Into Monson

Ten days since arriving at Baxter, I’m finally in my first trail town. All it took was 113 miles of trail (plus the hike up Katahdin), eight days in the 100-mile wilderness, one zero, countless scrapes, and a few days experiencing dehydrated. And I can’t wait to keep heading south.

Day 2 zero? Yes please

The original plan was a Friday summit day. However the forecast on Wednesday was suggesting a Thursday summit day would be best. So an audible was called and the summit day was now Thursday. We left Portland around 6am, started the hike up at 11am, and signed the register upon returning around 8pm. This ended up being a great call as we ended up with amazing views throughout the day. Given the long day and in consideration of my friend’s schedule, I decided to zero the following day. We ended up staying in Baxter and checking out some areas other than Katahdin. With Baxter’s isolated location, why not take advantage of being there? There are many lakes located within the park that have canoe rentals for $1/hour, there are multiple libraries, and so many views to take in. I’m thankful I got to share one more day with my friend before departing on my own.

Lessons from the wilderness

Spending eight days hiking from Baxter to Monson surely taught me some lessons. Some AT and SoBo specific, others more universal. Lessons learned include:

  • An eight day food carry is indeed heavy
  • There are multiple reasons to do a food drop as a SoBo
    • It will allow to carry a lighter load
    • It can help create an itinerary that keeps the mileage on the lower end to help ease you into hiking l
    • It can end up forcing a community if there are enough people that have a good drop on the same day, as you will all need to be at the same place at relatively the same time
  • Arriving at camp dehydrated will make you not want to eat dinner
  • You’ll have to be flexible with your daily mileage and be willing to change plans (provided it doesn’t put you in a dangerous situation)
  • Most importantly, people out here are great

Time to leave?

While I’m definitely ready to get back on trail, it is hard to finish getting ready for the shuttle back to the trailhead. I will miss showering and sleeping in bed (which was to be expected), I’ll miss these Shaw’s breakfasts (not completely expected but had seen/heard great things), and I’ll miss the community (not necessarily expected, at this point). But I know there will be more showers and breakfasts down the trail, and luckily it seems like a good number of SoBos will only be a day or two behind.

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