Make it count: Day #147

Thursday, August 6th - Day #147 - AT Hike

Miles Hiked Today - 10.7
Total Miles Hiked on AT - 1983.3/2,193 (90.44%)

ME Route 4 (1972.6) to Poplar Ridge Lean-To (1983.3) - tent at Poplar Ridge Lean-To

Total ascent - 3,951’
Total descent - 2,673’

Total States Completed - 13/14

**No Rain - Windy morning. Nice day overall - cool on the mountain peaks

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Over 90 percent complete with my journey!! Outstanding! Today was a really tough day. One of those grueling, southern Maine kind of days. Nearly 4,000’ vertical ascent, 10.7 miles, 3 big mountain peaks, and over 8 hours on course.

We did 2 more 4,000’ peaks today - Saddleback Mountain and The Horn. We also did Junior Saddleback - which was just as hard as the first 2 peaks.

New England has 67 peaks over 4,000’. 48 of these are in New Hampshire (I did 20 of these on my AT journey), 5 are in Vermont and 14 are in Maine.

Note - in New Hampshire, I did the blue-blaze trails as an add-on to actually stand on the very peak of each mountain - except for the last one - Moriah - where the 0.1 blue blaze was concealed. In Vermont and Maine - I’m not actually taking the blue-blaze trails to the actual summit of a few of these 4,000’ mountains. The AT does not go over the highest point on every mountain. I’m staying on the AT (just too much vertical and distance to add at this point). In Vermont - we did climb nearly to the summit of Killington (1/5 over 4’000’). In Maine - we’ll either peak or nearly peak 11/14 over 4,000’. I did the actual peak of Saddleback and The Horn today.

I’m throwing out a lot of numbers there - but bottom line - the AT goes over a significant number of all the 4,000’ peaks in all of New England. It’s the reason NH and southern Maine are known as the toughest stretches on the AT.

During my last climb today - up Junior Saddleback - I was thinking back to my first week on the AT in Georgia. I remember struggling on those hills. It was incredibly hard for me at the time. Today - the climb I did up Junior Saddleback was twice as hard as anything I saw early in my journey. The steepness of the climb, the technical (hand over hand) crawling - I can’t believe how far I’ve come. I’ve improved so much in the past 4-1/2 months.

Tomorrow - we have a super tough 14.1 mile day on the books. We’re trying to pull this off so we have a reasonable day to Stratton, ME on Saturday. It’s 8:15pm now - we got into camp early enough that I’m just about finished with the blog - hoping to be sleeping before 9pm. I’m going to need all my strength on some big climbs tomorrow.

Only 3 days left before the Bigelow Mountains (Mile 2,015). This is the area southern Maine transitions into northern Maine - where the course begins to ease up a bit. 3 more tough days. I got this!!

Here’s to continued strength and good health. Goodnight from a chilly tent (54 degrees for a low tonight) in southern Maine.