Friday, August 12th

Cloud Pond Lean-To (2099.0 mi) to Carl Newhall Lean-To (2115.7 mi)

Hiking Miles: 16.7

Total Ascent: 3,483.9 ft

Total Descent: 4,060.4 ft

Total Grade: 450.7 ft/mi

Steps: 49,889

RETROFILE – Sunshine

Gator/Sunrise: I had a short, but restful night’s sleep. I mustered up some dry clothes, and packed away the ones I wore last night after airing them out a bit. It was dark and I focused intently on finding my way back to the main trail. Last night, we found our way down a jagged path (off trail) leading to the shelter, so remembering my way back took some mental coordination. Once I did, there was a short climb before the trail leveled off and I started to see continuous white blazes with my headlamp, and I smiled. In fact, ever since I began hiking the early mornings back in North Carolina, I had a habit (another process) of smiling every time I spotted a white blaze because I knew that I was not lost. Then within 15 minutes or so, I caught a glimpse of the sunrise coming through the trees. It was so inspiring, and I felt it was going to be a good day.

There were a few significant peaks (e.g. Barren Mountain), interesting artifacts (a plane wreckage on Chairback Mountain from the 1980’s), and a major mile marker (passing 2100 miles) reached today. Now there was only 94 miles to go which felt so surreal.

The plane wreckage was regarded as an AT historic landmark, certainly the coolest sighting for me today. It was located on the fourth Chairback mountain that I came upon at 9:20 am. I recall how totally impressed I was with how preserved everything looked after having been there untouched for 40 years. Remains of the plane were scattered everywhere. A father and son had survived the private plane crash unscathed and the two of them actually camped there immediately following the disaster before hiking out the next morning.

Later that morning, Croc caught up with me and we hiked together for a better part of the day. Then towards the end of the day he moved ahead of me (I was feeling ill and sluggish once again) and he reached the Carl Newhall Lean-To before the sun set. Slowing down later in the day was becoming a repeat occurrence for me, and coupled with not feeling well started to concern me just a little. I also was not thinking clearly and I began to wonder if I had seriously caught some type of virus. But I quickly passed it off as exhaustion and refocused my attention on the trail.

I crossed Gulf Hagas Brook, but I could not locate the blue blaze leading to the shelter, so I retraced my steps thinking I had passed it. In doing so, I crossed Gulf Hagas Brook a few times (once in each direction), not a trivial task balancing on the stepping stones. As it quickly turned dark, I shouted out in frustration to Croc to hopefully locate his whereabouts. When he called back, it was ridiculous how close I had actually come to the blue blaze before I had backtracked.

At the shelter, there was a young couple who remarkably were on their honeymoon. The husband was an avid hiker and his wife agreed that it would be romantic to spend their honeymoon on a section of the AT. Sure – why not! I crashed right after making some dinner hoping to rest my body and get a sound sleep.

Croc: All my clothes were still soaked, but I luckily still had a spare nighttime pair to wear until the wet ones dried. I also figured my wet socks and shoes would inevitably get wet again during the next river crossing, so that wasn’t so much of a worry. Once again, I was one of the last ones out of camp, which started to feel odd since I was still getting up around 7:00 AM and left no later than 8:00 AM. Down in the south, or even in every AT YouTube video, I see the hikers leave after 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM. Now I look like the lazy one!

Today did have a few mountains, but none of them even came close to 4,000 footers. This is the area where people warn you that the 100-mile wilderness isn’t just a flat, straightaway and they were right. It also wasn’t nearly as difficult as Southern Maine or New Hampshire, so I’ll take it.

Pretty quickly into the hike, I reached the 2,100-mile marker which would be the last one on trail. It’s insane to think back on the first 100-miler marker nearly 4 months ago in Virginia. I remember making it ourselves (since we started at mile 864) and thinking, “wow, another 21 more of these…” That also meant our countdown was officially in the double digits.

I also found it pretty entertaining passing the plane wreckage on the trail. As Gator mentioned, it has an incredible backstory and was at least something new to look at that wasn’t more trees. It also had probably one of the nicest grounds of the whole trail. It was so well maintained and had an almost moss-like bounce in the ground as it was littered with pine needles and dirt. I’m not sure if it’s always like this, or if it was newly made, but I could probably sleep on it.

Eventually, I caught up with Gator and even went ahead for a bit. I enjoyed some views on top of rocky ridge and even took my shoes off to air out my feet. I was also procrastinating because I knew we had a gnarly downhill, rock scramble coming up that I was dreading. Honestly, this part of the trail reminded me Mahoosuc Notch, but fortunately it was 0.25 miles and not a full mile, so it only took 30 minutes.

Towards the end of the day a just put my music on and went hard since we were only about 1-2 miles from camp. The shelter was kind of tricky to find because FarOut just showed a shelter icon, but didn’t have a clear path. It was one of those shelters you had to go 100 yards further than the mile marker and backtrack on a short blue-blaze. After I made it to the shelter, I was chatting with a newlywed couple for 20 or so minutes when I heard Gator shouting. I ran down some steps to try to find him. I was afraid he started bushwhacking to find the shelter.

Luckily, the newlyweds were early sleepers, so after dinner and a couple of minutes of chatting, we all went to bed. Sometimes when you camp with day hikers, they are still used to their normal sleep schedules and stay up all night. I forgot to mention that during our conversations, we discovered that the husband had hiked the AT before and said his favorite part was staying at Tom Livardi’s house (flash from the past)! I did ask his trail name, but totally forgot by the time I wrote this blog.