Lovely, cold morning. After eating a hot breakfast and fixing my bear line problems, we prepared to ford the river. It wasn't too deep or far across, but it was cold, and the rocks were a bit slippery. The key is to go slow and carefully (and wear crocs). So we did (Boss wore flip flops). And we made it fine. The cold water definitely helped wake us up more!
We stopped in quickly to the shelter nearby and said good morning to Rainbow, Stryder and Farmer John. After hiking a few miles and seeing a train, we rock-hopped and took a break at a stream. Then it was up up up to the mountain-before-Barren mountain where the view was excellent. We startled some sort of moose-like animal in the woods on the way up, but I was unable to determine just exactly what it was since the woods were so thick. (It seemed like a moose though.)
We caught up with Sourdough and Sweet Dough and had lunch there with them. Master Chief stopped in, too. We were all stunned by the gorgeous view we had up there. (The lake in the photo is the geographical center of Maine!) The sun was out. Soft breeze. Lunch. Freeman swung by, heading south (he had flip flopped in Kent, Connecticut - where I saw him last). We all chatted and stared out at the mountains and lakes in the sun. It was beautiful. And it marked the "100 miles left" spot. Wow.
We left and hiked up and over Barren mountain, then down/up/down/up over four little mountains. I slipped and fell at one point, but it wasn't too bad. Just stressed out the ole left knee again. We hiked through a bog where we saw a few pitcher plants (photo - they fill up with water and somehow lower the viscosity of the water so that insects that can normally float on the service will sink to the bottom. The pitcher plants digest insects, and they look pretty cool. Thanks to Freeman for the info!) We got to the Chairback Lean-to around 5:30pm and made dinner. We wanted to shave off a few more miles from tomorrow's mileage, and stopping to eat while it was light out made it easier to night-hike, if it came to that. We said goodnight to Master Chief after getting water and pressed on.
Up on Chairback Mountain, we caught a setting sun and a lovely beginning to the evening. We walked out on the ledge and got to see the silhouettes of the mountains on the pink sky. It was quite rocky for the next mile, so there was nowhere to camp. After we slowly made it down the mountain, it got muddy... and dark. We whipped out our headlamps for the second day in a row and hiked another mile or so through a lot of scratchy brush, then mud, until we finally found a good spot.
We had already eaten, so all we needed to do was set up camp and go to bed. Nice and quick and ready to sleep. Now that we know we want to summit on the 23rd, we've worked out our daily mileages for the rest of the trip. Tomorrow will be the biggest day in the wilderness with White Cap mountain (the last real mountain before Katahdin), but pretty big miles on the remaining flat terrain till the end. I think I'm ready to be done... Only 85.8 miles left...
(19mi 8st)
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