The Last Section: Part 4

This is part 4 of a 188-mile northbound section hike of the Appalachian Trail in Maine in September 2023. I started hiking at the road crossing near the town of Stratton, ME and finished at Mt. Katahdin in Baxter State Park, the northern terminus of the trail!

Catch up with: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Day 7: Stealth Tentsite after Baker Stream to Horseshoe Canyon Lean-To

Waking up at the little clearing of pine trees of a tentsite that next morning, I was able to go through the motions of packing everything up without getting too much sap on my pants from the pine needle floor or hesitating for that initial cold chill of putting on damp hiking clothes, because logistics were the only thing on my mind with the events of the previous evening behind me.

There are a lot of different types of section hiking, as a “section hike” can range from a short weekend to something months long. That moseying section hiker stereotype didn’t really apply here once again, and I had to go into long-distance hiker mode as if I were back in one of my months-long sections, pushing myself all day with a goal in mind. Part of the proof is in this wordy post, because I didn’t take a single picture on this day, minus one little video. I had to pull a few pictures from other days of the hike for this post just to keep some greenery in the background of my words! 

There were about 24 trail miles between my current location and the town of Monson, and I had a day plus the next morning to get there to be safely out of the woods before winds from Hurricane Ian could potentially reach the area, the strength of which was still in question. I and all of the other hikers had to be prepared, just in case. 

I was a week into my hike, not five-plus months into my hike, so the thru-hiker speed and mileage of many of the other hikers on the trail did not apply here and getting through 24 miles in this one day and into Monson that night was not a realistic possibility for me. 

More notably, river fords and terrain were a huge contributing factor in the reason this one-day mileage would not be possible, which I might have been able to buckle down and pull off had the trail been more of just a walk. This whole trail was still very wet, mucky, rocky and rooty – the lingerings of all the flooding that happened earlier in the season. 

And river fords take time. Forget about hiking as much as three miles per hour during that time, like you might hear hikers speaking of on a different sort of day. Depending on the situation and water level, a hiker might spend an hour by the time they get set up, get across the water, and take a second on the other side to reconvene. 

What this was really like was a big puzzle, and I was constantly working out different ways to fit the pieces together in my head. 

I knew I didn’t need to sit around at the Sterling Inn back in Caratunk for days on end until the hurricane arrived and then passed, my hiking abilities were enough that I could get a move on. But I did realize that I needed to remain humble and have a plan in case I didn’t make it to Monson in time. I carried extra food, and knew that if I had to, I could sit in a shelter for an entire day and night until any potential wind and rain passed. 

I should probably mention that this wind and rain would be the aftermath of the hurricane. If I were going to be in the middle of an actual hurricane, it would be a different story and I wouldn’t even consider hiking to beat it. 

And so the thoughts went, all day long, with very few rest breaks. The type of hike where I’m outrunning something can be exhilarating, but not always continuously fun either. 

Then I came to the West Branch of the Piscataquis (pronounced piss-skat-uh-kiss) River. Once on the other side, I’d consider this my first real river ford. The ford of Baker Stream the previous day was a practice run, a cakewalk compared to this. 

The West Piscataquis River Ford

If you’re a 90’s kid or beyond like me and have seen the movie Titanic, imagine that scene where Rose goes to rescue Jack while the ship is sinking. She goes to retrieve an axe. Then everything is “rush rush rush” until she comes face to face with the water at the bottom of the staircase she must descend in order to get back to Jack, and realizes what she’s about to wade into. Things get really quiet, focused and calm. She takes a few steps down the stairwell and soon the water is up to her chest. She lets out a little yelp at the cold, but keeps going, wading her way forward. 

Ok, a little dramatic here. No water was up to my chest, and it was not freezing like the Atlantic Ocean. But the transition from rushing to calm was just like that. Stark. A change in character, a sudden quiet focus. 

It was so peaceful, overcast, and I stared at the swiftly moving water. There weren’t rapids, but it was like a sheet of foggy dark glass with ripples churning their way through the surface like someone was stirring it from below. 

I tossed a stick in as I knew to do. The baseline is that if you can keep up alongside the stick on land, then the judgment call is generally that the current is slow enough that you can cross the river. 

But it did nothing for me, I couldn’t really make the judgment call and the stick drifted away at such a borderline speed. I realized it was either go across or backtrack to somewhere and take a very long detour that I didn’t really have the details of, or potentially be stuck on that side of the river until after the hurricane weather. This could lead to another set of tough logistical decisions and likely even deeper water if I tried to cross again later. 

I had been gathering data from southbound hikers who had already crossed the river, along with comments in the Farout app that proved invaluable. It gave me a gauge of the conditions of the river in which others were safely able to get across. One hiker told me it had been up to his chest when he crossed, and he sure was taller than me. That worried me and had me thinking “there’s no way it could really be like that”. But I decided that as I was crossing, if I was within the realm of the conditions these people had described who were a similar size to my body type and had managed it, so could I. 

So in my “Rose in Titanic” moment, I stepped in. Normally water with that type of chill would have me dipping a toe in and then recoiling in my low tolerance for uncomfortable water temperatures and standing on the side for 10 minutes thinking about it, but it’s so interesting what happens when it’s not really a choice. It was the path forward that I needed to take, not a voluntary dip on a summer day. So I just did it.

I’m not used to a current pressing me like that, but I paused and took stock of whether I could hold steady while taking a deep breath. I could, so I side-stepped on. Just like the day before: three points of contact at all times from either my feet or trekking poles, face upstream, hip belt unbuckled… until the water level started to reach the base of my hip belt and fanny pack.

“This isn’t going to work” I thought to myself. 

So just as slow as I had made it a quarter of the way across, I started shuffling back to my starting point. I took my shirt off and left just my sports bra on as a top layer, the air temperature completely manageable although I wished it was sunnier out all the sudden. I shoved my shirt in the top of my pack, took everything out of my hip belt pockets, and attached my fanny pack to the top of my pack. My shoes and leggings remained on. I needed the shoes for stability on those slippery river rocks and by this point, wet feet and legs were just part of the hike anyway. 

In I went again. This river had a tiny little “island” of dirt and grasses in the middle. I had read in some comments that the deeper route was to go to this little island and then on to the other side, and the shallower route was to go straight across in one shot in front of the island. 

I made up my mind that I needed to head to that island as a mental halfway point so I could feel like I was closer to land at any given time, despite the fact that this wasn’t a super wide river in the first place. This made it like two small crossings instead of one. But it got deep, just like the comments had promised. 

I felt the current pushing into my hips as I faced upstream, but any moment I started to feel uncomfortable, I stood completely still and breathed, thinking about how well I could hold steady and whether I felt in-control. I took this river ford super seriously, there didn’t have to be any performance anxiety. Only me, breathing, calm, one slow step at a time. If at any point I couldn’t comfortably take the next step, I told myself I’d go back where I had just come from and try a different route across. 

When I reached the little island, I felt this wave of relief. I climbed up and into the grass, walked a few feet to the other side and celebrated internally as I stepped my foot in the water and realized the second half was not nearly as deep. I had this, I’d be fine. 

Once I was all the way across, putting my top layer back on, I felt relief and realized how anxiously focused I had just been, kind of like when you’ve been busy or stressed and then suddenly have a day off to realize how tired you are.

A few miles later as the woods became dim with the first signs of night, I came upon a hiker I had chatted with earlier in the day, before he had passed and gone ahead of me. He had his tent set up at a little stealth spot right off the trail, and we launched into chatter about that river crossing. He told me he had stripped completely down to get across when he realized the depth, and also said he thought about me and wondered if I made it across or what I decided to do. It was then that I knew for sure the seriousness in which I took the fording of that river was completely justified. 

The thing is, these various river fords can be a different experience based on the day they’re crossed. The water levels and currents rise and fall with the weather and various other factors, so a shallow easy crossing one day might turn impassable on another. This is why this part of the trail was such a logistical puzzle after rainy days, and it was important to pay attention to what others reported. 

Everyone has a different experience and comfort level, as well as risk tolerance, and on varying days I encountered hikers who attempted river crossings in currents I’d never be comfortable with, all the way to the other end of the spectrum where hikers proactively decided to take every road walk around, despite the mileage it might add, just to not even have to think about it. 

A hiker could be reading this who’s forded the West Branch of the Piscataquis and had a vastly different experience than the one I’ve just described. The point is, this is what the experience felt like to me on that day.

Horseshoe Canyon Lean-To 

I arrived at Horseshoe Canyon Lean-To with the last light just leaving the sky, around 16 miles behind me for the day and 8 or so to go until Monson. Although I would have preferred to already be in Monson, well ahead of the hurricane, I felt better that I was far from the only one out there as three more hikers arrived at the shelter that evening, two of them well after dark.

The fortunate thing about hurricanes is that they move slow enough to be somewhat predictable about their arrival time, and I’d beat the weather if I could just get out of the woods within the first half of the next day. I knew that a good benchmark to do so would be that whatever time the others were planning on hiking out in the morning, I just had to leave earlier to make the same milestone. 

As I chatted intermittently with the one other hiker in the shelter and toyed with my stove that wasn’t working, which is another story altogether, I could picture what the town of Monson would be like. There are very few lodging options, Shaws hiker hostel being the main and famous option, with every hiker in the area taking shelter there from the weather. I knew that to get any chance of being indoors, I would have had to get there far earlier than that day, or at least made a reservation for a bunk excessively in advance. 

That’s what can happen on the AT sometimes. Hikers in thru-hiker season can’t just consider what resources are available, but what the competition will be like for those resources as well. I knew I’d be one of the overflow hikers who had to tent outside when I got there.

Riding out the day in the shelter really did seem like the better option, until the realization that if I stayed there, I’d be facing another river ford between the shelter and the town of Monson, but after more rain. If it turned out to be anything like the West branch of the Piscataquis River that I had just crossed, I knew I couldn’t risk it. Logistics regarding rivers were really the only thing I was basing decisions off of anymore. I set an early pre-dawn alarm to allow ample time for my morning grogginess and to make it to town regardless of the lodging situation and drifted off for the night.

Read Part 5 here!