Julie and I are hiking the Appalachian Trail in the US from Springer Mt, Georgia, to Mt Katahdin, Maine, in the north, a distance of almost 2,200 miles (3,540 km). Our journey will start in early May 2023 and is expected to take about five months. We will be mostly camping, carrying 3-5 days of supplies to get us between resupply points, where we will be staying in hostels/hotels/motels where we can. I hiked the entire Appalachian Trail back in 1986 so it will be interesting to see how much has changed and how much it has stayed the same.

Appalachian Trail - Day 125 - US Route 2 to Mt Success

Day: 125

Date: Sunday, 27 August 2023

Start:  US Route 2 (AT Mile 1900.0)

Finish:  Mt Success (AT Mile 1915.1)

Daily Kilometres:  22.5 (Ascent 5951', Descent 3550')

GPX Track:  Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos

Total Kilometres:  3130.4

Weather:  Mild, humid and partly sunny with some light showers.

Accommodation:  Tent

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Motel continental breakfast 

  Lunch:  Ham & cheese subs

  Dinner:  Rehydrated meals 

Aches:  Dave - left knee sore and some other niggles; Julie - nothing reported.

Highlight:  When we finally reached the summit of Mt Success (3565') in the late afternoon we had great views to the east, south and west, including to Mt Washington.

Lowlight:  So many candidates.  Our booked shuttle for 6:30am never turned up and wouldn't answer their phone, so we had to hitch-hike back to the trailhead which cost us some time.  The bogs were deep and unavoidable all day with Julie going in up to her calf on several occasions and Dave managing to go into mud that came up to mid-thigh.  We had 6000' of climbing on mostly steep technical terrain with packs loaded with five days of food.  When preparing our late dinner, Dave managed to knock over the full stove water container as it was about to be heated, saturating most of the dinner items along with some of his clothes.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

We turned up for the motel's continental breakfast right on 6:00am, when it opened, and were ready for our shuttle pickup at 6:30am.  The driver didn't arrive and wouldn't answer his phone.  We gave up and began hitch-hiking with little optimism given it was a quiet Sunday morning in a small town.  After about twenty minutes, a girl who had passed us returned and offered us a lift which was very kind (though her back seat was sopping wet so Dave started the day with a wet butt).

We began hiking around 7:30am with the expectation that the trail would be challenging based on various comments we had read and heard. Initially, it wasn't too bad as we climbed onto the Mahoosuc Range, but soon we were dealing with twisting eroded trail covered with slippery rocks and roots and sharp ups and downs and that's pretty much the way it stayed all day.  The forest was pretty and we did notice that some of the foliage is starting change to yellows and reds. We also passed a couple of attractive ponds and had views from rock ledges on occasion.

Dave had a couple of falls on the slippery rocks and mashed a couple of his fingers, while Julie caught a tree hard with her knee as she manouevred around a tricky section of trail.

All in all, we didn't have a great day and only managed to cover 15 miles when we had hoped to do 17 or 18.  Around 7:30pm, after crossing the summit of Mt Success, we found a possible tent site beside the trail and squeezed our tent in, not wanting to continue on in the looming darkness.

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