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Troll's 2010 AT Journal

16 September 2010

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16 September 2010, Gentian Pond Shelter
I slept like a baby last night. The wind died down and I stayed warm.

This morning it was not to bad getting out of my sleeping bag. The skies were overcast and there was no rain. Hopper made her coffee at 06:00 as usual and climbed back in her sleeping bag to drink it. She has turned into my alarm clock, getting up at around 06:00 every morning. When she gets done with her coffee I am usually getting out of my sleeping bag. It was no different this morning. I did my usual privy call than came back to camp and ate breakfast, packed up everything and made one last privy visit and moved on.

We ran into two older guys on the trail heading south this morning that were brothers and gave us the latest weather report. They also told us about some bear tracks behind then in the mud that looked fresh. We saw those same bear tracks and they were in fact fresh.

The day was chilly and I found myself getting chilled quite often. When I got to Gentian Pond Shelter at noon time I asked Hopper how she felt about calling it a day. To my surprise she said she could live with it. The clincher was when the maintainer for this shelter said that there was 100% chance of rain and thunder showers tonight with only a 20% of rain tomorrow morning. The weekend and the beginning of the week is suppose to clear up and be sunny. We ate lunch and went down to the pond and each cleaned off our muddy calves and got water. We played toss the log into the pond and Ben swam out and fetched it quite a few times.

When we returned to the shelter Ice was sitting there making his lunch. He hung out and talked with us until 3 pm and moved on, he was going to the next shelter, which is what we should have done but we decided to just be lazy today.

Around dinner time Johnny Walker and Wondering Foot showed up and grabbed spots in the shelter. When we got done eating Ripple rolled in. I had not seen Ripple since Pine Grove Furnace. We spent a while catching up on things.

Tonight were suppose get constant rain all night and 20% in the morning. We are thinking about doing a 5.2 mile day to Carlo Col Shelter to stay dry and get out of the rain. This will set us up for the next three days. We do not want to go through Mahoosic Notch in the rain. Mahoosic Notch is supposed to be the hardest part of the whole AT because you have to crawl under and over boulders and for one mile, some of these boulders are the size of a house. I have hiked through the Notch before and I can say it is not hard at all, I think it is fun. The hard part is climbing Mahoosic Arm afterwards. It is one sheet of rock that climbs the side of Mahoosic Arm for a long time and at a steep angle. It is not dangerous but strenuous.

Here is our three day plan.
1. We get out of the rain and wet weather as soon as possible Friday.
2. We get down to the beginning of the Mahoosic Notch on Saturday to set up a stealth campsite. Doing this will have us going through the Notch with the sun out and the Notch will be somewhat dry.
3. Head through the Notch on Sunday and get to the bottom and call The Cabin for a shuttle to Andover.

The only concern I have about this plan is if we planned on taking four days to get to Andover and now that we took a nero day at the shelter here and are doing a short day tomorrow it adds one more days onto what we planned to do in four. I only packed four days worth of food. I am starving right now but I need to ration my food.

Here tonight are, Johnny Walker, Wondering Foot, Hopper, and Ripple. Ripple set her tent up.
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2010 thru hike

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