Wait, did we really just walk from Georgia to MAINE?!

Maine photos updated here:  http://picasaweb.google.com/HikeStrong2010/

Is this real life? Did we really just walk from Georgia to MAINE?!? I guess I have the bruises, scars, smelly clothes, useless shoes and mangled feet to prove it, but it just doesn’t feel real… I couldn’t have possibly walked the entire Appalachian Trail. I was warned we would feel this way once we got off the trail and came back to the “real world,” but I had no idea how surreal being back would be. We search for jobs, run errands, hang out with friends, and do everything normal people would do. It’s hard to believe a few short days ago we were celebrating hiking over 2,175 miles and raising exactly $11,466.13 to fight cancer. Thank you so much to everyone for your support, donations to LIVESTRONG and good karma! We definitely needed it and it helped us prevail on the trail!

Since we last blogged…

We saw a Moose! MAN that thing was big! It was just in the style I like to see bears… far away and walking the other way. The moose was a little less daunting than the bear, as it was in the water on the other side of a pond. Soon after we spotted it, the moose slowly lumbered off into the trees and up the opposing hill never to be seen again. Several times throughout the day and rest of the trip we would stop when we heard something in the distance, hoping it was another moose, but it always ended up being squirrels or birds or something else completely non-moose.

There are legends on the trail about people from Maine. Most of them we heard from our pal “Bad Dinner,” and others we propagated as we hiked on. These legends included things like “Maine could conquer Canada, but they don’t want to have to pay the taxes,” and “Icy hot is too weak for people from Maine. After hiking they just rub their muscles down with liquid hot magma.” These “Maineiacs,” as we liked to call them always seemed to carry the heaviest pack, walked the most miles a day and never carried trekking poles (they are too girly I guess). Their distinguishing characteristics included enormous hiker thighs, bushy fu-man-chu’s and a glare that could turn a man to stone. Thru-hikers from Maine were tough… and when we finally reached Maine we were taught a lesson why.

You see, when you get to Maine there is a nice pretty sign that tells you you’ve reached the border. After that sign you slip your way up a wet stone slope and then hike directly back down a boulder-filled rock face. There are no “foot bridges” in Maine on the Appalachian Trail. If you want to cross a stream you take your shoes off and walk through it. Once in a while a lumberjack will have chopped down a tree and you can walk across that, but fording rivers is what you do in Maine. There is only one place in Maine where you seem to get a break when it comes to stream crossings. On the Kennebec river there’s a nice guy named Dave who ferries you across the river in a canoe. They ask you not to ford this river because there are multiple dam’s on it that can quickly cause the water to rise without notice.

Maine also has a few other key attributes. We talked about Mahoosuc Notch in our last post, the “most fun or hardest one mile of the AT” which had us scrambling over boulders for over a mile. Sugarloaf and Bigelow were also killers. Then, just as you feel like you are getting to the very end of the trip, you get to the 100 mile wilderness. The sign as you enter it warns you that there are no places to get supplies or help for a hundred miles, and tells you to take 10 days of food as you enter. Once you make it out of the 100 mile wilderness, then you have to climb Mt. Katahdin. Mt. Katahdin is where the AT ends for us Northbounders, and the 5 mile ascent is what I consider the most difficult hike of the entire trail. Some would argue with me on that one, but I still say it is the hardest.

The trail up Katahdin starts out fairly low-key, quickly getting steep, climbs over boulders up to false summit, flattens out for a mile, and then finishes with another step climb to the top. The hike was agonizing as we tried to pick the best route up the rock slopes knowing full well when it was over we would have to scramble back down the same way. At one point we were sure we were near the top when other hikers passed us going down the mountain. One of them said to Jeff, “you’re almost to the top of the first peak, and then you’re gonna laugh.” What in the world did that mean!? I mentally prepared myself for the worst, climbed over the last big boulder, and then completely understood what the guy meant. When I got to the top of the first peak I could see over a mile of flatland leading to another peak, waaaaaaaay in the distance. The hike up the mountain literally felt like it lasted forever. We pushed on, climbed up the peak we had seen in the distance, and then saw the infamous “Katahdin” sign. Oh what a feeling! We took a few minutes to take in the beauty of everything we saw around us – 360-degree views of the valley, trees, cliffs, lakes and clouds – it was so surreal. Surprisingly there were a LOT of people on top of the mountain, and the weather was getting bad, so we snapped some triumphant photos and headed on our way back down the hill. Maine didn’t let up on us till the very end… raining on us as we tried not to slip off the rocks we had to scramble down. When we made it back to Baxter State Park, we put our shoes in a pile of things to burn later, and headed out of the park.

We really want to thank all of you for following along with us, and for all the great support from you all. A special thanks to all who have donated to LIVESTRONG in our name and enabled us to raise over $11K to fight cancer! If you would still like to donate, you can do so by going to www.hikestrong2010.com and clicking “donate online!”

Not sure what is next on the agenda… but I’m sure it will be awesome!

~Styx & Bones

The Best For Last!

To see our full blog with pictures go to http://www.hikestrong2010.blogspot.com/.
New pics uploaded at http://picasaweb.google.com/HikeStrong2010/ in the first two albums.
  
I’ve often wondered why more people don’t hike the AT south from Maine to Georgia. My rationale for supporting hiking south is because the weather is way more friendly if you start in the cool summer breezes of Maine and then work your way to Georgia after the heat wave of summer is gone. Having hiked this far now, I realize that people choose to do it from GA-ME like Jeff & I because of New Hampshire and Maine…period. Not only are they by far the most beautiful sections of trail, but they are also the hardest. I’m sure that you need the practice of hiking the first 1,800 miles to get ready for them. I honestly can’t imagine hiking the trail from ME to GA now because if it didn’t physically kill me, after seeing what I’ve seen here, the rest of the trail probably would have bored me to death!
  
Since we’ve last blogged…
  

  Our first “Welcome to NH” was Mt. Moosilauke, a 4,800 foot beast that takes you directly up the mountain and down the even steeper and more slippery north face back down to 1,000 feet in under 4 miles. The actual “welcome” was in the form of a sign that read “This trail is extremely tough. If you lack experience, please use another trail.“ And they weren’t kidding! The north face was a treat with cascades right next to the trail for over a mile heading downhill. This part of the hike reminded me of a journal entry I had read in a shelter register back in New York (Jeff’s re-creation of it shown here), which talked about how the trail used to have a lot of “switchbacks” that would wind around mountains to help you go up them in a less steep manner, and now the trail just seems to go straight up and over the highest peaks it can find.
  

Going into the White Mountains we saw an inordinate amount of day hikers and French Canadians! It was actually pretty weird being around so many people during the day, and even weirder having to talk to them… lol. I remember very clearly coming down one stretch of the presidential range. The hike was pretty intense, with huge rock steps going down, down, down. We were tired of hiking at this point, so we started going faster and faster, but still stopping to enjoy some waterfalls on the way. At one point we saw three kids hiking and asked them how much further. One kid said 2 miles. We were stunned! The trail to the bottom was only 2.7 miles, and we had been hiking for a while, surely we had not only gone .7 miles! We decided they didn’t know what they were talking about and asked for a second opinion. The next people we came across was a mother and daughter who were taking a break by a footbridge. We asked how much further and the girl said it had taken them an hour and a half to get there, so we definitely had an hour left. We were disheartened, wanting so bad to be at the end. Eight minutes later we were at the bottom. We then vowed to never ask a day-hiker a question… ever!
  

The White Mountains of New Hampshire are officially one of my favorite places I have ever been -- definitely check out the pics. We climbed Mt. Washington, the second highest mountain on the trail, for my birthday and enjoyed the clearest, most beautiful views from the top. The 60-80 MPH winds were a little crazy, but its not called the “home of the worlds worst weather” for nothing! The sign as you approach the summit reads “STOP. The area ahead has the worst weather in America. Many have died there from exposure, even in the summer. Turn back now if the weather is bad.” Yikes… what are they trying to say here? Double-yikes to the teenager that soon walked past me with no shirt on. It was an amazing birthday.
  

After the presidentials our next mental milestone was reaching the border of Maine, and MAN we were glad to see it! I was so excited! I took a picture hugging the sign and Jeff picked it up and played it like a Rockstar jamming on a guitar -- it was awesome. After the border, the thing Jeff & I had been looking forward to most was “Mahoosuc Notch.” They call this one-mile stretch of trail either the most fun one mile or the hardest one mile of the entire Appalachian Trail. Jeff & I definitely call it the most fun -- so much fun we thought about doing it twice. We posted a lot of videos on our Facebook   page and have a bunch of photos in our picasa album if you want to see for yourself. This area is a massive jumble of boulders and rocks that you have to scramble over, climb under and jump across to get to the other side. In one spot I had to use the roots of a tree like a rope to climb up a rock wall to the top! Jeff always seemed to make it look easier than me, but I still made it and had a ton of fun. My pack finally received some battle damage though, as I scraped a couple holes in the side as I squeezed myself between two boulders.
  

We only have a couple hundred miles left now! Its so crazy to know we’ve come this far and have raised over $10K to fight cancer! Thank you to everyone who has donated, and if you still want to donate you can do so by going to http://www.hikestrong2010.com/ and clicking the “donate online” button. Our phones are supposed to be turning into useless paperweights any day now, so you probably won’t hear from us until the end!  If you need to find us, leave a voicemail or send an email and hopefully we'll get it! :0)

  
See ya in a couple weeks!
~Styx & Bones