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 128 - Grafton Notch to Hall Mountain

Day: 128

Date: Wednesday, 30 August 2023

Start:  Grafton Notch (AT Mile 1931.0)

Finish:  Hall Mountain (AT Mile 1947.3)

Daily Kilometres:  24.8 (Ascent 5597', Descent 4459')

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

Total Kilometres:  3177.0

Weather:  Rained most of the morning and into the early afternoon then mostly cloudy with a late shower.

Accommodation:  Tent

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Muffins 

  Lunch:  Trail mix

  Dinner:  Rehydrated meals 

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

Highlight:  Maybe getting back into double figures in our daily mileage.  The day was a mix of reasonable trail and some very technical trail, combined with some slippery (in the rain) rock slab ascents and descents and a total elevation gain of over 5500', so we were reasonably happy with 16+ miles.

Lowlight:  Some very heavy rain in the morning had us both soaked for most of the day.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

Kevin, the motel co-owner, was ready as promised to drive us back to the trailhead at 6:00am and we were hiking by around 6:30am on a grey, but dry, morning.

The ascent up Baldpate Mountain was more gradual than recent climbs and on better trail, which had us both feeling a little more positive.  However, the promised rain arrived around 9:30am and stayed with us for most of the morning with an occasional break.  Baldpate Mountain was largely bare rock, and a bit slippery, but despite the weather we did get some impressive views, made more so by the low cloud shrouding some of the surrounding mountains.

After Baldpate, we descended on reasonable, but very wet trail, passing the rushing Dunn Cascades en route before taking a late lunch break in a gap in the rain.  We then descended further to pass the picturesque Surplus Pond and begin our last climb for the day to the summit of Wyman Mountain where we hoped to find a tentsite.  But, alas, the only one we saw was already taken and we ended up hiking another 1.5 miles in diminishing light until we reached some tentsites near Hall Mountain Lean-to around 7:45pm, later than we would have liked.

We had pretty much set up camp by headlamp, washed and were ready to start eating dinner when it began to rain again, so we ate in the tent.  The last forecast we heard was for some dry sunny days ahead and we are looking forward to that.

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