8-31-12

AT miles hiked today: 12.1
Miles to Mt Katahdin: 99.4
Total AT miles hiked: 1204.1
Miles to complete my thruhike: 980.3

I'm tented at Long Pond Stream Lean-to, which has no water nearby because the water source dried up, so everybody had to walk all the way back down the AT to the bottom of the canyon to get water from the stream we had been following the whole time before heading up the hill to the shelter.

I thought I'd point out how exciting things are right now. I know it will be hard tomorrow and the next day. The Chairbacks are coming, and then we will have some easy miles to Mt Katahdin. I loved today. The trail was so beautiful that I stopped many times to take pictures. It was a bit overcast for a while, so I got some good lighting today. There were several lovely waterfalls and one tree had orange, autumn leaves.

I am tired and I slept in till 6am, so didn't get out of camp until 7:40am. We're aiming to leave earlier
tomorrow morning but I'm up late writing this. I'm so far behind on my blog. I have three weeks that I have to catch up on, but Maine is hard for blogging. Many places don't have service and you have to get in the miles and/or they take forever, so there isn't much time for writing.

Payman and Manfred 46 are in the shelter. They plan to summit the day before we do, but we plan to hike a five mile blue blazed loop of waterfalls called the Gulf Hagas trail, which they don't plan to do. Two Steps went back to Germany. I guess the Whites were too intense. They were pretty tough on me, too, but I'm loving Maine.