The Last Section Part 9: Sun and Rivers in the 100 Mile Wilderness

This post originally appeared on The Trek on February 5, 2024. Read it here!

This is part 9 of a 188-mile northbound section hike of the Appalachian Trail in Maine in September 2023. I started hiking at the road crossing near the town of Stratton, ME and finished at Mt. Katahdin in Baxter State Park, the northern terminus of the trail!

For a refresher, read part 8 here!

Day 12: Tentsite near Fourth Mountain Bog to stealth tentsite near the West Branch of the Pleasant River

I started the morning feeling pretty damp and defeated as I packed up in a dim camp spot after another unplanned cold-soaked breakfast, but getting going always seems to be the toughest part. The trail finally cut me a break as the day progressed during day 3 of the 100 mile wilderness.

The sunshine poked in and out all day long, and I was like a cat who found a warm spot every time it did, not wanting to move until the sunny patch moved too. 

Some noticeable attractions broke up the day, like some unique plants that I had never seen before in an alpine bog, or the surprise of walking up on trailside airplane wreckage that I didn’t know would be there. 

The elevation of the hike was steady overall, but with a mini roller coaster of constant small ups and downs. Most of the hikers in that big wave of the first two days had passed me at that point, bringing the trail vibe back to the occasional “hello” with passersby.

The West Branch of the Pleasant River

Before I got too carried away in the ease of the day compared to the two days prior, I was jolted out of the daze when I realized I had to think heavily about river crossing logistics again. 

My choices were either: 

1. Attempt to ford the West Branch of the Pleasant River that evening, then have to keep hiking for a few miles past it by which time darkness would fall, due to a no camping zone on the other side. 
2. Follow Wendy’s directions to take the detour to bypass the river ford, which I’d have to start about a half mile before actually reaching the river. This would be the longest road walk/other trail detour of them all, causing me to add a lot of mileage to the hike and be hiking well into the night when I was already very tired from pushing myself all day. 
3. Keep hiking up to the river, hopefully find somewhere to camp, then assess in the morning whether or not I could ford it and backtrack a half mile on the trail to take the long detour if I determined I didn’t feel safe trying to cross. Stopping at that point today would cause me to be pretty behind on mileage compared to where I thought I’d be, which would be even greater exasperated if I decided I had to take the detour in the morning. This would add some pressure to the hiking days to come.

This was really starting to feel like a “choose your own adventure” book that I used to love so much in the 90’s as a kid, except I couldn’t skip ahead to spy on the pages of the outcomes of each choice and then pick accordingly. 

So I decided to go with option three: keep hiking to the river and then camp. The light was dim enough that I needed my headlamp while I was trying to find a spot. There were some nice open areas that were clearly tent sites with room for many tents, at which some hikers were already set up, but I kept walking along the AT as it briefly followed alongside the river to see if there were any other spots that would give me a little more personal space. That way I wouldn’t have to be self conscious about rustling around after dark if other people had gone to sleep already. 

Thankfully, I found something. Right where the trail ended on land and continued into the river, there was a little clearing that looked like it had probably been tented on before, just not blatantly obvious. It was almost like it was on a little peninsula too, with a couple of other avidly flowing small creeks converging around it. I had to immerse just up to my ankles to take a few steps across and get to the spot. 

After pacing back and forth for a while, I decided this would do.  The only downside was I felt like I’d need to wake up early and start packing up camp before other hikers might start passing by my spot right at the beginning of the river ford, so I didn’t get the soundest sleep knowing I’d be waking up to an alarm once again. But it sure beat the alternative of still hiking down a road somewhere on the detour in the dark after I was already so tired, so after another cold-soaked meal, off to sleep I went. 

Day 13: Stealth tentsite near the West Branch of the Pleasant River to tentsite between Hay Mountain and White Cap Mountain 

My “choose your own adventure” wager of the previous day turned out to be the right choice. I was a little slow to pack up camp after being roused by my alarm, the morning having that damp chill to the air that I have a low tolerance for. But just as I was almost ready to go and transitioning to deciding if I should ford this river or backtrack a half mile and take the long detour around it, a hiker walked up. 

“Are you going to cross?” I asked him.

He looked at me with a puzzled expression, clearly wondering why I’d ask that question.

“Uh, yeah?” he said. 

We briefly talked, and he was a section hiker doing the 100 mile wilderness. I realized that he might not have had the same recent experience of crossing the West Branch of the Piscataquis river prior to Monson like I had, since it wouldn’t have been part of his hike. He probably didn’t realize the background behind my question that I was being cautious about which rivers I could and couldn’t ford, since the West Piscataquis had been right at my comfort boundary. 

Fortunately, I got to sit back as the decision making work was done for me. I watched him cross, the current looking relatively fast and the bottom unclear. To my delight, despite the fact that he nearly slipped 3 times, the water was only knee-high on him the whole time. I sighed in relief that I wasn’t going to have to backtrack and take the detour route that would cause me to have an extra-long hiking day. I knew I’d cross a lot slower than that hiker, facing sideways rather than straight across like he did, so I wasn’t so worried about the near-falls I watched him almost take. The water would be shallow enough for me. 

I made it across to the other side without any issues, but my gosh, was it cold! It was memorably the coldest river ford of them all. No wonder that guy had busted across with haste!

This set me up for a wonderfully sunny day of hiking. It was countered by several steep, energy-draining climbs with little views offered at the top, but no matter. That type of hiking offered comforting classic characteristics of the Appalachian Trail.

Camp for the Night

Day 4 of the 100 mile wilderness came to a close a little earlier than I had planned again, and colder temperatures set in that evening to pay homage to the cold water that had started my morning.

I camped at a little tent spot between the peaks of Hay Mountain and White Cap mountain, near a trail junction with the White Brook Trail. I actually had started heading up White Cap, the last real peak prior to reaching Katahdin, not wanting to go on but feeling like I had no choice because I was nearly out of water and needed to reach the next source for camp that night.

Not too far into the climb though, I came to a tiny trickle running off the trail. Backtracking is something that rarely happens on the AT when us hikers are all about moving forward, but I couldn’t get the image of the little tentsite I had just passed 10 minutes prior, along with daydreams of my sleeping bag, out of my mind. I leaned my pack against a tree and plopped down on the slope, filled my water bottles, and headed back down where I had just come from. 

Couscous Frustration

I faced a strange but not uncommon hiker phenomenon that night. I was the only one around at that flat area with room for 3 or so tents, surrounded by tall thin pine trees with lichens up their trunks. It turned into the coldest night so far, a combination of the forecasted temperature and also the fact that I was camped at 3,000 ft. vs the low altitudes of the previous nights. 3,000 ft. is a child’s height compared to places like the Rockies out West, but nonetheless is enough to make a difference in air temperature. 

I made a pot of cold-soaked couscous, and after a few bites, I couldn’t find my appetite anywhere. It was hard to find comfort in the cold by putting cold sustenance on a spoon and forcing a cold swallow. But there’s no other option in a situation like that besides eat it. 

And this is what I mean by a strange hiker phenomenon. It’s a weird challenge to have an excess of food that you can’t seem to eat, opposite of the real suffering that goes on in much of this world when those ends of the sentence are reversed and there is an excess of hunger but not enough food. 

There was nothing I could do with a pot full of cold couscous besides force it down or save it until the morning and eat it for breakfast after it would have been sitting in my food bag all night, hopefully not attracting any critters to investigate. In this scenario, you can’t just dump it in the woods and turn a blind eye. You can’t just dump it in a fire, not that there would be a fire that night anyways with how wet the foliage still was. You can’t just offer it to someone else if you’re alone. So nibble by nibble, I ate it, feeling a bit nauseous but knowing I needed the calories anyway and I’d be happy I wouldn’t have to attempt to eat it again in the morning. 

I changed clothes, then took a bite. Then brushed my teeth, then took a bite. On and on, task then bite, until my pot was empty and I could go to sleep, much the same way one step after another leads to the end of this trail. 

Read part 10 here!