June 3, 2007 | Miles: 8.7
Start: South Arm Road
End: Bemis Mountain Lean-to
Danielle:
We had planned to do the Franconia Ridge this 3-day weekend, but due to forecasts for thunder, lightening, wind and rain, we thought another option might be best… So, we thought that this Maine section would be a good one. We called Earl at the Cabin in Andover on Saturday night, and arranged for him to shuttle us from our end point at Rt. 4, Rangeley back to the start at South Arm Road. During the whole 1 1/2 hour ride, Earl kept us amused with stories of hiking and hikers, as well as little bits of trivia. We also saw some white lady slippers on the back roads. Cool! We started off at 10am, and although we had a few views on the steep climb up Old Blue, things quickly clouded over and we were in the fog and mist for the rest of the afternoon. The woods had a Tolkien quality to them, very rugged, old and moss covered. And things were very wet and slippery, with the wet rocks and roots making for some rough, slow going. Thrown in were a few blowdowns to make life interesting too, of course :-) And lots of moose poop! We finally made it to Bemis Mountain Lean-to after 6 hours, to find three guys holed up there out of the mist and rain. Bookworm was on a NOBO hike, but he started in October! Now that’s a different way to do a thru! And Stickman and Faithful had just started out there hike, heading north to Katahdin and then flopping back south from Andover. Inexperienced, but seem to have good energy. We’ll be thinking of them as they head along the trail! It was an early night in the bag for us, as it was pretty chilly!
We saw lots of spring flowers on the way- trillium, goldthread, trout lilies, blue bead lilies, violets, starflowers, wild sasparilla and bunchberries.
Ryan:
Earl is the man. Who’s Earl. Earl owns and runs the Cabin in Andover, ME, and he agreed to shuttle us from our car at the end in Rangeley to the start of our hike on South Arm Road. (Oh yeah, we planned to hike from Franconia Notch to Crawford Notch, but forecast of rain, lightning, death and destruction changed our plans.) Earl told us stories the whole time, and it was great. Then we climb up Old Blue. Old Blue flat out brings it. Steep climb. And, we were climbing into the clouds. It never really rained on us, but it was very wet, soggy and misty all day long. Earl warned us about blowdowns, but we saw very few until we saw a lot. From Elephant Mountain (or near it, anyway) to the Bemis Stream Trail, the blowdowns were crazy. Up, over, around, through. You name it. We climbed Mt. Bemis, but didn’t bother with the viewpoint…since we were in a cloud. Maybe there were other views. No idea. See aforementioned cloud. We rolled into Bemis Mountain Lean-to at about 4:00, and there were already 3 in-residence. Bookworm, an ’06-’07 thruhiker who started in October of ’06, took two months off, and now is only a couple weeks from Katahdin. Good stuff. The other two, Stickman and Faithful, who are ’07 southbounders who are doing a northbound section to start just to get rolling. They’re going from Andover to Katahdin, and then they’ll head south. Stickman just turned 50 and has been dreaming of hiking the AT since he first heard of it at age 15. Faithful just turned 21 and is very, very quiet, but he did try to set the shelter on fire. He wasn’t quite sure how to use his stove. They are very green, but happy to be on the trail We talked to them a ton about our AT experience, and we wish them all the best. Hopefully, they’ll take some of our advice, especially since, like most new hikers, they are carrying way, way, way too much stuff. All in all, a great day on the trail, but I must admit, I was pretty tired by the time we got to the shelter. It was nice to curl up in the bag.
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