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Album: journal:day10

Inn to David Logan Shelter
7 Oct 2005
Day 10
13.7+ LT miles, 122.3 cumulative miles

Today started with a wonderful breakfast aftter a fullfilling night of sleep. Things went downhill from there. Thinking back to that breakfast I have to smile at how clueless we were about the day's hike.

Here I will have to pause the journal writing. It is after 1 a.m., bugs are attracted to my headlamp, and I'm not recovered from the day's beatdown.


This is written on Sunday, two days later.


Friday started without any hint of problems. Karen and I left the Inn and said our farewells. Both of us were headed to Maine Junction but by different routes. I went down the highway a mile to pick up where I left the trail. Karen didn't need the extra mileage or uphill so it was more convenient for her to take a side trail directly from the Inn to the Appalachian Trail and head south to Maine Junction where the Long Trail and the Appalachian Trail split.

I arrived at Maine Junction just fine. I waited a bit and then hiked to the first shelter on the LT, the Tucker-Johnson. We agreed to meet here or leave a note if we didn't arrive at the junction at the same time. No Karen. So I waited.

When I put the shelter journal down, an hour had passed. I didn't know what to think. She only had to walk 1.4 miles and two hours had passed. I jogged the half mile back to the junction and soon some day hikers arrived on a loop back to the Inn. I gave them a mission and returned to the shelter.

After another hour without her or news I decided to head back to the Inn via her trail. Either she turned north on the AT instead of south or she somehow injured herself and hobbled back to civilization. I figured it was the latter. After all I had given her the guidebook, map, and directions which I made her repeat in the parking lot. "Take this trail to the AT, turn left at the first junction, then right at the LT.", and "Don't take the Deer Leap trail." because the map the first intersection look like a 3-way.

Suffice it to say that she is tentatively named Half Mile due to the fact that that is about as far as she can walk before getting lost. We reunited on the trail after she fugured out her mistake and went back to the shelter. It took 3.5 hours to reach that point. Needless to say it was a big setback. We didn't head further down the trail until after 1 o'clock. "For lack of a nail the kingdom was lost", as the saying goes. The late start due to that little error caused serious problems for the next two days.

The walk was easy out to the Rolston Rest Shelter. We made good time and had a bite to eat. We talked to some weekend section hikers, and I watched the sky. It was 4 o'clock and the temperature had dropped and the winds were picking up. The bad weather was arriving.

Karen seemed keen on reaching our planned destination 7.9 miles further though. Who was I to argue? It would put us in a really good spot for the following day. I should have argued. The rains began before we went a half-mile. The steady drizzle did not stop until 9 am two days later.

Soon the sun set and our world was the small circle illuminated by our lights. It was warm so we never dressed for the rain. Water was running down our faces as we hiked into the night. The trail was tedious. It's narrow footpath was rapidly filling with water and mud. It was slippery and filled with roots and rocks. Up and down. Around that tree. Where is the trail? Where was the last blaze? It might have been the longest 7.4 miles of my life. We finally arrived at the next shelter after 11 and gave Left Foot quite a scare.

We were beat (Karen literally after several falls) but we had a good time talking to LF about the ordeal. We had a little wine and went to bed.

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