Day 21, July 20, 16.6 miles

Whew, what a day. The trail today threw everything the AT has to offer at us. I hiked today with Still Thinking and Poego, the 2 NOBO’s that were at the hostel. We got our shuttle to the trail at 7:00 am. The shuttle dropped us at the Liberty Springs Trail which was 0.8 miles from where we started, so we had to hike that to get to the AT and that may not sound like much extra, but on a day like today, that’s a lot and it doesn’t even count. Back to what the trail threw at us today. We started after the first couple of miles with a river ford. After the rain and storms the last 2 days, the river was raging. We nervously forded one by one. I ended up having to swim the last bit. Just a few yards from where we crossed was a crazy waterfall, so any mistakes and you go over the waterfall. Thank goodness, everyone made it ok. The trail was extremely wet and muddy. There were steep, wet, slippery climbs, steep, wet, slippery decents, boulders that you literally had to sit and slide down, mud bogs, swamp, waterfalls, roots that protrude like monsters out of the dirt and entangle your feet, stream crossings—pretty much everything you see on the trail at one time or another was all there today. There was no flat terrain and there was no dry terrain. However, the sun was shining and the temps were high 70’s. At about mile 3, after our ford, I slipped on a rock and went down hard on my right hip. I cut my right arm up and scraped my right leg pretty good. After another 4 miles, I deliberately stepped on a log that was stacked with another log to cross a stream and the thing slipped out from under me and I banged my good knee into the log that was left. I am a little black and blue and cut and scraped, but I’m good–just sore. Still Thinking took a spill and jabbed a stick in his right side and Poego fell twice and is pretty skinned up too. We all look bad, but we all came out pretty good. Nobody was seriously hurt. We’ll probably all be walking gingerly tomorrow. With all that and the 12-1/2 hrs. it took us today, we loved it. The views were incredible. We got to see the mountains we’ll be climbing tomorrow. They’re big and beautiful. On top of North Kinsman today, we were stopped for lunch and met a man who is a native of NH. He told us we will have done 2/3 of the 4,000 footers of NH when we get thru the Whites. Guess I’ll have to come back another time to do the other 1/3–or not!

I can’t wait for tomorrow. It will be another beautiful climb. It’s suppose to rain in the afternoon, so we’re hoping to get across Garfield Ridge to the shelter before the rain comes.

Today I crossed the 1800 mile mark and I have about 372 miles to Big K. I’ve come a long way, but it’s still a lot of miles. Loving the Whites!!