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January 31st - The Mahoosuc Notch |
The trail in Maine is about two hundred and eighty miles. The Mahoosuc Range is in the last ten or so miles of the Maine section of the trail. The Mahoosuc Notch is a very famous place that all the thru hikers talk about. It is a very narrow ravine that is formed by two mountains that slope down an extremely inclined plane. And, there is a stream that runs through the bottom of the ravine. Now, just imagine a giant, a giant as big as a mountain throwing pebbles. There are pebbles to the giant but rocks to you that are bigger than cars and as big as a house. There are lots of rocks and boulders like this filling the ravine that make up the Mahoosuc Notch and they are all on top of each other. There is no way around them. You can't climb up the sides of them. You have to go over them. But, sometimes you can't climb over them you have to go under them. And, when you try to go under them you are in little cave-like spaces with your backpack on. There are times you and your backpack won't fit so you have to take your backpack off and drag it behind you or push it ahead of you. Then, you realize there is a stream underneath you and it's frozen. It never heats up because the sun can't reach it under these huge rocks. This is the Mohoosuc Notch. It is a little over a mile in length and it took George and I two hours and fifteen minutes to get through that one mile. We were laughing at ourselves about it until Nightingale and Morpheus told us that it took them four and a half hours to get through it! Other thru hikers have hiked through it in an hour or so by leaping from one rock to the other like goats. But, if you are hiking south to north, the hardest thing about the Mahoosuc Notch is that after you have finished hiking it and you are exhausted you then have to climb the Mahoosuc arm. The Mahoosuc arm is almost straight up and down for a mile or two and boy is that brutal! George and I hiked the Mahoosuc arm first and then the Mahoosuc Notch and that was hard enough. Then we met a thru hiker who looked at me and said, "I have hiked from Georgia to here but this section is the most heartbreaking." |
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