Day 153-The Longest Day Ever!

Aug 18-16.5 miles-Kinsman Notch to The Notch Hostel-AT mile 1819.9

Holy moly, that was a long day! Frosty brought me to Kinsman Notch, and dropped me off right at 7:00. 

Frosty (Robert), the owner of Hanover Adventure Tours, and all around nice guy! After dropping me off, he took my pack to The Notch Hostel. 

Sure Foot had camped a few miles up the trail. I wasn’t sure if I would catch up to him. The Kinsman Ridge Trail went straight up from the road. Fortunately, I was slackpacking again. 

At least there were kind of stairs. 

Interestingly, three years ago when I rode from Minneapolis to Maine, I went past this spot. I remember that I crossed the AT twice, and that one was Kinsman Ridge. Crazy, huh?

Anyway, I was hiking along, when my foot slid sideways on a wet rock (it rained last night). Next thing I knew, I was on the ground in the bushes. Some would say that was my first real fall. But, I say it was fall number 3. 

My landing spot. 

I went up and down for quite awhile before finally continuing up to the top of Wolf Mtn. 

A bit of a view along the way. 

After coming down Wolf, I did a bit more up and down before beginning the climb up South Kinsman Peak. Let me tell you, that was one heck of a climb! There were spots where I had to throw my poles up and scramble up the rocks. 

A nice little waterfall. 

Going upppppp!

Boy, that was fun...not!

I was approaching Eliza Brook Shelter when it started to rain. I put my rain jacket on, but not my pants. It rained harder. My pants were starting to get wet, but I didn’t want to stop while it was really raining. The rain started to lessen, so I took a moment to put my rain pants on. Then, of course, the sun came out! I took both my jacket and my pants off when I stopped to filter some water. 

I continued on by this pond. 

Hard to tell there’s a pond there. 

Heading up there to South Kinsman. 

I was going up some particularly steep rock when who should come up behind me...Sure Foot! He had been at the shelter watching for me, but somehow missed seeing me. 

We made it to the summit of South Kinsman. 

Knowing time was slipping away, we hustled down. The terrain between South and North Kinsman Peaks wasn’t too bad. We had more rocks to climb to get up to North Kinsman, then a very short bit over to the lookout. 

It was 3:00. I finally ate my sandwich. 

From North Kinsman, we still had 5.3 miles to go, most of which was steep, rocky downhill. It took us 1 1/2 hours to go one mile. 

Stuff like this doesn’t make for fast moving. 

We needed to be done before dark, hoping to be done by 7:00 or 7:30. We had to do better than a mile an hour. I would go as fast as I could when there were tiny bits of good trail. Sure Foot told me once we got to Lonesome Lake Hut, the trail would get better. 

Lonesome Lake Hut. Didn’t have time to check it out. 

Lonesome Lake. 

The trail did get better, but there were still slow parts. I had called Ali’s Taxi (Marleen, wonderful lady) to pick us up at the road. We guesstimated we would be there by 7:15. We made it to Hwy 93 right at 7:15, but to get to the Liberty Springs Trailhead parking was another .9 miles. Since I had earlier only been able to leave a message, I called Marleen to see if we would indeed have a ride to The Notch Hostel. She said she was dropping a hiker off, then coming straight to pick us up. 

We got to the parking lot at 7:30. It was a good thing because the woods were starting to get too dark for my eyes to see well. Marleen picked us up shortly, and brought us to The Notch. We arrived around 8:00, absolutely exhausted. A gal handed us cheeseburgers, and a guy gave us the tour, and showed us to our room (which Sure Foot’s friend, Debi, had paid for our night). The Notch Hostel is a well-oiled machine. They have many rules, which includes no packs or shoes in the hostel. The packs and shoes go in a “gear shed”. It makes it somewhat inconvenient, but we managed (even though it meant going up and down the two staircases a couple more times than my knees wanted to). We are in the Kinsman Room. There are 5 bunks, but Debi paid for a private room, so we have it to ourselves. 

We are taking a zero here because we got in so late that our laundry won’t be done (they do it for you) until this afternoon, and we need to resupply. 

Hiking Kinsman Ridge was probably one of the hardest days I’ve had. I’m glad that I slackpacked it, but I also would have had the option to go shorter if I hadn’t. The best thing about yesterday was that I never have to do it again! I told Sure Foot I wouldn’t do it again even if someone gave me $1000 (if it was a million...I’d think about it)!