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Appalachian Trail Day 164 - Carlos Col Shelter to Mahoosuc Notch Campsite (Mile 1,916 to Mile 1,924)

I wake up at 5:45. I actually slept in this morning! The shelter is dim, but there's enough ambient light to see without a headlamp. No one came in the middle of the night, so I don't have to worry about waking anyone when packing.  I can hear women's voices from the platforms behind the shelter. 

One nice thing about sleeping in the shelter is that I can pack up pretty quickly.  I'm packed and reading through the shelter journal when a woman my age comes by. She was staying in one of the tents and just wanted to say hello. They are a group of four women doing a section hike of Maine. They're doing five or six miles a day because of the difficulty of the terrain. We talk for a few minutes before she says she needs to finish packing. 

I take my pack to the little creek in front of the shelter to filter water.  The creek is not running but there is a small pool only a few inches deep. It takes me some time to scoop a couple liters of water so I have enough to make it to the next water source five miles away.

We all end up leaving the shelter about the same time. I pull ahead once we start the climb up to Goose Eye Mountain. The open rock ledges along the ridge offer the most gorgeous views. The wind is blowing and it's rather chilly, but I sit here for a while admiring gorgeous scenery and nibble on cranberries and blueberries which are in abundance. The women catch up to me and they start munching on blueberries as well. 

The climb up to the top of Goose Eye is rather fun with ladders made of rebar and an actual ladder made of wood to climb up the steep and high rock face. One of the women climbs ahead of me and I take her picture for her, and she does the same for me as I climb the rebar ladder. 

A short time after, I am on the first of the two Goose Eye peaks, having gained 1,200 feet in the first 2.5 miles of the day.

The trail winds along the ridge to the next Goose Peak and it looks down to the north.  The trail is visible in the open areas on the ridge and lots of bog bridges are visible below. 

The descent down is made much easier with many wooden steps made from logs.  The going is quite slow as I don't have the best balance, but it has certainly improved over the last few months on the trail. 

It's just a beautiful day up here and I stop more often than I should to pick blueberries until the trail leaves the open ridge and descends down toward the next mountain. 

A mile after leaving Goose Eye Peak I reach the Full Goose Shelter.  No one is here, and I drop my pack and sit on the end of the shelter platform. I  have enough water to boil to hydrate my lunch, which is actually my dinner from last night. While it's hydrating I go down the path behind the shelter to the water source to fill up for my next adventure on the trail.

It's too early to stop here for the day so I decided to continue on and tackle the Mahoosuc Notch, which is considered to be the hardest mile of the entire trail. I will certainly need some calories for the endeavor, so I tuck into a delicious white chicken chili and eat a bunch of snacks, and 45 minutes later I am heading to Mahoosic Notch, 1.5 miles away.

The trail up and over the next mountain is a little tricky due to downed trees and erosion where people have gone into the trees to bypass some tough rock scrambles,  but the climb is short. 

After descending from the mountain I enter the notch, considered to be the single hardest mile of the entire trail. I'm excited and nervous because this can take anywhere from two to four hours to complete. I've seen videos of other people's experiences in the Notch, which is basically a rock scramble that is relatively level. 

On entering the Notch I get my first taste of what the next mile will be like. This is not what I was expecting. I imagined some rock scramble where I may have to take off my pack a time or two, but this is rock scrambles the like I have never seen. Huge boulders the size of cars lie helter skelter to one another with deep crevices in between.

Trying to figure out which way to negotiate the rocks is really hard because unlike other sections of the trail, there is no trail. It's just a big jumble of rocks. Occasionally I can make out some very faint white arrows pointing the direction but they are few and far between. Often I don't even see the arrows until I have descended or ascended or gone around some rocks trying to find the right route. My backpack is getting really scuffed up from the tight spots and the backs of my legs are getting abraded from sliding over the rocks.

About an hour into the notch, it starts to rain steadily. I can't afford to get cold while climbing up and down these boulders so as soon as I find a safe spot where I can take off my backpack, I put on my rain coat realize my rain pants which are cheap Frog Toggs will be perfect to protect my legs from the rocks. I will probably tear them to bits, but at this point I don't care.

The rain makes everything slippier so I have to really watch my step. I keep thinking about how a man last month got stuck in here for 5 hours and had to call search and rescue to come help him out. I really don't want to end up on the evening news.

I make it out of the notch at 4:25, which is 1 hour and 55 minutes after I started. I'm a little scraped in spots and my pants are shredded on the seats, but I am elated!

I collect water from the stream at the south end of the notch and set up camp at a tent site just beyond. The wind is howling and there's nowhere protected to set up my camp because I'm on the side of the mountain. The wind is howling through the valley, so I try to tighten down my lines on the tarp as best I can.

By putting up my tarp first I can then set up everything else under the protection the tarp provides me. As soon as I get my hammock hung I strip out off all my wet hiking gear and put on my dry wool sleeping clothes.

I sit on the side of my hammock and heat the water for my dinner. I eat and I am asleep as soon as the sun sets. 

Today's Stats: 7.4 miles, 1,965 feet gain
Trail Stats: 1,924 miles, 392K feet gain

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