Today's miles 14.5. AT miles 1837.
We woke up to blue sky's and sunshine this morning thankfully after yesterday. Nothing had dried overnight though, we had to put our damp shorts and tops back on, not very nice but the first time we've had to do that. They soon dried. We left camp at eight and met straight away with our first obstacle of the day, descending down a small but very steep rocky waterfall, thankfully the water level had subsided after the rain. The trail remained very rocky all morning. Once down from Mount Garfield and our campsite we had a few ups and downs before a tiring steep rocky climb up to South Twin Mountain, great views from the top again though. We stopped just before the summit on a large rock for a rest and to dry out our tent fly and the last bits of damp clothing in the sun.
The descent from South Twin Mountain wasn't too bad, fairly gradual and the trail got less rocky, less big rocks anyway until we crossed a small rock field near mount Guyot. The trail from the rock field had no white blazes for about a mile and a half which left us wondering if we had took a wrong turn at the last junction. Everything seemed right, we were on the right track according to Nigel's map and the trail followed the same profile as in our guide but with no white blaze in sight we did doubt ourselves, finally though we spotted one to our relief. The last mile and a half down got a bit steeper but not as bad as we expected, we did have a huge wooden step ladder to climb down at one point.
Once at the bottom, past Zealand Falls, we could see from our guide profile we had a 4.7 mile flat section but expected it to remain rocky. To our surprise the trail was totally clear of rocks and flat as a pancake, we didn't expect that in the White Mountainous. It remained flat for about three miles passing some fabulous rock fields. The last mile and a half got a bit rockier and had lots of boardwalks over boggy ground on a very gradual ascent. We reached our campsite for the night at Ethan Pond at 5pm, another caretaker operated campsite where we had to pay $8 each again. The pond looked beautiful in the sun. There were no tent platforms left as there were two big groups in for the weekend, but Em the caretaker, who was lovely, had a secret overflow camp spot. So rather than being crammed onto a tent platform with two or three other tents we have a lovely spot at the other end of the camp in the peace and quiet all to ourselves. One of the groups were very friendly and chatted a lot when I went to fetch water and put our food in the bear box, the other group kept to themselves.
It took us nine hours to get from A to B today. The first 9.8 miles took us seven hours fifteen minutes (including our half hour break) our pace approx. 1.4 mph over the steep rocky ascents and descents. The the last 4.7 miles took us one hour forty five minutes, back to a reasonable 2.7 mph pace.
No comments:
Post a Comment