INTO GORHAM, NH

AT Day 118_119: Thursday_Friday,  August 3_4, 2023

SOBO Mile 1913 – 1900

Campsite – Route 2, Gorham

Distance Hiked – 13 miles/21 km

Total Distance Hiked: 1943.8 miles/3127.6 km 

A:  3045  ft / 928 m D: 4347 ft/1326 m

The night was cold. I kept waking up shivering from deep in my bones. Just couldn’t stay warm. Hammer did not find it so bad. Not sure what’s going on. It seems that autumn weather has arrived quite suddenly. 

Today was predicted to rain. Checking the weather this morning, we may get lucky and it won’t start raining till later in the day. We were feeling grateful that we found the dispersed campspot in the dark last night and grateful  for the weather news this morning, we broke camp and left our campsite around 7 am. 

Hiking this morning did not come easy to me. I banged my ribs and  knees against a rock wall yesterday while traversing the tricky Mahoosuc Notch. It would have been so much easier, and perhaps more fun, to have hiked it carrying only a day pack. Some days it just takes more time for the body to cooperate with what we are asking it to do. 

We are feeling relieved that we are going into Gorham to rest and resupply today.

A couple of northbound hikers warned us yesterday that New Hampshire will be tough. We smiled, they think Maine will be easier. I read that to traverse the AT through Maine is equivalent to hiking up Mt Everest 3.5 times. Yet only Mt Kathadin is higher then 5000 feet. There were just a lot of mountains to hike over. 

So far in New Hampshire we’ve noticed that trail blazing is not common and they’ve got even more of the boggiest trail amongst the mix of boulders, long and steep rocky ledges and overall rocky terrain that we’ve traversed in Maine. In many of the boggy areas that once had boardwalks, large areas were rotten and collapsed and served no purpose. This was hard to avoid. So many WTFs were issued today. 

We made it to Route 2 with muddy and soggy feet.  We walked the 2 miles along the highway to the White Birches campground where we booked a small cabin for today and tomorrow. Tomorrow is likely to be a wet day. 

We got into the very basic cabin, Hammer hitched the 6 miles to Walmart to get our resupply and I spent a very frustrating couple of hours being given the runaround by airlines while trying to change the date of our return trip home.  It wasn’t possible in the end. Hammer had more luck with hitching and was back in the cabin in no time with what looked like tonnes of food for the next 5 days through the Whites. 

We woke on Friday to pouring rain. It was a good day to be off trail, to rest and to recover from the bruising last couple of days.