The rain in Maine is mostly insane...

I am currently reading a book by Ed Viesters about his adventures climbing the tallest mountains of the world, in the Himalayas. I read something in there that kind of sums up our adventure this past week:

"You may love the mountains, but that doesn't mean the mountains love you".

That said, it was indeed the rainiest backpacking trip that I have ever been on. Ben, who has hiked for 5 months straight on the AT, confirms that.

Ben added a new level of challenge to his trip by biking the 120-or-so miles up to Grafton Notch, the northern end of the Mahoosuc Range in Maine. It took him only two days...one day was mostly sunny (luckily his first), and the second was rainy and buggy. Our plan was to hike continuously together for 6 days. By the time I had met up with Ben 4 days after he had left for Miane, he and his gear were soaked and were drying out at a hiker hostel in Bethel, Maine.

We set out that day with hopes of still going forward with our 6-day trip plan, even though the forcast was calling for nothing but rain for the next week. By now we know how to keep our gear dry even in rainy weather, and we were feeling pretty die-hard about going forth into the rainy wilderness of the Mahoosucs. And it had already been raining for 2 weeks straight...it can't rain for another week, right?

That day we headed into Grafton Notch to park Skip, our '94 Honda Civic, at the northern edge of a trail that traverses the Mahoosucs, which some say is the toughest stretch of the AT. The hiking is technical, lots of large rocks to climb over, which can be difficult with a loaded pack. The rain posed another challenge, as we all know that wet rocks can be grippy one minute but slippery the next. Our goal was to summit Old Speck (4170') that day and camp at Speck Pond that night. We reached the summit of Old Speck pretty late in the day after our late start, and the summit was enshrouded in a pea-soup fog. There is an observation tower on top that was interesting b/c there were no stairs to get up it, just a iron-rung ladder whose rungs were about 1 inch in diameter. Ben went up, but I stayed on the bottom...slippery metal rungs and I do not mix! Sorry no pictures of this summit...wanted to keep the camera dry. The highlight of our hike was when the sun peaked out of the clouds for about 15 minutes while we took a snack break!

On our hike down to the tentsites we were going to stay at, it started to rain on us (up until this point in the day we were wet b/c of condensation on the trees that then dripped on us). Setting up our new tarptent in the rain posed to be quite the challenge, mainly b/c tent platforms are great for easy-up tents with poles, but not-so-great for our tent which stays up mainly with ropes and stakes. Also, I had never set up this thing before, so I proved to be a quite useless partner. Ben got it up by using his problem-solving prowess...After that debacle, we vowed to stay in shelters or pitch our tent on the ground, not on stupid tent platforms! (Don't get me wrong, tent platforms are great at keeping you off the wet ground and being nice and flat...but they do have their disadvantages.) It rained on us all night, and the next morning we woke up to more rain, which dampened our spirits (no pun intended.)

We decided to axe our Mahoosuc hike simply b/c it would be too dangerous in the rain. Our goal was now going to be to hike as many of the Miane 4000 footers as possible. Up until this trip Ben had already hiked all of them, so this was to be for me...I had summitted 4 of them. Old Speck made 5, and I had 9 left, 8 of which were within about 2 hours drive from where we were.

So that morning, soaking wet, we hiked back up and over Old Speck to make it back to the car and drive to Rte. 4, where we would again get on the AT north of Saddleback. We dried out our socks in the car on the way there, and got to a lean-to shelter 1.8 miles up the trail at Piazza Rock. The shelter was a dream compared to our soaking wet tarptent. We had a fairly dry hike up and a nice evening there at the shelter. There was a south-bound AT hiker that stayed there as well, an 18-year old by the name of "Gigantor" who just graduated from high school in his home town of Ann Arbor, Michigan. He and Ben had fun talking AT logistics...

On a side note, the privy (outhouse) was the funniest and coolest one I have ever seen on any trail. First of all, you walk in and there are two seats! (I got a chuckle thinking what person would be comfortable enough to go next to a friend...) There was also a cribbage board nailed to the wood between the two seats, so you could skunk your friend as you both do your business. There was also toilet paper and some hand sanitizer...wow!

That morning we awoke to more rain...


It is really hard to get out of your warm sleeping bag when you know that outside the shelter it is cold and raining. Especially hard if you really don't have to hike anywhere. If we had no car to bring us to dry places, or we were doing a long distance hike like the AT, you would have to muster up whatever motivation you posessed to get your butt out of bed and begin packing up to continue your hike. Meanwhile, Ben and I remained in bed waiting for the rain to stop...staying in our sleeping bags until after 10 am, which is ungodly late for backpackers. We didn't leave the shelter until noon, but luckily we knew we would have enough time with the late summer days. Plus we would leave most of our gear at the shelter, just taking what we need for our day, so our packs would be much, much lighter. Our goal was to summit Saddleback (4120'), hike down into the "saddle" and then up and summit the Horn (4041'), and then back down to the shelter. If we had enough time we would even get down to the car and on to our next trail. It wasn't raining when we left, just dripping from the trees...

Of course the rain started just as we were getting to the summit bald of Saddleback:

We thought that this was the summit, but of course b/c of the fog we couldn't see that the actual summit was just a little farther up. There were some nice dayhikers who had walked up the ski slopes of Saddleback and took this picture of us...

So Ben took this picture of me at the actual summit, a bit later:

I can imagine what incredible views we would have had hiking this trail. There was a lot of exposed rock faces that you scramble over, and the flat saddle-part of the trail between the two summits was awesome. When we go hiking, yes, part of the motivation is to get great views at the top of a summit. But what a lot of people miss is the rest of the mountain...the rocks, the fragile alpine plants, the animals...and how things change as you go from the valley up to the summit. How the forests go from lush and green and full of broad-leaf deciduous trees like Maple, Beech, and Birch...to more coniferous trees like firs and spruces. Then you get to the Krummholz, the land of stunted trees...the conditions much harsher as the mountainsides get buffetted by strong winds and colder temperatures. Then up at the summit, where the tiniest of lichens, mosses, and tiny alpine flowers eek out an existance...it is always truly amazing, even if we don't get a view. The special bonus of this trip was that most of the alpine plants were blooming, like the sheep laurel, cranberry, and blueberry.

Anyway, here is another picture of me at the summit of the Horn, 1.7 miles after the summit of Saddleback:

(Ben always insists of taking a picture of me, not the other way around....)

We managed to get back to the shelter in good spirits, having summited 2 of the 4000'-ers in one day. It was a 12-mile hike in all, a long day for me! When we got to the shelter, there was not one group, but 2 groups of campers (all boys!) staying there that night, so that gave us the motivation to hike down another almost 2 miles to the car. We were then going to stay in town at a motel and have dinner...quite the luxury for a couple of stinky, wet backpackers. We stayed in Stratton, Maine at a place called the White Wolf Inn...famous for it's "wolf burger". Needless to say, we had hot showers, a wolf burger for dinner, and a six pack of tasty beers...just about paradise after being cold and wet for the past few days. Washed the mud out of our gear and dried all of our stuff at the local laundry mat and we are ready for anything!

On to the next trail...the goal being North and South Crocker, which are also 4000'ers. We had planned to go on past those summits to also get to Sugarloaf, Spaulding, and Abraham, and knock off 5 of the 4000'ers in one trip!

The hike up North Crocker (4228') was pretty brutal...a 5.2 mile climb, the first mile you ascend 1000 feet, then it levels off for a bit, then the last two miles you ascend another 2000 feet. It was pouring rain, and it took every bit of will to get my butt to the top of it. Little did I know that once at the top, the clouds would part and we would get to spend 20 minutes on the top, basking in the sun, with no one else there. It was heaven:

We had quite the awesome summit snack, some fresh baguette with horseradish hummus!

The hike down to where we were staying that night was pretty incredible. The clouds had parted long enough for us to be able to see views of the surrounding mountains, and of the cirque between N. and S. Crocker. There were also a bunch of slides that left it fairly open so we could see down into the valley. Here is a picture of an alpine lichen garden that was colonizing an area after a rock slide:

We had an amazing night at the Crocker Cirque Tentsite. Even though we had vowed to not use tent platforms, the ones here at this site had plenty of hooks on the side to attach lines to and surrounding trees to tie to as well. It also hadn't rained since we had reached the Crockers and we set up our tent and had dinner in a few patches of sunshine! We were all alone at this site, it was glorious. We had eaten dinner, gotten everything set up...when suddenly we could hear the thunder. A raging thunderstorm rolled in at about 8pm, but luckily we were snug as bugs. We listened to the thunder, and saw the lightning while it poured on the tent. It was quite intense...

We awoke the next morning to...you guessed it...rain. Another morning of how can we possible go on in this crappy weather? We decided to throw in the towel and head back to the car. We didn't have to head back up and over the Crockers to get back to the car because there was a mountain road about a mile down from the tentsite and hooked up with Rte 4, where we parked Skip. It would be a 7 mile day, mostly road walking.

We decided to go and take a look at the river we would have crossed had we decided to stay on the trail and go south to Sugarloaf.

With all of the heavy rain, many of the rivers were flooded, and those rivers that were normally fordable were now quite dangerous to cross. Here is a picture of the Carrabasset River, which we were glad we did not have to cross:

I'm not sure if the river looks as intimidating in this photo as it did in person. The water was flowing so fast and there was so much of it, one false move and in you go. Not only do you and your gear get soaking wet, there is the chance of you getting rushed downstream and your head getting bounced off some rocks. No thanks...

Anyway, our road walk ended up being pretty pleasant, with the sun shining most of the way. There were butterflies, wild flowers, and good spirits...

So our journey ended after summiting 5 of the 4000'ers in Maine, with 5 left to go...what a trip!