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 146 - Hurd Brook Lean-To to Abol Bridge

Day: 146

Date: Sunday, 17 September 2023

Start:  Hurd Brook Lean-To (AT Mile 2179.8)

Finish:  Abol Bridge (AT Mile 2183.4)

Daily Kilometres:  7.2

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

Total Kilometres:  3543.7

Weather:  Cool, breezy and sunny.

Accommodation:  Basic Cabin

Nutrition:

  Breakfast:  Ham Italian roll/Turkey Italian roll

  Lunch:  Roast beef Italian roll/Turkey Italian roll, fruit pies

  Dinner:  Hot dogs, fruit pies

Aches:  Nothing to report

Highlight:  Hiking the 3+ miles to Abol Bridge, our destination for the day, along the sun-dappled trail in the cool early morning with a sense of achievement and knowing that the worst of the trail and our journey is over.  Just the climb up and down Mt Katahdin tomorrow, without full packs, and we will be done.

Lowlight:  None.

Pictures: Click here

Map and Position: Click here for Google Map

Journal:

The wind blew hard all night, but there was little further rain from the remnants of yesterday's storm and we slept well in the shelter.  There was no rush to start the day as we only planned to hike the three miles to Abol Bridge and the campground/store there, so we didn't start hiking until around 7:30am.  The weather was such a contrast with yesterday's, with clear skies and sunlight shafts dappling the pine-needle-covered trail although there was a lot of debris and even large trees down in places.

We reached Abol Bridge soon after 9:00am, with a magnificent view of Mt Katahdin from the bridge, and decided to take a cabin in the campground here for tonight with plans to set out early tomorrow for the hike to the base of Mt Katahdin and then the summit and return climb.  We probably could have done the climb today, but the rangers won't let anybody start out from the base after 10:00am and we wouldn't have been there in time.

We bought some breakfast from the limited items in the campground store and then spent the rest of the day relaxing in the picturesque campground set beside Abol Stream beneath the mountain.  We also had our first showers and did laundry for the first time in a week and dried out all of our wet gear.

Trail friends, Christine and Matthew, have rented the cabin next to us and will also be summiting Katahdin tomorrow.  They had originally planned on summiting on Tuesday, but the weather forecast for that day is rain.  Tomorrow's forecast is for partly sunny skies.

We had dinner with Christine and Matthew cooked over an open fire on a beautiful evening outside our cabin and enjoyed a good conversation about our times on the trail and what we had observed and learned.  A very pleasant time before an early night with an early start planned for our last day on the trail tomorrow.

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