{"id":1155,"date":"2014-09-11T09:57:13","date_gmt":"2014-09-11T13:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hnatow.com\/wordpress-happytrails\/?p=1155"},"modified":"2014-09-11T09:57:13","modified_gmt":"2014-09-11T13:57:13","slug":"day-148-near-long-pond-stream-to-gulf-hagas-brook-mile-2103-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hnatow.com\/happytrails\/?p=1155","title":{"rendered":"Day 148 – near Long Pond Stream to Gulf Hagas Brook (mile 2103.4)"},"content":{"rendered":"

We had a nice, restful night in our site right off the stream. The white noise of the water was great to sleep by. The full moon really lit up the water and the rocks in it, too. <\/p>\n

This morning we got up and began the climb into the Barren Mountain range. The first climb up to Barren Mountain had some nice views from Barren Slide.<\/p>\n

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The clouds blew out and it turned into a fabulous weather day for hiking. The bubble of northbound hikers is a day in front of us, so the trail seemed really empty again. The trail today was pretty much pure, uncut, evil Maine, however. It was everything that makes the trail here rough. That definitely made it slow going pretty much all day. By the time we got to our afternoon snack break we were beat. It was a great spot on Chairback Mountain, though. <\/p>\n

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Whitecap range off to the north <\/p><\/div>\n

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East Chairback Pond<\/p><\/div>\n

From there we hiked down to the West Branch Pleasant River and forded it. We were originally going to stop there before the ford, but we saw the forecast for tomorrow looks pretty rainy, so we wanted to get the ford over today and make up some miles in case tomorrow is awful. We hiked on past the Gulf Hagas side loop trail and found a flat spot by the brook, so we have some nice water white noise again. We’ve been leapfrogging another hiker from Pittsburgh named Shellback who camped down near us. <\/p>\n

Tomorrow we head over the Whitecap range, the last significant mountains before Katahdin itself. <\/p>\n

Vital stats for Wednesday, September 10th :<\/strong>
\nMilestone – less than 100 miles to Katahdin and over 2100 miles hiked
\nMountains remaining – 2
\nMiles hiked today – 18.2
\nMood – not excited about the 90% chance of rain tomorrow, but otherwise very excited
\nSmell – still not too bad, it was very cool again today
\nPhysical state – pretty tired after so much evil Maine
\nSong stuck in my head – Wildflowers by Tom Petty<\/p>\n

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