Day 152: 200 Miles Remaining

Hiked 19.5 miles, stealth camping about two miles from ME 27.

I got out of camp pretty early today.  Rain was in the forecast for tomorrow and I was hoping to get most of the way to Stratton today so that I didn't have to do big mountains in bad weather.  I had planned to bypass Stratton but I'm trying to slow down to let a bunch of friends catch up and taking a day off in town during the bad weather is a perfect way to accomplish that.  Today was a lot of big mountains with steep ups and downs with a bunch of river crossings in between.  Again the water levels have been low enough so far that I've still been able to maintain a dry crossing over all of them through skillful acrobatics as I leap nimbly from rock to rock.

Oberton Falls

Crossing Oberton River

9 AM photo

AT completion plaque

Almost all of the mountains that I climbed over today were of similar height or larger than Saddleback, so my hope was that they would all have similarly great views.  Unfortunately this was not the case.  I hiked over Lone Mountain, Spaulding Mountain, South Crocker and North Crocker.  The summit of Spaulding was slightly off trail but someone had nicely written "no view" on the side trail sign.  If only the sign had been facing the northbound direction I might have seen it before I hiked all the way up and back to the summit...  South Crocker was the only mountain with a minor view on a side trail near the summit.  Every other summit was completely covered in trees, despite an arduous hike to get there.

View just after Spaulding Mountain

The drop down to the Carrabassett River was steep enough
that you could see over the trees and back towards Spaulding

Looking across the gulf that the Carrabassett River run through

Looking down at the Carrabassett River

Early on in the day I crossed the threshold of less than 200 miles to go!  It is with very mixed feelings that I pass these milestones nowadays.  On the one hand it is so cool to have walked so far and be getting so close to the finish.  On the other hand I am definitely dragging my feet through a lot of Maine because I'm not ready for this amazing journey to come to an end and these milestones starkly point out that I am very close to the end.

Crossing the Carrabassett River

Looking out at Sugarloaf and Spaulding from the top of South Crocker

Spaulding with the Saddleback behind it as seen from South Crocker

During the steep descent from North Crocker I briefly got a view northeast over the trees

Right of the above photo

The other cool thing that happened today was that I came upon a plaque on a rock marking the spot where the last trail sections were joined in 1937 to complete the continuous trail from Georgia to Maine.  Granted it was 130 miles shorter back then and many sections of the trail have changed over the years.  There used to be a lot more roadwalking and currently there is hardly any on the trail.  It also used to start on Mt. Oglethorpe instead of Springer.  But this location marked the first time that the trail was one continuous section for the entire way.  Nifty.

I made it up and over North Crocker as desired today.  There is no water source on the far side though which required me to carry a bunch of water all the way up and over both Crockers.  I had to walk most of the way down the mountain before I was able to find a respectably flat area to set up my tent since there are no established campsites between the summit and the road.  This was not a bad thing because it got me down the steepest part today while the trail was dry, rather than on potentially slick rock tomorrow and it means a short two mile hike into town which means I can get breakfast first thing!