Half a day in rainy Stratton: After our stay at the resort in Caratunk we crossed the Kennebec River on the canoe ferry. The ferryman was very kind and quite the story-teller. He's been ferrying hikers for 17 years across the only river that the ATC has deemed unfordable. We've now met about 10 northbounders who've come from Georgia. They say that southern Maine is pretty tough with a 4000+ peak nearly every day.
We got to meet both Trek and Bone Pac, the first two Northbounders. Trek stayed at the hostel with us in Monson. The next day we were setting up camp at the next shelter south and in comes this lean hiker who said he was looking for Trek and trying to beat him! He had already come 30 miles that day after fording the Kennebec (yes, he swam it) at 4:30 am. When we told him he was only a day behind Trek and that Trek planned to summit Katahdin on that Friday, Bone Pac zoomed off to Monson to round off a 37 mile day. We just learned through the grapevine that Bone Pac was able to pass Trek at the base of Katahdin and summit in first place on Thursday! Bone Pac was a really friendly guy, father of 2 in his late 30's. He said his main motivation for finishing so quickly was to get home to his family. Congratulations to Bone Pac!
We stayed in Caratunk an extra day at the resort because I (anna) had slipped on a rock a day before and perhaps fractured my tailbone. The day off helped a lot and carrying Garrett's lighter pack for a couple days helped too. (he kindly carried my heavy pack) We moved on from Caratunk toward Stratton passing through the Bigelow Range which was incredibly beautiful. We had gorgeous weather to hike the summits of Avery and West Peaks where we could make a very distant shadow of Katahdin about the size of an ant hill on the horizon. We also thought we caught a glimpse of Mt. Washington in the other direction. Nice to see where we'd come from and where we're going.
We had some what of a Christmas here in Strattton where there were 5 packages waiting for us and a number of letters. I got a free replacement of trekking poles from REI because mine tended to retract at inopportune times and eventually (yesterday, in fact) just snapped in half. Garrett and I both got our new Montrail Hardrock trail runners. We sent home our leather boots. Good ridence. I also got a new back pack in the mail which I had decided to order while in Caratunk. After having a lot of knee pain ascending and descending the mountains and the worsening affect my heavy pack had on my tailbone injury when I fell, I decided that a lighter pack with less volume was really what I needed. I decided to try out the Gregory Z-pack with Garrett's recommendation. It came today and I was able to fit all my things inside and dropped the pack weight alone from 7 pounds to 3 pounds. With a few other things dropped as well my pack weight is probably now down to 25-27 pounds. A big improvement! Hopefully this will help my body feel better and help us pick up our pace.
We are aiming to get to Gorham for the 4th of July even though we're about 3 days behind our schedule now. This means really picking up our pace to about 14 miles per day through the high mountains of southern Maine. My friend Tom is meeting us for a few days around the end of June.
Garrett was very happy to get a hot meal of spaghetti after talking about for days. We were surprised by some trail magic on the north side of the Bigelows when Sunset's (a northbounder) mom came to shelter and cooked for him and everyone else who happened to be there. There were 4 of us (the same four- buster, cotton, hansel and myself) and Sunset and 2 other "top 500" hikers from Tennessee and we all got spaghetti, fresh green salad and black walnut bread. It was delicious! thank you!
Now that we are headed for the higher mountains we should hopefully leave the deep mud and mosquitos and swift rivers behind. New adventures await. We'll keep you posted as we go!
buster and bluebird
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