AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

by David Miller

  When I had told one friend, a married woman, about my plans for a four- to five-month. AT thru-hike she said, “Good thing you’re not married to me.” She was right, but it was best not to tell her so.

  Juli and I also finalize plans for the end of the hike. Juli, our daughters, and Juli’s two brothers will fly to Maine on September 16. My timeline is now fixed. I have twenty-one days to hike 314 miles.

  I leave Gorham after my second night in town, planning to return after my slack-pack today. The AT from Pinkham Notch to Wildcat Mountain is rigorous, often inclined steeply enough for me to lean forward and touch the trail with my hands. Even after hiking over eighteen hundred miles, I sometimes feel winded and my thighs burn a short way into an uphill climb. Usually it means I’m going too fast. I slow down, find my pace, and think about something else. Next thing I know, I’ve gone another hundred yards and I’m no longer struggling.

  A group of hikers ahead are having difficulty with the climb. As I pass they make comments: “Look at him, just waltzing up the trail.” Of course they are unaware of how I have to manage my own struggle. If a person who has not had enough exercise attempts to backpack, then he will find the going difficult. He might think, “I sweat, I get out of breath, I’m out of shape.” But he is wrong to think the tribulation is uniquely his. Everyone sweats; everyone pants for breath. The person who is in better shape will usually push himself to hike more quickly and bump into the same limitations. But when the fit person is stressed, he is less likely to attribute the difficulty to his shortcomings. Backpacking is hard—that’s just the way it is. Obviously conditioning is advantageous, but the perception of disadvantage can be more debilitating than actual disadvantage.

  It takes me two hours to cover the first three miles and reach the top of the ridge. At this rate, I would finish at 10:00 p.m. The remaining ridge walk is rather saw-toothed, with each mountain on it having secondary peaks. Wildcat Mountain has summits A, B, C, D, and E. Carter Mountain has South, Middle and North summits. The trail goes over every one. At 3:20 p.m. I stop at Imp Campsite to get water after traveling thirteen miles without taking my pack off. This is the farthest I’ve walked without a pack-off break. I’m back on the trail in fifteen minutes, needing to hike eight more miles before sunset.

  A note on the side of the trail warns that a “4,000-pound moose chased a hiker” near this spot; four thousand pounds is about three times the weight of a large moose, so more than likely it was a fisherman who wrote the note. Moose tracks and droppings are everywhere. The AT is hemmed in by trees and underbrush. Occasionally a moose-trampled path cuts across the trail. Should an angry moose step onto the trail, there would be no easy exit.

  The final four miles to Interstate 2 are easy and eventless, enabling me to reach the road before dark. I easily hitch a ride into town and spend my last night in New Hampshire.

  I leave town in the morning and head down the road to find a good spot from which to hitchhike. A car pulls over to offer me a ride before I even stick out my thumb. The trail continues to be challenging. Much like yesterday, I have a long ascent to the ridgeline, and then I bounce over many summits along the ridge. Plateaus high on the ridge are sometimes muddy, even swampy enough for bog bridges. Most of the summits have open areas with exposed bedrock, trimmed with straggly krummholtz, low shrubbery, and some blueberry bushes.

  As the trail descends from an unnamed hill, I can see Dream Lake through the trees. The lake is 2,650 feet high and completely encircled by the forest. Near the perimeter a few boulders poke through the rippled surface of the lake. From my vantage point thirty yards above the water, it looks like one of the boulders is moving. I stop to get a better look, my mind trying to reconcile the bizarre sight of a boulder moving about in the water. I’m considering the plausibility of a manatee or a seal being in the mountains of Maine when the head of a moose rises from the water. I ease my way down to the lakeshore, and the moose either doesn’t see me or is unperturbed by my presence. She continues her routine, dipping her head to the lake bottom to feed, allowing her body to float so she can rotate.

  Moose feeding in Dream Lake, Maine.

  I meet up with Ken and Marcia at Gentian Pond Shelter and hike with them the rest of the day. We would stay on a similar schedule for the remainder of the trail. I’ve spent more time with them than with any other thru-hikers, and they are outstanding company. Ken is unflappably genial. Marcia is the more driven of the two; she is definitely not just tagging along with her spouse. Marcia is a reader, and we spend hours discussing books.

  The last four miles of our day are difficult, with steep climbs and descents. Trail builders have erected log ladders to help us up or down some of the many rock ledges. Late in the day we come to a sign posted on a tree:

  WELCOME TO MAINE

  The way life should be

  We arrive at Carlo Col Shelter after 7:00 p.m. It is cold and nearly dark. I cook and eat in the shelter with my legs in my sleeping bag.

  I plan for a short day, less than ten miles, because today I will traverse some of the most difficult terrain on the AT. The morning is cold, below forty degrees, and windy as I head for the open summit of Goose Eye Mountain. I pass two southbound hikers and both have scraped knees. After Goose Eye Mountain, the trail descends to Mahoosuc Notch, a mile-long ravine reputed to be the hardest mile on the Appalachian Trail.

  The notch is an alleyway between two steeply sloped mountain ridges, filled with boulders that have tumbled down from the mountainsides. The boulders are huge; many are as big as cars, some as big as trailers. They lay hodge-podge at different angles with gaps between them. The white blazes, almost entirely on rocks, just give a general idea of the intended path. Each chooses his own path, deciding when to go over or around, left or right, at every impasse.

  At the start of the section, I collapse my trekking poles and tuck them into my pack. I’ll use my arms as much as my legs, pulling myself up and dipping myself down. I enjoy navigating the obstacles and the uniqueness of the experience. It is more of a physical challenge than an aerobic challenge, and it is a time-consuming process. Hikers generally take fifty minutes to two hours to traverse the notch. I try to stay atop the boulders, and with the weight of my pack I can lunge three or four feet across the gaps between boulders. When the crevasse is too wide or the boulders too uneven, I descend into the rubble and pick my way through smaller rocks.

  Sometimes white arrows are painted funneling all hikers through the same slot. A few times this is done to put hikers through a squeeze below a gap in the boulders. Most hikers need to take their packs off and push them through the tunnel ahead. I am able to keep my snug internal frame pack on through the tunnels, but once I nearly get stuck as I belly crawl. Inside the last of the tunnels I find a water bottle that had been dislodged from the pack of a hiker before me.

  As soon as the trail exits the Mahoosuc Notch, another challenging mile of trail begins. The AT heads steeply up Mahoosuc Arm, gaining fifteen hundred feet of elevation in the next mile. The surface of the trail is almost entirely rock, like a sloppily poured concrete coating. The “sidewalk” is the core of the mountain, exposed by hikers wearing away the soil. There is soil, duff, and spruce trees on either side of the trail. Walking is difficult on this hard, sloped surface. I am taking my time, eliminating the challenge by choosing not to fight the mountain. I climb slowly and stop often.

  There is a ray of sunlight through a break in the trees, and I lie on the slab of rock that has been warmed. I take out my fleece and use it as a pillow. My body enjoys the rest, but my mind is not tired enough to sleep. Further up the mountain I chase away a squirrel and sit on the log he vacated. He goes up a tree and complains. He comes back down onto the other end of the log to confront me. He makes tiny little lurches toward me with every obscenity he squeaks. I wonder if he will attack and what strategy he may have to overcome the size differential.

  After the summit, I make a short descent to thirty-four hundred feet, where Speck Pond
is nestled into a flat between the peaks of Mahoosuc Arm and Old Speck Mountain. The trail circles around the shoreline to Speck Pond Campsite and Shelter, where I will spend the night. The pond is large, larger than Dream Lake that I passed yesterday. My walk along half of its shoreline is longer than a quarter-mile. In Maine, it seems that “pond” or “lake” is an attribute ascribed at the discretion of the person naming the body of water.

  Ken and Marcia are in the shelter, along with a southbound flip-flopper named Detour. This is an AMC-run campsite, and a caretaker has her semipermanent tent set up nearby. An Outward Bound group is tenting in the campsite area. There is a fee for shelter use, but we all do work-for-stay. Detour and I are assigned the task of scouring the grounds for trash. I find nothing. Detour tags along behind me and confirms my findings. Ken and Marcia get the job of answering the Outward Bound group’s questions about thru-hiking.

  Usually I lay my head on a stuff sack filled with unused clothes. Tonight I am without a pillow because it is so cold that I wear everything to bed, including my rain jacket and pants, gloves, and my fleece cap.

  I start my hike in the morning at the same time as Ken and Marcia, and we make the short but steep ascent up Old Speck Mountain together. The sky is blue, and large ponds, a deeper hue of blue, dot the expansive landscape visible from the rocky mountaintop. Ken and Marcia are on the trail below me, winding through the mix of stubby evergreens and boulders. The speckled gray granite contrasts wonderfully with the deep green of the forest. It is a scene exemplary of Maine, the most beautiful state on the trail.

  After a quick descent from Old Speck, I begin a long and arduous climb of West Baldpate. It is increasingly difficult the higher I go. The trail leads directly uphill with no switchbacks, on a slope varying from fifteen to thirty-five degrees, about the same slope range as the average residential roof. It is deeply rutted by erosion. Ruggedness can often be equated with unspoiled wilderness, but in this case, the difficulty is due to the poor trail routing and the trail’s popularity. Thousands of hikers use this section of trail every year, pounding away at the firmament that holds the soil in place. Initially, the path would have been difficult due to the steepness, but the terrain would have been smoother and covered by soil, like the land on either side of the trail. Water from rainfall and melting snow channel into this cleared, slightly depressed path, streaming away loose soil. Rock and deadfall lie scattered on the trail, in a snapshot of their slow-motion tumble down the mountain. Tree roots exposed by soil loss form a ledge one foot, two feet, sometimes three feet high. At times soil is washed away below the roots, leaving them suspended like thick trip wires.

  From Baldpate’s West Peak, I look ahead to the East Peak, which is slightly higher. The top of East Baldpate is a head of stone, rounded if viewed from afar. Trees grow in a ring down from the peak, like the remnants of hair on a balding man. The trail is a visible scar across the saddle between the summits. The clearing atop East Peak, which looked like a smooth mound of stone from a mile away, is full of lumps, cracks, and ledges. Puddles of dirt and pebbles gather inside the irregularities, in which ground-hugging plants take hold. Knee-high trees, some of which may be over a hundred years old, are scattered about taking lonely stands on the weather-beaten mountaintop.

  The East Peak of Baldpate.

  The AT down the north face of East Baldpate is dangerously steep. Bedrock bulges out from the ground in mounded slabs ten to thirty feet long. Some of the slabs are sloped downward at an angle of forty-five degrees or more, and often are tilted to one side. Even though some of the angles are too steep for me to stand on, I find that I can walk down them if I am gutsy enough to scurry down without stopping. Some of the surfaces end with a drop-off, so this technique is not always an option. I am not too proud to sit and scoot down the rock on my behind; it is better than doing so involuntarily. Mostly, hikers skirt along the edge of the down-sloping bedrock, gaining footholds in the soil at the fringes and grabbing trailside trees to keep from slipping. The trees look abused and wobble at the roots like loose teeth.

  Caution is on my mind. I’ve heard of two people who have been injured in Maine, ending their attempts to thru-hike. In Gorham I received an e-mail from No-Hear-Um, whom I last saw in Virginia before he had jumped up to Katahdin and started hiking south. Now, he is off the trail. He had lost too much weight on his journey; he felt weak and took too many falls on the precarious trail in this state. He decided to end his hike rather than risk getting injured.

  The trail levels, and it looks like I should pass the last few miles of the day in relative safety. The most innocuous-looking branch lies across the trail, not more than an inch in diameter, and not more than a few inches off the ground. Stepping over, surely I’ve lifted my foot high enough to clear, but the branch lurches up to catch my toe. This is a problem, because the foot now caught on the branch is the one I was counting on having in front of me. I lurch forward with my torso horizontal to the ground. My pack has more momentum than my body. It is a slave to gravity and wants to dive into the ground, uncaring that my face will go with it. My free leg is hopping, frantically trying to do the work of two legs, and my arms are trying to keep up by pumping away at my trekking poles. Finally, my foot breaks free and I am spared.

  East B Hill Road is a road with little traffic, but a truck comes along just as I reach it, and I get a ride into the town of Andover. I stop to eat at the diner. Ken and Marcia have arrived, and we eat dinner together. A wall of the diner is adorned with pictures of hikers who have completed the pancake challenge. If you can eat three pancakes, you get them for free. It doesn’t sound like much of a challenge unless you see the photographs. Each pancake is as big as the plate, and about an inch thick. After dinner, Marcia, Ken, and I visit the grocer across the street. We will make our own pancakes in the morning.

  All trail towns tempt me to describe them as “quaint,” but Andover seems most deserving of the adjective. The town is centered on the intersection of Main Street and the road on which I arrive. On each side of Main Street there are only a handful of buildings. The largest, a pretty three-story building with white siding, is Andover Guest House. The house has bed and breakfast quality rooms for travelers and a special bunkroom for hikers. This is the cleanest hiker accommodation I’ve stayed in, thanks to the fastidious owner, “Ladyinnkeeper.” “Packs and shoes stay outside,” she says. She delivers her statements in bursts, like she is paying for air time, but any time she has saved is lost by me pausing to absorb the flood of words.

  In the morning Ladyinnkeeper drives me back to the trail. She will pick me up today at another road crossing ten trail miles from here, and I will return to the guest house for another night’s stay. Ten miles is a short day, and I don’t have to cook or set up camp. It’s just a walk in the woods.

  The first six miles are easy, and then there is the moderately difficult ascent and descent of Moody Mountain. I struggle a bit on the climb. I’ve learned that as I tire my form gets sloppy, which makes matters worse. I tend to get duck-footed and let my weight drag. I can perform more efficiently if I keep my feet aligned with the trail, take shorter strides, and lean a bit forward when going uphill. If there is any science to my claims, it is coincidental; they are based only on feel. If I make a particularly steep step, I may plant both trekking poles and pull with my arms. Most of the time I avoid “ski-poling” and plant only one at a time. If I am on clear and level ground, I will pick up my poles and carry them by their balance point (near the center), one in each hand. My hike has made me a believer in trekking poles. They have saved me from a number of falls.

  Back in Andover, I speak with Juli on the phone. The temperature in Florida is ninety-three degrees. In the morning, the temperature in Andover is thirty-eight degrees. Ken and Marcia also stayed at the guest house last night, so for the second consecutive morning, we make ourselves a pancake breakfast.

  Continuing north, my hike starts with a long climb to the summit of Old Blue Mountain. The stunted pin
es, which cap nearly every mountain in Maine, are particularly dense and green on Old Blue. I’ve found a perfect chair-height lump of granite where I sit and write until Ken and Marcia come along. I hike with them, and we pass the miles talking. The trail stays fairly high on the ridge after Old Blue, and the weather is wonderful.

  I reach State Road 17. Nearby there is a pull-off occupied by a handful of cars. Their owners are looking out to the mountain range and to a sprawling blue lake with an island of trees in the center. From there I hitch a ride into Rangeley, a small resort town, and stay at Gull Pond Hostel.

  “Hello, Awol,” Crossroads says as he steps out of the bunkroom to greet me.

  I last saw Crossroads in the Shenandoah National Park. He wrote a register entry in New York saying he left the trail to return to his job. Now I eagerly listen as he tells the rest of the story. He worked only for one week before deciding it was more important for him to finish the trail. He quit, went up to Katahdin and has been hiking south. He’ll have to find a new job when he finishes. Crossroads seems very happy, and I’m happy for him.

  I update him on my progress, telling him of my sprained ankle and my struggles with the heat in New York and rain in Vermont.

  “Geez, I thought none of that would bother you,” he says.

  “Why would you think that?” I answer.

  “You were such a machine back when we met in North Carolina. I thought you were some military type, like a sergeant.”

  My recollection is of Crossroads powering up Standing Indian Mountain. He is younger than I am; he was hiking faster and was on a more ambitious schedule. At the time we first met, I was mired in doubt about my ability to thru-hike. We all perceive that the other guy has it easier than we do; we all assume that others know our inner doubts.