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 133 - Eddy Pond to Spaulding Mountain

Day: 133

Date: Monday, 04 September 2023

Start:  Eddy Pond (AT Mile 1981.6)

Finish:  Spaulding Mountain (AT Mile 1996.5)

Daily Kilometres:  23.8

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

Total Kilometres:  3246.1

Weather:  Mild to warm, humid and mostly sunny.

Accommodation:  Tent 

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Pop tarts 

  Lunch:  Trail mix 

  Dinner:  Rehydrated meals 

Aches:  Dave - the usual niggles and now on anti-inflammatories for his painful left knee; Julie - nothing reported.

Highlight:  Our early morning traverse of the Saddleback range was fantastic.  We were above the treeline for much of it and, apart from the occasional wispy cloud/fog that breezed through, we had superb views in all directions, including of the ski slopes to the west and the ski village below.  We felt like we had the world to ourselves.

Lowlight:  None really, apart from Dave accidentally deleting this blog post before it was posted and having to rewrite the whole thing the next night.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

We set the alarm for 5:00am to maximize our daylight hiking hours as the days become shorter, and were hiking by 6:00am.  Our goal was to cover about 16 miles so that we had a shorter day on Tuesday when we planned to resupply and stay in a hostel.  However, we were conscious of the trail likely being very arduous so weren't confident we could do it.

We started with a climb up to Saddleback Mountain (see above) from where we followed a ridge, with deep saddles to Saddleback Horn and Saddleback Junior, mostly above the treeline and with great views all of the way.  The descents and ascents were hard and slow, but the scenery compensated.

After Saddleback Junior we had a long descent through the forest to Orbeton Stream.  We managed to rock-hop across Orbeton Stream without getting our feet wet before ascending steeply to Lone Mountain after which we had some nice flattish trail until we found a campsite near the Spaulding Mountain Lean-To soon after 6:00pm, having achieved our goal distance for the day.
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