🧵 1/5
May 8, 1983, 41 years ago today: There is nothing like trying to pack up everything you own in a downpour. My sleeping bag was soaked, my tent was hopeless; everything was drenched. Adding insult to injury, the rain came to a dead stop about five minutes after I had finished packing.
2/5
I am writing this entry at Addis Gap Shelter, seven-and-a-half miles further up the Appalachian Trail, where I have stopped for lunch. My backpack must be ten pounds heavier than yesterday just from all the water which has soaked into my belongings. My backpack must be ten pounds heavier than yesterday just from all the water which has soaked into my belongings. I feel a desperate need to keep driving myself now. My boots feel like sandpaper against that deep wound.
🧵 1/7
October 1, 1983: After crossing Pollywog Stream on a logging road bridge, the AT proceeded to Rainbow Stream, which it followed for a good distance upstream, passing a long series of cascades and small waterfalls in the boulder-strewn shallow waters.
4/7
When I set out again, I crossed Rainbow Stream and followed the opposite bank past the three Rainbow Deadwaters. These were small pond-like stretches, along which the stream widened, and the current became very still.
5/7
The scenic qualities of the lake country have been a pleasant surprise.
The shallow, rocky stream widened and deepened, becoming a placid channel wandering through an extensive freshwater marsh filled with water grasses teaming with birds and small creatures.
6/7
Eventually, the Appalachian Trail came out on a grassy stretch of the southwest shore of Rainbow Lake. The haze of the morning had cleared, and across the lake there was an absolutely fantastic view of Katahdin's massive profile. The trail followed on or near the shore of the enormous lake for the next five miles.
🧵 1/3
August 31, 1983: The Appalachian Trail followed some dirt roads through a pleasant farm valley encircled by mountains and reentered the forest to begin a rather taxing climb up to Holts Ledge, the first real mountain it had thus far traversed in New Hampshire. It kept turning onto one woods road after another, and each was a bit steeper than the preceding one.
2/3
It passed just to the left of the wooded summit and began very gradually to descend along the ridgeline.
The sun broke out just as I was breaking out onto the open ledges. Suddenly, the sky was clearer than it had been in days. I sat down to drink in the sunshine and the views. I was so far ahead of schedule I was able to linger for about an hour.
🧵 1/6
June 2, 1983: Beyond Carvers Gap, the trees rapidly began to thin out along the ridge crest. Near the top of Round Bald stood a small cluster of red pines.
2/6
Starting with Round Bald, the final three peaks of Roan Mountain, which also included Jane Bald and Grassy Ridge Bald and the connecting ridge crest, formed basically one long, undulating meadow sprinkled with thousands of bluets. There were a few large rock outcrops.
🧵 1/3
June 25, 1983: Picking up the roadwalk under the I-81 overpass near the sprawling truck stops on US 220, I soon found myself drifting back into the #Virginia to which I had grown accustomed on this journey, following rural lanes past rolling pastures, barns, silos and a few small clusters of residences.
3/3
I had not encountered this mountain chain since the eventful early days of my journey in Carolina and Georgia (I had been on the western fork of the Blue Ridge as recently as the Virginia Highlands, but it is the eastern fork which carries that name officially once they diverge).
🧵 1/2
June 10, 1983: Unlike the Roan Highlands, the open fields throughout the Mount Rogers area did not seem to be natural balds. In places which hadn't been grazed recently, thick scrub covered the landscape. The predominant features of these landscapes were emerald green spring grasses and medium to light gray boulders and rock outcrops,
2/2
but these elements created a constantly changing and surprisingly varied countryside of rolling hills and rocky ridges. Mixed in were brushy areas of shrubs and stunted trees, scrubby overgrown fields and groves of fir, spruce, pines and northern hardwoods. I would not be seeing many of these trees again until Vermont.
🧵 1/6
September 8, 1983: After Eisenhower, the trail descended into a col before another stiff climb up Mount Franklin, the first 5000-footer of the day. The sky had cleared very nicely by the time I reached this peak.
2/6
I got some great shots of Mounts Monroe, Washington, and Clay (how did he get in there?) along the trail ahead. The few clouds remaining in the sky had lifted well off the mountaintops, save one — the cloud that still blanketed the top of Washington, covering just the very tip of its summit cone.
3/6
It was getting rather late, so I stayed on the Appalachian Trail as it bypassed Mount Monroe, which I have previously climbed, and did not stop at Lakes of the Clouds Hut, located in the col between Monroe and Washington.
4/6
I began the final assault on Mount Washington. The mountain’s summit resembles a huge, barren pile of loose rocks, and those rocks make the steep climb somewhat tricky and time-consuming. Slowly, I approached the sharply-defined bottom border of the vast cloud as the sun, sinking low in the sky beyond distant Franconia Ridge, tinted it with gold and orange. It was like ascending into heaven. I reached the fringe of the cloud and stepped inside.
🧵 1/6
September 3, 1983: The Appalachian Trail briefly followed the U.S.F.S. fire road before turning onto a paved road for a while. Eventually, the trail turned off that road, passed through some fields, and reentered the woods. That was the point where the real climbing began.
5/6
Today, it is simply a wide, rocky foot trail, lined with eight-foot-tall spruce. Their aroma filled the air, reminding me of my childhood, when my grandfather used to take my brother and me to pick out our Christmas tree.