Maine's 100 Mile Wilderness
After a stretch of grey and cooler temperatures, we finally had a nice break. I had the 100 mile wilderness in the back of my mind for a while and took the nicer stretch of weather as my sign to get after it. With the help of a friend I pre-positioned my vehicle at the northern end and was dropped off at the southern entrance to the hike.
During the first 3 1/2 days I only met up with 2 other people, 1 southbound AT thru hiker and 1 guy, like me, was doing the 100 mile wilderness stretch. He was much quicker than I was and never saw him again. This stretch was a wonderful chance to just immerse myself in these remote woods with nothing but the wildlife and the elements. In the mornings I would check the navigation app to get an idea where I wanted to end up for the day and then phone went away! No social media, no notifications, no distractions. This is my way to totally recharge my own batteries! With the snow melt and all the rain we had locally over the past couple months, the river crossings were higher than the previous 2 times I hiked this section, at times close to my waist. The other challenging aspect to this hike was that there were a lot of blow downs from a recent high wind event. Going up and over White Cap Mountain I would guess a safe estimate of about 50 trees down, sometime 2 or 3 deep. Over, under or around (my preferred method) really slowed down progress but ultimately adds another element that makes hiking exciting and interesting to me.
On day 5 of my hike I really began to run into some southbound Appalachian Trail hikers, in groups of 2 to 4 mostly. It was really motivating for me as it brought back some great memories of my own 2017 Northbound AT hike. I also feel as if I was serving a solid service giving them updates of what was coming up for them, some river crossing tips, and ultimately letting them know that as hard as it gets, it’s completely do-able! hope it helped at least a couple of them. As my hike was coming to and end, feeling a little rough around the edges but ultimately no worse for wear, the wheels start to turn……maybe there’s another long distance thru hike still in me!
The year was 2016 and I was preparing to retire from the Army. I had an epic adventure planned to help me make the transition from military to civilian life and that was to hike the Appalachian Trail! My thought was what better way to document this amazing and very necessary reset than to blog about it? Well, building a blog, regardless of how “easy” and “user friendly” they promise it is, it isn’t. So for that trip and many, many others I just relied on the old faithful social media platforms. Posting pictures and short blurbs about my travels was fun but stepping it up a notch by blogging about these trips was always in the back of my mind. Big Hill Adventure is what finally what came from all times I told myself, “I have to get that blog started!”
Since my initial 2200 mile Appalachian Trail hike I have traveled to Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, North, Central, and South Americas, and most recently Africa. Hiked many more trails and treks including Appalachian Trail, Arizona Trail,1000 miles of Caminos, Arizona Trail, over half of the Florida Trail, Scottish Highlands, Mount Kilimanjaro and many more. My plan is to continuing to document my new travels and adventures here but also finally catching up on blogging all my old trips and treks. I hope you enjoy these stories and would certainly enjoy hearing about your similar adventures or recommendations in the comments.
