Day 281

Day 281 (AT 85): 16 miles

I got a late start this morning since I watched the sunrise at Old Speck (which was fantastic). The late start certainly didn’t help with my distance for the day. I didn’t feel terrible most of the day but the terrain was just so steep or rock heavy that I could move too fast. It took me 17 hours to hike 16 miles.

Part of this was because of the Mahoosuc Notch. It was definitely slow going and Boulder climbing and squeezing under massive boulders but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be. It wasn’t any worse than knapsack col in Wyoming, even disregarding the part where I took the wrong route and ended up dangling from a Boulder with a 600 foot drop below. I wasn’t paying attention to the time in the notch but it definitely wasn’t fast. With all the little caves under massive boulders in the notch I was thinking of the movie The Descent. Good thing I haven’t watched it lately.

But even after the notch, the trail was still brutal. There are a lot of steep rock faces I had to walk up and they weren’t easy but I’m just happy it wasn’t raining. That would’ve been a waterslide. Some of the rock faces have ladders but I wish many more did.

I was on the last peak of the Goose Eye mountains when the sun was setting which was a little silver lining in an otherwise pretty bad day, almost exclusively cause of the terrain and how slow I was going. After it got dark is when things got weird. The grade of the trail was pretty much the same it was all day, even with a little more decline than incline, but for some reason I started moving super slow. I swear time stopped working in a linear manner. I had planned on getting to the shelter around 9:30-10. After going a while without looking at the time, I looked at my watch it was 11:30 and I still had a like to go. I thought maybe it was daylight savings time and somehow my watch knew along with my phone, or maybe I passed out for 2 hours and didn’t realize it, or anything else. I was amazed I was moving that slow, grants by that time for he day I did feel pretty bad. When I got to the shelter was probably the worst/most exhausted I’ve felt in a long time.

When I got to the point on trail where the shelter was supposed to be all I saw was a sign saying it was .2 miles down a side trail. I was furious. I thought it was supposed to be right on trail. If I could’ve physically assaulted the trail at that moment, I would have.

I’m in New Hampshire.