Mahoosuc Notch: The Most Fun on the Entire Appalachian Trail

Despite being mostly lucky with weather (with a few exceptions like the Worst Conditions Yet), it has recently turned foul. 10 days of rain every day. Everything has become saturated. My rain jacket and pants…soaked through. My pants and shirt…wet, cold rags clinging to me. My underwear…damp. My socks…dripping wet. My shoes…literal buckets of water.

It all started at the tail end of the White Mountains. I was on the summit of Mount Hight. Weather forecast said thunderstorms in three hours. I’m looking around at blue skies thinking, “Where? I can see for miles in every direction. There’s no storm. Pffft. Stupid forecast.” (Cue ominous foreshadowing music.)

I’m cruising along with plans to hike to a shelter many hours away still. I go down Mount Hight and start up the Carvers, which are three peaks along a long ridgeline. Headphones in, blasting music in my ears.

What was that? Was that thunder? I pop out a headphone and listen. Nothing. Oh well. I keep cruising.

More rumbling. Hmmm…headphones out. Oh, that is thunder. I can’t see anything because I’m in the “Green Tunnel” with trees blocking my view. I finally get to an open area. Hmmm…dark clouds over to my right, but the wind is blowing that way. Those clouds can’t come over here.

More hiking. More rumbling. This time from my left. More Green Tunnel then finally a view to the left.

Yikes! Dark clouds to my left and right now. I’m well into the Carvers now about to be trapped on a ridgeline during a lightning storm. I check the map. No other trails. It’s either back the way I came to an intersection where I’d still have to hike several miles to get to a trailhead, or push on toward a shelter just beyond the Carver mountains.

I push on. Thunder gets louder. The blue skies peaking through the leaves above me become gray. I’m moving my little feet as fast as they can go.

I get to the side trail to the shelter just as a few drops of rain start to fall. This side trail goes for what seems like an eternity as the looming downpour hovers overhead. I finally get the shelter. Safe! Or rather, safe-ish. Still on a mountain side in a lightning storm, but at least I’m in a dry shelter and somewhat protected.

I setup camp. I cook. I eat. Still no rain. Just the sky grumbling. Pffft. Stupid forecast. It’s not going to rain. And right then the skies unloaded a torrential downpour.

It rained all night. Lightning claps got closer and louder. One was scarily loud and close. But somehow I managed to drift off the sleep.

The next morning, the rain had stopped. However, it was so humid and foggy that I literally saw clouds of fog come in through the entrance to the shelter. I packed up.

Even though the rain stopped, everything is now wet. All the trees and bushes along the trail are wet. The trail is muddy. The sky is overcast, so there’s no sun to dry everything out.

It’s been like that for the past 10 days. But it gets worse.

Although the thunderstorm has passed, the overcast skies drizzle all day long with occasional showers. The trails have become lakes and actual rivers using the trail as their riverbed. And in numerous places, the trails are overgrown. No big deal when it’s dry, but when they’re wet, it’s like trying to walk through an automatic car wash with the brushes beating against you. A mile-long carwash.

And the trails. Oh, Lord. This area is already boggy when it hasn’t been raining. If you have never been in the middle of a bog, let me explain one to you.

Bogs appear to be pools of water between mossy, sometimes grassy land. This is all lies. Deceitful, lying bogs. The pools are just a thin layer of liquid above decomposing organic matter. If you disturb this, perhaps with a trekking pole or worse yet, your shoe, you realize that the decomposing matter has the texture and smell of chunky diarrhea. Yes, it’s as appealing as it sounds. Several times my foot sank and chunky diarrhea spilled over and into my shoes, squishing between my foot and shoe as I walked. Furthermore, the decomposing matter apparently has no bottom. It simply becomes so thick that your pole or foot stops sinking from the friction rather than making contact with something solid.

Usually trail maintainers install raised planks through these bogs to help hikers avoid sinking in the chunky diarrhea. Unfortunately, in the wet bog environment, these walkways quickly rot, collapse, sink, and become unusable. So what can you do to avoid the watery traps?

Maybe the mossy, grassy land, right? Wrong.

The land in a bog is more like a squishy sponge. You step on it, and you sink three feet. You realize that the “land” isn’t even an island but is more like a pool float floating on the surface of a vat at your local sewage treatment plant. And you’re trying to stand upright on this pool float. That rarely ends well.

Welcome to my life for the past 10 days.