally returned to it. The Gulf Hagas detour threw me far behind my self-imposed schedule for the day. I did not expect to take three hours to cover a mere 5 miles, but it was a rugged little detour.

Back on the trail, I didn't sit on my laurels very long because I wanted to make up for my lost time and pushed onward.

Later in the day, the trail passed a campsite--not a shelter, just a wilderness campsite--which I had no plans to stop at until I saw a sign saying that there was a register in the privy. A register... in the privy?! I had to go down to the privy and see for myself. That was too funny. =)

The Gulf Hagas is called the Grand Canyon of Maine is known for its abundance of waterfalls. I took photos of them. All of them. And you're going to see them all.... =)

While I was down there, I heard a couple of other hikers back at the campsite who seemed to be arguing with each other about something, but when I headed back up, I only saw one person sitting by himself. I guess the other hiker had already left. I didn't recognize the fellow and assumed he'd been hiking southbound and waved hello, and as I passed him walking back up the trail, I heard the argument break out again and saw the man arguing... with himself!

It was so bizarre! He'd shout something at himself, and reply in a slightly different voice. What the hell?! This was not a guy just talking to himself like everyone is prone to do. He was actually yelling at himself! It kind of freaked me out and I was happy to put some distance between us. I never saw him again after that, and good ridden!

Near the end of the day, the trail passed over White Cap Mountain, the last 'big' mountain before Katahdin peaking at 3,650 feet above sea level. The trail would, for the most part, settle about 500 feet above sea level for the rest of the hike. Three more times it would poke up above 1,000 feet, but never again peaking above 2,000 feet. Until the very end. Katahdin, where the trail would sore one last time over 5,000 feet above the surrounding terrain.

The reason I mention this is because Katahdin is a very large mountain surrounded by.... almost nothing. It dominates the landscape around it, and I figured that I was maybe 35 miles away as the crow flies.

So this is the first really good view thru-hikers tend to get of the end of the trail. You need a clear day, obviously, and I had it! Katahdin stood majestically in the distance. The end! If it wasn't feeling real before, it certainly does now.

I stopped for the day at Logan Brook Lean-to. My goal for the day had been the next shelter, but that was another 3.6 miles away and I just wouldn't be able to make it before dark. I was done for the day.

Two other hikers had set up a tent near the shelter but never came out of their tent so I never learned who they were. Late in the evening, a southbound hiker had arrived and joined me in the shelter. I didn't even remember to write his name down in my journal so I couldn't even tell you who he was, but at least he wasn't yelling at himself which is always a plus in my book! =)

Screw Auger Falls

Lower Falls

The Jaws

Buttermilk Falls

I'm not sure this waterfall is even big enough to have a name, because I didn't see any signs labeling it!

Billings Falls

Stair Falls

That was it for the waterfalls--now I had to look for the small marvels along the trail on my way back to the AT! =)

I took a quick snack break at the Carl A Newhall Lean-to.

You've got to be $#!^ing me! Sorry, I had to say it! =)

Well I'll be darned, there IS a register in the privy! I'm not sure I'd want to touch it, though....

What can I say? It was a good day for taking photos of mushrooms today! =)

View looking south (from where we came) from White Cap Mountain.

Viewing looking north from White Cap Mountain.... with the end of the trail now in sight! That's Katahdin in the distance! And just look at all that wonderful, flat terrain between me and the Big K! I was so looking forward to some flat, easy terrain....