Friday, November 15, 2013

Day 22: Stratton Pond to stealthy campsite

I thought getting going in the morning on the trail would be quicker than getting going at home. No shower, no breakfast-making, no phone or internet distractions... I was wrong. Getting out of the shelter door (or not-door) takes me a minimum of 30 minutes. Mostly this is because All My Stuff has to be bagged and packed up, in a pretty specific order. Here's the morning routine: 

Get out of sleeping bag go and pee in woods. Sanitize cold numb hands. Take off outer two layers of sleeping clothes, perform some cursory personal hygiene involving babywipes, deodorant, tiny toothpaste and moisturiser. Sanitize cold numb hands. Pull cold, clamming hiking spandex clothing off the line or beam where you hung it overnight. Put on these clothes put on zipper fleece over the top. Put iodine tabs lighter and today's breakfast bars in zipper fleece pockets. Bag and compress sleeping bag sleeping trousers sleeping mittens sleeping merino top sleeping socks sleeping scarf and crocs. Fetch mess kit and stove from upended drying location, bag and pack these. Sanitize cold numb hands. Eat 2 cod-liver oil 1 multivitamin 2 St John's Wort and 2 to 4 ibuprofen, pack toiletries and meds bag. Take all belongings to porch or edge of shelter. Pull down hiking boots from hanging hook or line. Sanitize hands. Take off thin socks. Apply Vaseline liberally all over feet, including between toes. Excess can go on shins or calves. Put on thin socks. Put on thick socks put on hiking boots lace tight and double knot. Pack footcare bag inside massive bumbag. Sanitize cold numb hands. Use privy even if you think you don't need to (having abandoned heavy poop-shovel, unused, somewhere quite near Canada, there is no margin of error in terms of privy strategy). If privy cannot handle TP, bag and burn TP. Sanitize cold numb hands. Pack TP ziploc inside backpack, zip main compartment shut. Retrieve food bag from hanging line. Pack rope inside massive bumbag. Strap food bag to one side of backpack, massive bumbag to other side. Lay backpack strap-side down, bungee rolled sleeping pad to the top side. Fill small water bottle from Sierra Mist bottle, bungee Sierra Mist with around 1 litre of water above the sleeping pad. Shove all waterproofs under bungees. Put on gloves. Perform series of stretches for neck shoulders back legs and knees. Write the alphabet with each ankle in turn. Upend backpack, sit down in front of it. Append and tighten shoulder and hip straps. Stand up retrieve hanging hiking poles check around shelter for anything left behind. Why not sanitize the hands once more for good measure... And we're off. 

Stratton Mountain's a long climb, but it's all switchbacks so it's steady going. Up through the pines and the moss -- it is the very greenest. Nature certainly abhors a vaccuum. 




At the summit I think I hear a bear. It's a friendly caretaker. He asks me to sign the summit register, "to be part of the history". It's a historical spot -- apparently the idea for the Long Trail occurred to James P. Taylor on Stratton Mountain; some time later, Benton McKaye was on the same mountain when he thought of joining the East's best ranges to make the Appalachian Trail. It's certainly an inspiring place (though the plaque has all its "its" and "it's" annoyingly reversed -- I want to have a compulsive edit with a chisel):


I start off up the firetower. I want to look at the view, eat my Kendal Mint Cake for Stratton, and snack on a Cheese of the Day at the top. A lady caretaker kindly warns me that I wouldn't get through the opening with my backpack on. "Sorry, I've just got really attached to my pack" -- I bumble backwards and leave my hefty counterpart at the base of the tower. "Everyone does -- it'll be fine down here", she says warmly.

Later, I'll realize the caretakers are Hugh and Jeanne Joudry -- here's a sweet profile of them and their work on Stratton Mountain. I saw their tiny cabin-house padlocked as they made a delivery to the ski area. On the ground outside, a little soil tray was growing salad leaves in the high, thin air.



I'm not super prone to vertigo, but I was happy to climb into the top cabin and get out of the wind. Little labels on the windows told me which natural features I was looking at. 













Caretaker home and Massachusetts in the distance/




This apple-smoked mozzarella was a premium cheese of the day. Deliciousness. I rate it 9/10. 


I signed the trail register and learned a little bit about bears. Decided I would have a firm and factual conversation with any bears I met down the trail. Before throwing rocks.


Onward, south, down and up and down for some miles. I'd optimistically been aiming for a shelter about 16 miles away today; with climbing Stratton mountain I was once again averaging only a little over 1 m.p.h. Oh well.












I passed a group of four men in almost-dress trousers, braces and matching straw hats. A barbershop quartet? A stag do? At Story Spring shelter, a fifth matching gent explained they were Mennonites from PA. I shared a Milka bar with him and another hiker (trail name Swampfoot) who'd overtaken me earlier in the afternoon. It was too early to stop at Story Spring for the night, but also too far from the next shelter for me to make it without several hours' dark hiking. I decided I'd push on til dusk, and just pitch the tent somewhere beside the trail. I hiked on achily and tired, but impressed by beaver engineering by the trail. The going was "swampy" for quite a way around here -- I wouldn't have wanted to pitch a tent.



Then I was climbing uphill uphill uphill, the trail narrow and rocky. There wasn't any flat space to pitch my tent by the trailside, anywhere. I began worrying I wouldn't be able to camp if there wasn't a Jane-sized patch of ground on which to do so. Vegetation and rocks crowded out all but the narrow channel of the trail itself. I got in a weird panic-hiking mode, in which I was zooming uphill at probably around 3 m.p.h. and breathing hard with every other footstep. Dusk started creeping in. I saw one possibly viable tenting spot, a little sloping area with perhaps 5 foot square not forested. I could have stopped; something impelled me to keep going uphill. Ten minutes later, a second lumpy area on the left. I kept going. The fourth viable site was very slightly sloping, uphill from the trail. I quickly pitched the mighty Megamid, struggling to peg out the corners around tree roots. I hoped not to have chosen a moose-commuting path on which to pitch the tent. I hung my food bags a good way from the tent, and crawled into my sleeping bag as it got dark.

It is very, very, very quiet. Leaves falling are the loudest sound -- amplified on the tent fabric this sound is almost shocking. I get up for a midnighty toilet break, and look at the stars. There is nobody for miles around. I refuse to be scared. Once again, I remind myself that I drive on the interstate, all the darn time. I sleep well -- the tent smells of the house of the friends who lent it to me. This makes me feel a little less lonely. The daylight starts seeping in right around 7am; I'm packed up and on the trail by 7:30.

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