Day 135 Carlo Col Campsite to Speck Pond Campsite

Today's miles 9.5.  AT miles 1913.5

We had another tough day again, quite an assault course today - the AT Theme Park Ride!   It was still raining when we woke up this morning so we delayed packing up and leaving until a bit later when it stopped for a while.  It was 10 o'clock when we left. We met Breeze at the shelter as we were leaving, it was nice to see him, we'd not seen him for a few weeks.  He left camp a bit later.   It remained warm but damp all day, changing constantly between walking in the cloud, drizzle, mist and rain showers. We knew it was going to be a hard day, we had hit the Mahoosuc's and on a wet day, it would have been easier if it was dry.

The first six miles was a bit of a rollercoaster up and down over a few mountain tops Mt Carlo, Goose Eye Mountain East West and North and Fulling Mull Mountain. All quite steep rocky trails with lots of obstacles - rocks, iron rung ladders in the rock, wooden steps, planks,  boardwalks and boggy ground. We stopped for a short snack break at Full Goose Shelter.  Eventually we reached Mahoosuc Notch, 1.2 miles through a jumbled pit of huge boulders, the most difficult (or fun the guide says) mile of the AT.  It was fun to start but we were glad when we reached the end.  It would have been more fun had it been dry.   It started raining again as we worked our way through the boulders, it took us an hour and a half.  We could constantly feel the change in temperature, cold in the rocky crevasse bottoms and warm again going up and over.  There were still patches of snow/ice in some crevasse bottoms.  We had to make our way up, down, over and through the boulders, crawling on our stomachs through some holes, almost like caving.  We had very soggy bottoms by the time we'd finished from sitting down on the rocks to aid manoeuvre over some sections.

After the Notch we then had Mahoosuc Arm to get up.  A steep rocky climb of a mile and a half, 1600ft, up lots of steep rocks and rocky slabs.  It started raining again on the way up again.  From the summit we had one more mile to go down hill to Speck Pond Campsite, not too steep thankfully.  It went very dark and misty on the way down, visibility was about 20 feet. We walked past Speck Pond to get to the campsite but could only see the waters edge.  We reached the campsite for 6:30pm and set up tent on a platform.  Breeze arrived a while after us.  Another caretaker ran site we paid our $8pp fee, it was the same caretaker we saw at Nauman campsite.  He rotates around covering other caretakers off days.  It took us eight and a half hours to walk nine and a half miles today.