Dave Byrnes

Appalachian Trail - 1986

Overview Map Diary Pictures

Day:	100
Date:	Sunday, 10 August 1986
Start:
Finish:
Daily AT Miles:	22.3
Daily Other Miles	0
Total AT Miles:	1928.5
Total All Miles	1984.0
Weather:	Warm, humid, mostly sunny.
Accommodation:
Nutrition:	Breakfast: Muesli, health drink. Lunch: Biscuits and peanut butter, health bars. Dinner: Noodles and sauce, pop tarts.
Aches:	None bad.
Animals Seen:	Squirrels, grouse.
People Seen:	3 overnight hikers, 9 day hikers, some others.
Pictures:	Here
GPS Track:
Journal:	We got up at 5:30am and left about 6:45am with the daunting prospect of over 22 miles in front of us on the boggy Maine trails. Fortunately, there were no major mountains on our route for the day. We set off in foggy damp conditions and first climbed to the fairly bare summit of Beamis Peak but couldn’t really see anything. The Trail then descended over a series of knobs until it reached Beamis Stream. It was too wide to rock-hop across and we both ended up just ploughing through it. By this time the weather was clearing and after our steep ascent to ME 17, we had a great view over the lakes, forests and mountains to the west. We only stopped for a short time to admire the view because we were conscious of the distance we still had to go. The Trail levelled out a little, though still gradually ascending, and was often boggy, slowing us occasionally. John saw a moose, but I missed it! John stepped up the pace in the better going parts, and I hung on. We reached a lovely beach on the north-east end of Long Pond and we both washed our socks and I went for a lovely swim during the 40 minutes we stayed there. We then left to walk another five miles to the Little Swift River Pond campsite where we planned to have a late lunch. The Trail continued to be boggy and, at one point, newly clean from my swim, I slipped on a root and fell sideways into some lovely black mud, dirtying my whole left side. We reached the Pond around 3pm and spent 45 minutes eating and resting. We then moved off through more deciduous forest and boggy trail with the intention of breaking the remaining six miles into two three-mile sections. However, we missed the rocky ledge supposedly marking the halfway point, and walked all the way to ME 4 leaving us only 1½ miles to go. We were pleased that it looked like we were going to reach the Shelter at Piazza Rock at around 7pm – an hour earlier than last night. There were about five cars parked at the trail-head and, as we climbed towards the Lean-To through the forest, we heard a loud screech of tyres and then two big bangs of a car crash. Probably some of the parked cars. We decided we wouldn’t be able to do anything, so didn’t return to the scene. We were very pleased to reach the Lean-To at 7pm and find no-one else there (though there was a care-taker in a tent about 100 yards away). We washed and had dinner, congratulating ourselves on having an empty shelter, when a father and son hiking team turned up, very tired, at 8:15pm. We chatted with them and the care-taker, who brought us some cookies, before retiring around 9pm.