8/8 – Day 100
13.5 miles from Great Barrington to North Mount Wilcox Shelter
We enjoyed our final few minutes of the cool, dry motel air before grabbing some McGriddles for the road and hitching back to trail around 11:30am. At the trailhead, two ladies were excitedly dumping drinks and bags of ice in a cooler as their first ever trail magic. They told us it was going to be another 90 degree day and we had better drink up.
Spout, Wraps, and I decided to create a group Spotify session to occupy us for the upcoming hills. The result was a mixed playlist of bubblegum pop and trap music creating a wormhole to the top of the next mountain. We took a snack break near Ice Gulch, then descended from the ridge. Spout manifested trail magic at the next road crossing, literally calling it out before we reached the parking lot. Sure enough, a gentleman was handing out Gatorades and explained to us in overly precise detail what to expect from the trail all the way through Vermont.
We reached Benedict Pond to find a familiar hiker, Hollywood, swimming alone. We posted up on the rocky shore and chatted with him about his backstory and passion for skydiving. It was a serene location and a perfect evening for detaching from stress and getting lost in conversation as the hours melted away. A long while later, we split up and continued heading north to the North Mount Wilcox Shelter.
After setting up our tents, there was enough daylight remaining for me to scramble together a campfire, which we have not made for hundreds of miles since they are not permitted in some of the mid-Atlantic states and Connecticut. Once ablaze, we ate dinner amidst the bellowing smoke to protect us from the mosquitoes. Then, when darkness had fallen, the clear skies clouded over and it began to pour. We sought cover within the shelter and watched as our fire was reduced to a few simmering ashes.
8/9 – Day 101
14.2 miles from North Mount Wilcox Shelter to Upper Goose Pond Cabin
I slept like a log and awoke as Spout was finishing packing up around 8:30am. We dragged our feet leaving camp, feeling a bit groggy. The morning conversation was a recurring one where we reflect on how unfathomable the trail feels as a whole, simultaneously in awe of how far we have come while believing the finish line is still impossibly out of reach. Neither of us actually want to finish, but imagining the day we finally step foot on Baxter Peak is one of our favorite pass times.
After four miles, we came to a road crossing with a snack stand offering ice cream sandwiches and sodies. We sat at the picnic table with Wraps and Season Pass, joking about our developing pop addiction (it’s not funny though, I never used to drink this crap). We left the stand and hiked through a pasture that gracefully transitioned to plank-walking over a marshy bog. We re-entered the dense forest populated mostly by evergreens.
At length, we came upon Upper Goose Pond and made a group decision to stop early again. A half mile spur trail lead us to Upper Goose Pond Cabin, a large bunkhouse above the water maintained by the National Park Service. There were over thirty hikers staying on site! Since the bunkhouse was already full, we pitched our tents nearby two older men, Little Hawk and Mountain Drew. They have been doing a slow motion yo-yo hike starting in February from PA, south to GA, and back north to MA. They planned to stay on the trail “until they died” and after asking, “do ya want to know what kind of hikers we are?”, they showed us a picture of a clam bake.
There was plenty of daylight remaining for Spout, Wraps, Season Pass, Coltrane, and I to take canoes out onto the pond and paddle to the lonely island a few hundred yards away to declare ownership. Afterwards, we swam in the pond under the setting sun, then enjoyed the company of the other hikers back at the cabin.
8/10 – Day 102
20.4 miles from Upper Goose Pond Cabin to Dalton
It was cool enough overnight that I was able to sleep with my fleece hoodie on for the first time in weeks. The caretaker of the cabin, Kathy, made pancakes for all of the hikers starting at 6:00am. She frantically managed to brew batches of percolator coffee and flip hotcakes at the same time, while hungry hikers crowded into the dining room area to get their fill. After we ate and packed up, we hit the trail around 8:00am. The terrain was suspiciously easy throughout the day, with low elevation change and only moderate a covering of roots and large rocks.
After a breezy eleven miles, we arrived at Washington Mtn Rd where the Cookie Lady lived. Unfortunately, she was nowhere to be found, but Cookie Husband was on the property with a box full of fresh chocolate chip cookies and hibiscus lemonade. Their family also owned a blueberry patch and sold pick-your-own berries by the pound.
Cookie Husband offered us a deal that if we each picked a bucket full of berries, he would make us burgers. Spout, Season Pass, and I took to the bushes, plucking delicious berries as fast as we could, perfecting our technique as we went in the spirit of friendly competition. We were all slowed down by the irresistible urge to eat one of every ten that we picked; they were just too juicy. Spout had a natural, biological advantage as a self-proclaimed forager, and her bucket was overflowing in just twenty-five minutes. We enjoyed the fruits of our labor (pun intended) by trading them all away for a cheeseburger and fresh garden salad. Worth it.
We hiked out after 2:00pm, hoping to push to the town of Dalton, MA before dinner. We made a gentle climb to the crest of Warner Hill, looking out dead north to Mt Greylock which stood triumphantly in the distance. Then, we descended through a mixed forest into town, making excellent time. We planned to stay at trail angel, Tom Levardi’s, home, which was directly off the trail once we hit the road. To our astonishment, there were already twenty tents pitched in his backyard, mostly SOBO thru-hikers. We squeezed our tent into the only remaining space. Then, Wraps, Season Pass, Spout, and I hitched to Chipotle for dinner and walked to a Walmart next door to resupply.
By time we were ready to leave, it was 9:00pm. There was no Uber/Lyft in the area and little traffic to rely on for a hitch. However, I managed to pull over a mid-size SUV in the parking lot with a middle-aged man driving, his daughter in the passenger seat, and mother in the back. He offered us a ride but told us it would be tight since the trunk was full with bags of mulch. Miraculously, we loaded Wraps and myself (with Spout on my lap) into the two seats in the back. Meanwhile, Season Pass layed prone in the trunk with four sets of grocery bags stuffed in space between his legs. In our most ridiculous hitch-hiking scenario yet, we avoided walking two extra miles back to our tents and giggled like children the whole way home.
8/11 – Day 103
20.5 miles from Dalton to Wilbur Clearing Shelter
At 7:30am, we crawled out of our vestibules and observed that out of twenty tents, there were only three remaining in the yard. We confirmed with one of the “late-rising” SOBOs still hanging around that roughly half of the people camped were indeed headed southbound and that everyone he hikes with is usually on trail by 7:00am. We reflected back to our first month on trail, where we attempted to adhere to a strict, regimented daily hiking schedule, but eventually relaxed as we reached Virginia. Northbounders who have made it this far are profoundly laidback and have no problem sleeping past 9:00am if their bodies demand it.
We grabbed blueberry cobbler cold brews at Juice & Java as we waited for the Dalton post office to open. It was new shoe day, and it could not have come any sooner for our battered feet. Spout and I stuck with the same models of Altras: Superior 5 and Lone Peak 6, respectively. We laced up, then set off on a mile road walk through a residential neighborhood on trail. The first ten miles were an easy up-and-over along Crystal Mountain, notably passing a huge, marble outcrop above the town of Cheshire and the vibrant blue waters of the reservoir below, known as The Cobbles.
Spout demanded Dunkin, so we swung into Cheshire for our second dose of caffeine and stopped at a Dollar General to pick up a pack of glizzies and buns. The baby mountains were coming to an end. Immediately out of town, we began a seven mile ascent to the highest peak in Massachusetts, Mt Greylock. The climb took us through an incredible, densely populated evergreen forest, with moss blanketing the mass of fallen trees. The air was crisp and cool. We have not felt such refreshing air in quite some time. Towards the summit, we passed a lovely pond with a tiny cabin on the opposite shore that would have fit nicely in a Henry David Thoreau novel.
At the peak of Mt Greylock stood a 200′ stone memorial and observation tower. Climbing the nauseating spiral staircase led us to a panorama of windows. To the North, the Green Mountains of Vermont were both more beautiful and intimidating than the landscapes of the other cardinal directions. We marveled at the spectacular view for some time, then climbed down the stairs and continued hiking towards those very mountains.
We still had another four miles before reaching camp. With the supposedly well-enforced “no dispersed camping” rule of Massachusetts still in affect, we were forced to haul our butts down the mountain to Wilbur Clearing Shelter. There, we pitched our tents and made a fire for roasting hot dogs. Though the site was again crowded, nobody joined Spout and me around the flames.
Eventually, we retired to our tent and listened to a noisy conversation between two owls. It was the coldest night we have experienced on trail in months. The weather changed from a low in the 70s to a low in the upper 40s in just a few days. A man doing trail magic told us that the trail north of Mt. Greylock would get colder, which seemed accurate after a sample size of one. Spout still had her summer sleeping quilt, so she was shivering until we cuddled under my 20 degree down quilt.
8/12 – Day 104
10.0 miles from Wilbur Clearing Shelter to Seth Warner Shelter
Massachusetts has an excessive number of towns on trail. It is convenient in some ways but stretches of three or four days between civilization, like much of the AT in Virginia, is preferable to me. Three miles into our hike, after coming off the remainder of Mt. Greylock, we came into the town of North Adams, MA. We found Wraps hanging out on a cooler of trail magic, then we walked down the road to the Break Room in a trendy, industrial complex. We ate a hot lunch and the waitstaff gave us free pastries for being hikers. In a last minute decision, we decided to make another resupply at a Stop & Shop to avoid a longer hitch into the next town, Bennington, VT, and instead push forward sixty miles to Manchester, VT before we needed more Oreos.
It was 2:45pm when we got back on trail. Next up was a predictable climb out of town, this time consisting of large, unsteady rocks that looked like they spilled out from the summit. Spout was fatigued, claiming her pack was the heaviest it had even been and even threatened to dump her food out on the ground. We made it to the top, as we always do, and continued for another mile and a half through a pleasant birch forest.
We reached the 1,600 mile mark then the MA/VT border back‐to-back. Here the AT famously links up with the Long Trail of Vermont for 105 miles through the Green Mountains. We stood at the southern terminus of the first long distance hiking trail ever built, teeming with excitement for one of our most anticipated stretches of trail. We hiked on a few miles further, but needed to walk to the Seth Warner Shelter for water and decided to stop around 5:00pm so we had time to build another fire.
Season Pass waddled into the camp two hours later with a band of SOBOs. We were outnumbered sitting around the fire, amused but somewhat estranged by the antics of the weird hikers going the wrong way. We listened to the same hyped-up horror stories of the Whites and watched a guy named Fuzzy Duck melt his cold soaking container by dropping it in a pot of boiling water trying to warm up his potatoes.
What’s next?
We are following the Long Trail through the Green Mountains of Vermont for the next 120 miles or so. The mountains here will be larger and the terrain is rumored to steadily ramp up in difficulty as we enter New Hampshire.
Etc.
We have been hiking on the Appalachian Trail for 100 days and walked over 1,500 miles! Here’s a summary of how we feel:
Physically, we both “hiker hobble” every single morning. We wake up with our feet painful and aching for the first few minutes of walking. Then, like magic, they feel fine afterwards. Occasionally, we still suffer minor injuries, like ankle or knee pain, but these typically only stick around for a day or two. We have lost roughly ten pounds a piece, but the weight loss has stalled in the past month. Despite joking about our bodies withering away, we are undeniably in the best “hiking shape” we have ever been in. I feel like I can hike as fast as I possibly can up steep hills without ever running out of breath. Though, I would be scared to see what my bench press numbers look like.
Mentally, it has been pretty exhausting at some points. We will usually have a few specific moments each week when we feel defeated, but neither of us have struggled with overcoming negativity. Some NOBOs we have met are extremely negative at this point, either refusing to climb up a fire tower for a nice view or hang out around the fire because they are sick of hiking. We do not feel this way at all. We’ve shifted our perspective of viewing Katahdin as the penultimate goal that must be striven for with 110% effort each day to respecting the journey and simply relaxing. This is because we know that our average daily mileage/pace has us completing the trail in a reasonable amount of time before Baxter State Park closes October 15. We stop when we feel tired, zero when we want to zero, and never skip a swimming hole. I think had contributed greatly to our enjoyment of the trail.
Regarding sanitation, we are dirty 95% of the time. Not like “I just got back from the gym” dirty, but like “a week’s worth of excessive sweat and body fluids have been permanently baked into my skin” dirty. When I put on my socks on on any given day, there’s a 50% chance they are wet. Everything is always wet. When we wash our clothes in the laundry, they will sometimes still stink after they dry. There really aren’t many upsides to this one, except that I care less about my filth and much less about how others perceive me when I’m in town. It’s a sense of pride, in an odd way, to walk into a restaurant smelling like a butthole with your head held high.
We eat so much food. It dominates our thoughts and influences our daily mileage. At first it was funny but honestly now it is just expensive. I eat a gross amount of calorie dense, easy-to-stomach junk food on trail and compensate in town by eating a lot of meat and ordering a salad or two. Spout packs out bagged salads and fruit more regularly than I do. Maintaining a consistent diet on trail is a million times more difficult than in the real world. Both of us have developed strange addictions to sugary things we would never normally consume: pop, Gatorade, Oreos, candy. It is our bodies telling us to consume more calories at any cost. On the positive side, every hot meal we eat tastes unimaginably good. We’ve had the opportunity to dine at countless local eateries across the country. Highlights include: biscuits & gravy down south, bagels in New York, and burger joints in every town in the U.S. Sometimes, our ravenous state of hunger collides with a geniunely delicious plate of food and just… wow.
Some of our gear is starting to show signs of wear. There is light abrasion in the DCF on the top of our backpacks. The liner in my shorts is tearing. We’ve broken three water bags so far. My third pair of trail running shoes is on its last leg. Our trekking poles tips are comically flat. I’ve patched three holes in my inflatable sleeping pad.
The trail itself is everything I ever dreamed of, and more. The scenery from Springer Mountain, to the Smokies, to Roan Highlands, to Mt. Rogers, the triple crown, the Shennies, a few highlights in the mid-Atlantic, to the most exciting, dramatic sections of New England yet to come, is simply breathtaking. I could spend every day lost in these woods.
We meet new people every day: thru-hikers, section hikers, day hikers, trail angels, people who give us rides, people in town, etc. Typically they have diverse backgrounds, even if there are some common demographics. Though we don’t necessarily get along with every single person we meet, they always have something interesting to say. For thru-hikers specifically, hiking the trail is a binding experience that acts as a social catalyst. Just like being stuck in a classroom together or working in the same office, any kind of ordeal tends to naturally foster relationships. I feel comfortable talking with the friends I met on trail about literally anything, despite only knowing each other for a few weeks.
I also get to hike with my fiancée everyday, who somehow manages to be beautiful even when covered in filth. Constantly being around one other has its challenges, but I think the struggles of the trail have brought us closer together. She is a breath of fresh air and spreads so much positivity to the world. I love her so much.
Overall, we are both absolutely infatuated with the lifestyle. It feels like we are removed from mundane events of the real world and constantly have something exciting coming up. At the same time, we can anticipate finishing the trail and returning to the comforts we love when we need a boost. We do not dread the idea of finding a job when we finish, it actually sounds like a nice change of pace. That being said, seeing the miles tick away makes me sad that it ever has to end. I am so incredibly grateful to have the opportunity to be out here. Thanks again to everyone following us, I hope the blog has been entertaining. We miss you all.
Peace & love,
Candyman & Spout
Reading this was so soul lifting, beautiful and awesome. Candyman you are a gifted writer. Please consider putting all these thoughts and photos into a book. Carrie and John will be meeting up with you soon. Wish I could be there also!