Day: 126
Date: Monday, 28 August 2023
Start: Mt Success (AT Mile 1915.1)
Finish: Mahoosuc Notch (AT Mile 1923.9)
Daily Kilometres: 12.6 (Ascent 2438', Descent 3442')
GPX Track: Click here for Julie’s Strava & Photos
Total Kilometres: 3143.0
Weather: Mild and sunny all day
Accommodation: Tent
Nutrition:
Breakfast: Pop tarts
Lunch: Trail mix
Dinner: Rehydrated meals
Aches: Dave - exhausted and the usual niggles; Julie - nothing reported.
Highlight: Crossing into Maine, our last state on our Appalachian Trail journey.
Lowlight: Only 8.8 miles today, despite our best efforts. The trail has just been too hard, twisting and turning, up and down, roots, rocks and bogs. And it took us three hours to cover the one mile of trail through the infamous Mahoosuc Notch, where you have to navigate your way through, around, under and over massive jagged boulders that have fallen from the walls of the gorge over the eons.
Pictures: Click here
Map and Position: Click here for Google Map
Journal:
We were hiking by 6:30am with some apprehension about the difficulty of the trail and particularly Mahoosuc Notch (see above). But first, we passed the New Hampshire/Maine border which was a cause for minor celebration as we entered our last State on our long journey.
It was a beautiful day for hiking and we had some fantastic views from the open summits of the mountains we crossed, but the difficulty of the trail dominated our thoughts. It was just very hard and quite stressful in places. Many times we had to ascend or descend steep rocky slabs hanging onto whatever roots, branches or rocks that were available and hoping that our shoes did not slip from their toeholds. It was an exercise in risk management and our risk appetite was low. Neither of us, and particularly Dave, is as agile as we used to be, so great care was taken but, even then, we had our little slips and gasps. Mahoosuc Notch was extremely taxing and exhausting.
We set out yesterday with five days of food and plans to have Friday off in Rangeley but, as the day wore on, we became increasingly skeptical that we would make it on time. In the end, Dave called the inn where we had a booking and deferred, by a day, our booking with some difficulty because it is a long weekend. Ultimately, the Australian charm worked and they found a room.
That took the time pressure off our hiking, but it now means we have to stretch our remaining food for an extra day, which we can do, but Dave will be hungry.
We reached Mahoosuc Notch around 3:00pm, a bit later than hoped and then it took three hours to traverse, also longer than hoped. We found it all a bit demoralising. We feel like we are in the home stretch with our hike and are keen to log up the miles, but terrain and trail like this never lets you walk normally and the miles pass very slowly.
At the end of the Notch traverse we found a tentsite near the trail and set up camp around 6:15pm, somewhat relieved to have the Notch and some more mountains behind us, but fearing we have more of the same ahead this week.
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