Monday, 9\/7 Labor Day<\/p>\n
AT Miles = 10.3 \/ 1921.8
Other Miles = 0.1 \/ 60.0
Total Miles = 10.4 \/ 1981.8<\/p>\n
I haven't slackpacked since those two days back in Massachusetts when Jodi came out and slackpacked me. Boy, is it nice!<\/p>\n
I had arranged for a 7:00AM shuttle from the hostel back to Grafton Notch, so I set the alarm on my cell phoneto go off at 5:15. By 5:30 I was seated at the counter of the local breakfast place ordering up a hot, cooked breakfast. So much better than the cold cereal or instant oatmeal I eat when I am camping.<\/p>\n
By 7:45 I was starting my hike up the south side of Baldpate Mtn. With only a light day pack on even climbing a mountain was almost a joy. I stopped at Baldpate Shelter to look through the shelter register and see when some of the people I know came through here, and to refill my water bottle. Pushing on, I got to the summit of Baldpate around 10:00. The mountain is aptly named as the top is mostly a dome of naked rock. It was fun walking up it on this nice dry day, but it surely would be a different story in wet weather, or something like a freezing fog! That would make it suicidal.<\/p>\n
Somehow I ended up being the only person at the summit and I stayed there for about an hour. It was wonderfully quiet. All I could hear was the wind blowing, and the occasional fly buzzing around. I could hear no cars, no trucks, no lawnmowers, chainsaws, or airplanes. How wonderful!<\/p>\n
I took advantage of the cell phone reception up there and spent some time talking to Jodi back home while lazing in the sunshine, then I called the hostel and told them I estimated I would finish the hike by 3:00PM and arranged for them to pick me up at that time.<\/p>\n
Leaving the summit of Baldpate I had to negotiate a few tricky sections going down the north side, but mostly I was actually hiking on a normnal hiking trail. How refreshing!<\/p>\n
I soon reached Frye Notch Leanto and stopped there for lunch. Lunch was a ham & cheese grinder I had ordered while I was earting breakfast this morning. Yum! It was now 12:30 and I had 4.6 miles left to hike. Based on my experience over the last few days, there was no way I was going to make it in time. But those standards didn't apply here. I made great time on the relatively easytrail, and by 2:00PM I had reached the stream crossing in Dunn Notch. At the same time, I caught up with another hiker staying at the hostel, and since he had a car parked at the road I called the hostel and canceled the scheduled shuttle. Half an hour latedr we were at the road, and another half hour after that we were back at the hostel, I was showered and changed into (relatively) clean clothes, and I had walked to the general store to buy beer and Ben & Jerrys ince cream. <\/p>\n
I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the front porch chatting with some of the other hikers, and with David, one of the proprietors.<\/p>\n
As a sideline, David makes jewelry out of moose droppings. Anybody out there want a nice pair of moose pellet earrings? David tried to convince me to buy a pair for my wife, but I am quite sure Jodi would not appreciate them. <\/p>\n
Maine is really beautiful, especially with the ideal weather we have enjoyed lately. I am afraid my fixation on my physical difficulties is overshadowing that and I am not giving youy a fair picture. In spite of all the difficulties, I do appreciate the beauty all around me. I guess I just wish it didn't hurt so much to get out there sometimes. Slackpacking takes a good deal of the physical difficulty away, and let's me appreciate it all the more. I expect to stay here at least another two days and get about 24 miles of trail done by slackpacking. I could keep slackpacking from here beyond that, but the shuttles get more and more expensive as I get farther away. I'll figure that out when the time comes.<\/p>\n
—
"Home is where I hang my food bag"<\/p>\n
Monkeywrench Monday, 9\/7 Labor Day AT Miles = 10.3 \/ 1921.8Other Miles = 0.1 \/ 60.0Total Miles = 10.4 \/ 1981.8 I haven't slackpacked since those two days back in Massachusetts when Jodi came out and slackpacked me. Boy, is it nice! I had arranged for a 7:00AM shuttle from the hostel back to Grafton Notch, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at_thru_hike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions\/308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/allenf.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Allen Freeman
allen@allenf.com<\/a>
www.allenf.com<\/a>
allenf.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"