Maineiacs home in Maine

Dewy and I continue our trek to Katahdin, with approximately 245 miles to go and continuing. We are spending the second of two nights at The Andover Guest House in Andover, Maine, which has been a great hostel for us to stop and rest. Today, with full packs, we hiked 10 miles from the Andover 'B' road to South Arm Road, with the intent of spending two nights here. I'm trying to get over a cold with bronchitis, and camping in the recent 30' temps seemed counter-productive. Tomorrow we'll be off on the next 47 mile segment of the trip which will bring us to Sugarloaf by Friday.
The last few days of hiking can be classified as arduous and cold. As we spent time here hiking 10 years ago with Troop 478, we are hiking in familiar territory. The Mahoosucs (Ma-who-SUCKS; native translation emphasizes the last syllable!) are universally regarded by all thru-hikers as the toughest section of the AT. These mountains are extremely rugged and difficult to hike due to the rocky nature of the terrain and the vertical feet of elevation lost and gains. Dewey mentioned the Presidential range requires 10,000 vertical feet climbed, but one will climb over 8,000 vertical feet in the 30 mile section of the Mahoosucs. The first day after Gorham was somewhat easy and we covered 12 miles in half a day. The second day however, it took us 11 hours to cover 15 miles, with the toughest section being the Mahoosuc Notch, a one mile section of giant boulder strewn trail that took an hour and a half itself to negotiate. We found the dead moose that we had been hearing about for the past two weeks. It had stumbled into the notch in early July, and had broken one of its legs. It was suffering terribly til someone put it out of it's misery. One had to negotiate over the corpse and the ungodly stench that still permeated the area. One of the nick-names for the notch is ice gulch, as even in August, one can find ice under rocks. As you walk through the gulch, certain low pockets will drop 10' in temperature. Our unlucky moose found it's final resting place in one of these pockets, which has delayed the natural degradation processes and has allowed more hikers to see and experience the thrill. However at the end of the day, it was nice to have the extra protein in the pot that night!
We expect the hiking to improve significantly over the next few miles, and longer distances should be possible. We plan to meet Kathy at Sugarloaf this Friday then continue on our way.