Footsteps from a 2000 mile hike on the Appalachian Trail. It had been so long since Mark and I had seen the sun, we started to speak of it as if it were legend. The air was relentlessly waterlogged and the low foliage soaked us as we brushed against it. The fall colors were at their peak and the damp washed a hard shell hue on the yellows and reds. Mark and I spooked a mama moose and her baby that morning and I failed to reach my camera in time to get a picture. It was an uplifting sight on an otherwise dismal day.
Maine is beautiful when the sun is shining on it. We woke to a heavy fog shrouding the shelter but the sun burned it off before we hiked our first mile. Our spirits lifted with the mist as we hiked through the colorful forest. We enjoyed a lively ascent of Saddleback but the clouds hung at the summit and the icy wind sent us on our way. A bit later, atop Saddleback Jr, the views were awesome. The clouds were thick in the low spots and it felt as if we were much higher than the 3900 feet stated on our map. We absorbed the commanding vista for quite awhile taking time to mentally catalog all the impossible colors of the foliage. We were dizzy with optical overload when we stumbled into Poplar Ridge Shelter a few miles later.
Instead of taking the AT into Stratton, Mark and I decided to walk down the ski slope to the road into town. After a knee damaging descent off Sugarloaf Ski Area, we poured onto the main drag and hitched toward the food. We arrived in Stratton, got a room at the Widow's Walk ($10.00 for a room and breakfast!) and proceeded to feed. We retrieved our mail drop, repacked and prepared for more magnificent Maine. In the morning we stuck out our thumbs and hitched back to the Trail under the rare Maine sunshine. It was a great day for hiking and we were about to climb into one of HAE's favorite hunks of wilderness! Mark and I ascended the peaks of Bigelow enthusiastically. It seemed every turn in the Trail opened up onto an overlook and great big eyefuls of brilliant autumn color. The surrounding terrain was splotched with many huge lakes. The ski slopes on the scarred face of Sugarloaf was the view south across the valley all day. We ran into Highlander and Mike on the way up. We all lingered a bit on a particularly nice ledge then hiked on to Avery Memorial Shelter for the night. Aside from a resident rabbit and one of those annoying Canadian Jays, Mark and I had the place to ourselves. The following morning we got up at dawn and started the climb of Avery Peak with the sun still close to the eastern horizon. The views from the summit were outstanding. Great masses of clouds seemed to be eating the landscape far below. The valleys were stuffed with cottony wisps and tendrils of mist followed the river cuts on the mountainsides. The camera worked overtime as I struggled to capture the Kodak moment. No film could represent the vista from the peak that morning. This was such a great stretch of Trail that HAE would return to Bigelow Range for a couple of outrageous winter adventures!
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Copyright 1999 Tim Novak and Half Ass Expeditions