Spring time hiking

Yesterday mom blogged about an adventure that I had last year. She told it from her perspective (which is not quite as exciting as the real thing) so I will tell my side of the story... (this is a long post and I don't really want to proof read so hopefully everyone can stand to read it).

I have this one friend who I went to WPI with. His name is Ryan Starbuck but is only known by the name Starbuck. He is kind of a big soft guy, not real athletic or daring but always up for a good time. He always gets these hair-brained ideas that hardly ever come together. Well he decided that he wanted to go hiking up in Maine at the end of the school year last year. I thought that it sounded like a good idea because I have been hiking in Maine (although not nearly to the extent of my mother) and always enjoyed it, however, every time I go hiking in Maine we get terrible weather. At some point things actually came together and the trip looked like it was going to happen. We chose to do the ~30 mile section between Gorham NH to Grafton Nothch, ME. We broadcast an invitation to all of our friends to accompany us and one guy, dave Gagnon bit at the bait. When the day came for the big departure we left for Maine (at like 10 pm, because Dave was at a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert I think) We arrived at my moms house at around 1 or so in the morning and planned on leaving at around 5 am (we were still young so some how that small amount of sleep worked for us). It turned out that my little brother Archie was going to join us which was going to be cool because he is a cool kid and very at home in the woods. You probably know, if you read my moms blog, that he is a climber and part of being a climber is being prepared by never climbing yourself into a corner, protecting yourself from harm, and being prepared to battle the elements. These were all qualities that we could use a little more of so he fit into our group pretty easily. So at 5 am we set off in towards the trailhead in Gorham. There were a couple of supplies that we needed to get before we actually hit the trail, like white gas for our stove, trail mix and some other food stuff. Well we showed up in Gorham about 2 hours before anything opened up. So we drove around looking for white gas and food. Finally we found some but we were a little later hitting the trail than we had expected. So we finally took off with our backpacks, enthusiasm, and prepared to have a good time.

Being that we were 4 16-22 year olds we made awesome time. we cranked out about 3 miles in the first hour or so. Everything was awesome, it was a little cool in the mountains so we weren't sweating too bad but the sky was beautiful and we were feeling good. We wanted to do about 12 miles in the first day and it was looking like that was going to be easily doable. At about 5 miles in we hit our first road block. There were huge trees all over the trail, the winter had obviously reeked havoc on the trees and as a consequence our trail was totally obscured. I had Dave and Starbuck stand at the last point on the trail that we knew and me and Archie went ahead and tried to find where the trail reemerged. This turned out to be a pretty good way to navigate the blow downs but it was slow. At mile 8 we reached the first lean to on our hike. The plan was to go past this one to the next one and be just that much further down the trail. After climbing over blow downs for the past 4 or 5 hours we were all pretty beat so we decided to just stay at that lean too for the night and make up time the next day. It was a really pretty spot, we were on this little knoll and there was a small alpine lake just down the hill with an outlet that went right by our site so we were always hearing the stream noises. We got dinner cooking, made a fire to warm our socks by and the day ended nicely. As we were going to sleep Starbuck was reading in the trail guide book about the rest of our hike. There was a part about the next 15 miles being full of high alpine bogs which were supposed to be very nice. I think Starbuck had a feeling for how the rest of the trip was going to be because the life left his voice as he read about the high alpine bogs. We went to sleep laughing and thinking about a tall squishy kid sinking in the bogs on top of a mountain.

The next day we woke up and it was heavily misting. Not quite raining but sure as hell not dry. We packed up and hoped for the best as we set off. This hike was in early-mid May (about a year ago from today) we expected to see snow because of the altitude and shade of the trees. Not very long into this day we stared seeing more and more snow. On parts of the trail we were walking on top of 3 or 4 feet of snow, or Dave, Archie and I were walking on top of the snow. Starbucks extra weight caused him to "post hole" with every step. Post holing is where you step on an area of snow and it feels strong but then as you put your weight onto your foot you crash through the snow. Starbuck was wearing shorts and post holing 2-3 feet through the snow with every step. By this point in the hike we were starting to get kind of tired of it. The snow was cold and abrassive, the mountains were steep, the food was terrible, and we were cold. We managed to find a dryish rock to make lunch on and made soup to try and warm ourselves up. After lunch we started uphill again. When I am hiking with people I like to wait at key points in the trail so that we are never too far apart. Me and Archie were hiking about the same speed and dave and Starbuck were hiking at about the same speed. Me and Archie reached the summit of some mountain and I wanted to wait for the other guys. It was so rainy and windy at this point that we actually had to come down off the mountain a little bit to excape the wind. Archie and I were huddled between rocks waiting for the guys when Archie did something that I have never heard him do before that time... he complained. He said his feet were really cold and kind of numb. I looked down at his feet at this point and was shocked to find that he was wearing a pair of sneakers. "Where are your boots Archie" I yelled at him over the howl of the wind. He gave some response that I couldn't hear or don't remember. I told him, go ahead, the lean to for tonight is about 3 miles down the trail so just keep on going to keep your body warm. When you get to the lean to make a fire or just get in your sleeping bag and warm up. Cold feet are not something to play around with in the mountains. So he did, he took off to hopfuly get warm. At this point in the trip things were starting to look pretty bad so I whipped out my trusty cell phone, turned it on and called my mom. When I got her on the line I told her about Archie and his inappropriate foot wear and bout the weather and post holing and blow downs and everything else. I told her that we might have to figure something else out about how to get off the mountain and that I would let her know how things were shaping up the next morning. Finally the other guys got to the summit where I was and I told them about Archie and that I was going to hustle down to the shelter (3 miles away) and I would see them there. I took off at a pretty good clip, not a run because of the 50 lb pack on my back but I was cruising right along. The whole way to the lean to I expected Arch to be huddled up on the ground just around every corner. I made it to the lean to to find Archie in his sleeping bag with the reminents of a fire in the fire pit. He was alright besides cold feet so I was relieved. I stoked the fire and gathered some wood and took off down to the water source to get water for dinner. I assume during the summer there is actually a pretty nice spring from which you can get water at that camp site but during the spring melt there is no such thing. There is a raging Ice river careening down the rocks. I started off trying to use our filter pump to get the water but I was getting to cold submerging my hands in the water so finally I gave up and just dunked the water sack into the water to gather as much beaver poop water as I could. I got back to the campsite and got the stove out. I don't know exactly what happened to the stove between our lunch and when I was at the lean to but it didn't work. With already frozen fingers I totally stripped and rebuilt the stove trying to get it to work. I did this 2 times and nothing helped it. Dave and Starbuck showed up sometime around this time and immediately changed into dry clothes and jumped into their sleeping bags. Archie had a little stove that was more for warming water than for boiling it but we had to use that to make warm dinner. I was bouncing back and forth between making dinner and keeping the fire stoked still in my cold wet clothes and boots. I was doing my thing when I heard from the other side of the lean to "Ethan check the fire and make sure it is still going good" from Starbuck. This sent me off the handle... I wasn't about to get bossed around by some kid all tucked away in his sleeping bag while i was wet and miserable trying to take care of everyone. So I kind of flipped out on him and he shut up. I made everyone dinner and was finally able to declothe and get in my sleeping bag. Before we went to bed we talked about our options. We had 1/3 of a nights worth of food left and and everything we were carrying was 2x as heavy as it was when we started because of the rain. We read in the book about what laid ahead of us. Of course Mahoussic Notch was on the table for the next day. Mahoussic Notch is supposedly the hardest 1 mile of the whole AT and consists of climbing straight down a ravine, through boulders at the bottom and then straight back up the other side. Then things to mellow out because you have to climb I think Mt. Speck (correct me if I am wrong).

1. Go on with the original plan and go through the notch
2. Abandon the hike at a side trail 1 mile before the notch
3. Abandon the hike at a side trail 1 mile back up the trail in the way we had come.
   

We went to be knowing that we had options and that we could see what the weather gave us the next day.

The next day we woke up and it was pouring, not raining but pouring. We made breakfast and decided that the best thing to do would be for me and Archie (the faster hikers) to blaze ahead and check out the notch and see if we wanted to commit to it, if we didn't we could just come back down the trail and abandon the hike at that side trail. Knowing this we packed up and started off. It very quickly became quite obvious that we were in a bit of trouble. We were hiking up cliffs against torrents of water that gravity was pulling down the hill. After about 1/2 a mile we decided that there was no way were in any position to take on the hardest mile of the AT. We didn't want to stop for more than a minute or two to wait for the others becasue we just lost body heat when being stopped so we would hike a couple hundred yards and then wait for a minute, maybe 2 and then repeat. Finally the other guys caught up to us and everyone was pretty happy to just call it. I called my mom and said we were ditching and that we would be coming out on this logging road at the bottom of this valley. She was in court or something so she called my granddad and he was up for the challenge of picking us up. We were relieved to have a plan but we sure weren't off the mountain yet. We still had a mile or 2 of hiking to get to the escape trail. There was one part that I remember where we had to hike down this rock, it was so steep that there was a wooden ladder on it to help people navigate the slick rock but in our case the ladder was under 2 feet of rushing melt water. Any ways, we go to our escape trail and were pumped. The trail looked flat and mostly consisted of logs that you walked across, basically a cake walk compared to the previous 2 days. The trail paralled a raging river full of melt water and rain water. At one point Starbuck joked about how were were going to have to cross the river, I laughed and told him that was unlikely. Much to my horror 100 yards later the trail disappeared into the raging river. Thankfully it was pretty narrow but there was no way to cross it without straight up walking in to the river. We decided to cross while holding hands or locking elbows so that everyone was pretty stable. I went in first, followed by Archie, followed by Starbuck and Dave took the caboose position. The crossing was narrow enough that only 2 people were in the water at a time, the other two were on dry ground. The water was so unbelievably cold, like real cold. We all made it across the river OK though and continued on, we had to because we were so cold. My heart nearly stopped when the trail disappeared into the river a second time. This time the crossing was much wider. The river looked pretty shallow even though it was wide and raging. We decided to employ the same technique to cross the second time. This time, however, everyone was in the water at the same time. At one point in the river the water came up to my belly button. To this day I am not sure how we were able to stand up right with all of that water hitting us, somehow we did it though and we all made it across safe. At this point I was starting to get numb all over, especially in my fingers and toes (water-proof boots are water proof it the water is over the cuffs). I was legitimately pissed off when the trail disappeared into the water a third time. The river at this point was so wide, deep and full of boulders that there was no way we could cross, we looked down the river hoping to see a bridge, or jumping rocks or something but only saw more of the same, we decided that it was too risky to cross there so we started bushwhacking down the river bed. After 5 or 10 minutes of bushwhacking we got tired of it and decided to commit to the safest looking option. That safest looking option was a circus high wire log jumping, rock hoping, rushing river option. It started with hoping to a rock and then balancing across a wet rotten log that was pinned against 2 rocks, jumping onto said rock, stepping to another rock and then jumping (with a 50 lb pack) 4' to the far bank. I guess I have some kind of care taker instinct because I had to be the first one across (maybe it is a bragging rights thing :) ), I was willing to guinea pig it. Thankfully everything went without a hitch, just a pounding heart. The river down stream of this crossing was full of rocks that were being assaulted by the raging river and just waiting to be the rock against which one of our heads was beaten. Dave was next and did fine Starbuck went and decided that he wanted to throw his pack across before he jumped so he threw it across to me, and I noticed that his boot lace was untied. There was so little room on that rock that he was perched on that I decide it would be best not to tell him about it and just let him jump. He did and he made it. And now Archie was up. I had duty to take care of him and to this point I felt like I had done a pretty poor job at it. Dave and Starbuck positioned themselves strategically downstream in case something happened and Archie started out. Archie is probably one of the best athletes that I have ever known so I wasn't worried that he couldn't do it but I was worried about something unexpected happening. He made his way across the log and got onto the rock and passed his pack to me. He jumped and I grabbed him and helped him up the bank. Dave and Archie immediately put on their packs and started running down the trail towards the logging road. I was seriously feeling the hypothermia at that point though and it was all I could do to just keep walking down the trail. We got all the way to the logging road without any more river crossings. I was pretty pooped and just wanted to wait for my granddad to come down the road to get us. Archie and Starbuck were feeling ambitious and wanted to go find him so they went down the road and me and Dave sat on the side of it. After Archie and Starbuck had gone around a bend a mommy and baby bear crossed the road. It was one of those things where I was too tired to even really care. After sitting on the road for 10 minutes Granddad, my savior, came around the corner with the 4x4's heat on full blast with thermoses of soup and hot chocolate, and blankets. We made it out alive and wow did we have a good story to tell. Those two guys are still 2 of my best friends and I can't wait for my next adventure with Archie but I sure am glad we were able to leave the mountains of Maine with our lives.