I know this is something I’m going to have to deal with regularly when we hike the PCT next year, but that’s then and this is now. When you stealth camp on the AT, that usually means no privy at the campsite. I do know how to dig holes and aim, but I can usually wait if there’s a privy within a few hours of walking. When I was growing up and going to Boy Scout Camp in the summers, I would hold it the entire week I was at camp. I will grant that I wasn’t feeling great by the time that I made it home but one must exercise muscles to grow stronger. A sphincter is nothing but another muscle. There are times, I’m pretty sure, I can press out diamonds.
It was another beautiful day in Maine. We started out as a group and hiked as a group all day long. GCN no longer tries to run away from our singing, but he’s not quite joining in the chorus yet. Not bolting is a great first step. We do have him talking about music more and more. He keeps referring to tough days as “Abba moments.” Apparently, he’s one of the few males that uses ABBA for motivation. Sadly, I do know the words to almost all of their songs, but I was a tortured child of the 70’s. I also have a wife that is not offended by Pierce Brosnan trying to sing. We’ve only seen two movies the 8 months we’ve been on the trail, one of which was “Mamma Mia, Here We Go Again.”
I’m mystified by people that claim that Maine is tough hiking and that the trails aren’t maintained well. I personally think Maine is the second best maintained state just shy of Virginia. Coincidentally, these are the two longest states on the AT. I blame everyone thinking ultra-light is the only way to hike. The vast majority of people use trail runners which supply almost no support to their feet and then they try to run down the trail rather than carefully walking. This skews their image of perceived difficulty. GCN is a trail runner advocate, but he doesn’t try to blast down the trails. If GCN weren’t carry 10-15# of Paydays, he could almost pass as an ultra-light advocate.
I didn’t mean to leave anyone hanging with my privy (or lack of privy) story, but this phrase applies amazingly close to home. I knew we would be coming across a shelter and campsite with a couple of privies. Bunny and I dropped our packs when we came to the first privy. Bear and Sassy saw our packs, but continued on to the water source up ahead. I went exploring to find that this was a newly relocated outhouse. I’m talking I might have been the first person to “break ground and wind” here. It was eerie to actually be able to drop and time to determine the depth of the pit. I shared this discovery with Bear.
Bear went back to perform his own timing function. I was careful to not share my results before he collected his own data so as to not tarnish the results (don’t try this at home, we are professionals—really, we’re both degreed and over 21 no matter how hard that might be to believe). After a few minutes, Bear came back and said he determined the depth of the pit to be approximately 1.5 miles. It looks like we have an Artesian privy if Bear’s experimental results can withstand peer review. I had a few clarifying questions before I would be willing to accept his findings because the result was so divergent from my own findings. Perhaps I landed on a ledge. My first question “Once you started timing, was there a shake involved that might have caused a delayed launch?” I was fairly convinced Bear may need a little more fiber in his diet which was verified with his positive response. Chip felt left out of our conversation and lamented that he was sorry that he had gone first thing this morning because he could very easily have been the turd tie breaker.
We came across some huge moose tracks in the trail. We followed them for a bit before we noticed it turned off the trail going perpendicular to the trail. Bear had just read that a moose will circle back and follow anyone or anything following it. It will start to circle back then lie down in the woods to observe what is behind it. We felt eyes on our backs but couldn’t see any antlers in the woods.
I don’t know where Moxie Bald Mountain came from. I didn’t expect another 1700’ climb after the views yesterday. It really looked all level below us. The climb wasn’t really that bad because we kept stopping to admire the views. Not to mention that Bear and I were both feeling light as a feather after our little experiment. Bunny and I did fall behind a bit as she is feeling a bit tight in her hips. When we got to the peak, everyone else was already on the back side sitting protected and out of the wind. We were getting blown like mad at the sign, but the trail maintainers were thorough enough to provide holds for us to grab to keep from getting blown away.
We took a break and snack at the top to enjoy the magnificent views. I had also been warned about a gap on top of this ridge that required you to jump across. It was only about a 5’ gap with about a 15’ drop, but I was worried about Bunny getting a little intimidated. I waited for her and didn’t say a thing about it. As soon as she caught up with me, I made the jump and waited. She handled it with a minimum of hesitation. She truly is becoming a bad ass.
There are a few fords that we were anticipating here in Maine. Maybe, early in the season, the rivers can be swollen with snow melt but now, from what we’ve seen so far, they seem pretty tame. We crossed the first one, the West Branch of Piscataquis River late this afternoon. There was a guy fly fishing at the crossing which made me forget all about attempting the crossing barefoot. Where there’s fly fishermen, there are snagged hooks.
After the crossing, we were all starting to feel a bit tired. This is the longest we have hiked since we all started hiking together. I know the young pups will laugh that 15 miles isn’t that long, but we are about twice the age of the average hiker. Bear, GCN, and I picked up our pace to start looking for a campsite along the river to make another stealth camp. There just wasn’t anything suitable for a group of 5. We ended up making it all the way to the shelter (a little over 2 miles after the crossing). I slowed down and waited for Bunny and Sassy to catch up and break the bad news. When they caught up, I was expecting them to be tired and a bit angry but they could already tell from looking around. They were in surprisingly good moods considering it was getting dark and Bunny likes to be in the tent about now.
We set up camp behind the lean-to even though there was only one person in it. The women folk don’t like the shelters and complain about lack of privacy and mice crawling on them. Women! We set up the tents before I went to get water which turned out to be a long trek from the shelter. Bear had already gone ahead so he let me know not to even bother with the first location indicated. It was pitch black before I found the trickle across the trail. Needless to say, Bunny and I were the last ones in bed again.
EFG