Friday, 7/31

AT Miles = 14.8 / 1655.4
Other Miles = 0 / 54.1
Total Miles = 14.8 / 1698.6

Miles to Katahdin = 522.9

Rain. Goodness but it rained!

It started a couple of hours before I left town, and didn't stop until after I had set up camp for the night. In between, I waded and wallowed, slogged and sloshed, squished and squelched my way up the trail.

Apparently the Green Mountain Club has initiated some experiment in multi-modal backwoods recreation, whereby certain parts of the trail are meant to be walked, and other parts are meant to be navigated via white water kayak. I guess I just never got the memo, and I spent the day hiking the GMC kayak course. I lost count of the times I stepped in mud and water deeper than my boots. It didn't matter though, as my boots had long ago reached the point of maximum saturation where any additional water just squished out the top.

My goal for the day was Little Rock Pond, but it took me 8 hours of hiking to cover the less than 15 miles to Lost Pond Shelter, and being after 5:00PM I called it quits here.

The ground here is just flowing with water everywhere. It has rained so much, so often, that there is simply no place for the water to go. The ground is completely saturated. With these conditions, I am glad I use a hammock and not a tent.

Here's hoping for drier weather tomorrow.

—
"Home is where I hang my food bag"

Monkeywrench
Allen Freeman
allen@allenf.com
www.allenf.com
allenf.blogspot.com