Georgia or bust: Local couple braves the Appalachian Trail — Part 2

By Abby Noble
Sun contributor
Abby (Chatfield) Noble, of Leland, set out to hike the Appalachian Trail with her now-husband, Kenny, in the fall of 2003. The two-part tale of their awe-inspiring journey concludes in this issue of the Glen Arbor Sun. Abby honed her writing skills at the Interlochen Arts Academy. She and Kenny were married this year on June 27.
The entire trail only exists because thousands of individuals volunteer to maintain it and fight constant legal battles to ensure the Appalachian Trail keeps a secure passage. Near Caratunk, Maine, the Kennebec River rolls with such force that hikers are required to canoe across it. This would not be possible without the volunteers who sit at the river’s edge in shifts and wait to paddle hikers to the opposite bank. One hiker, determined to walk even the rivers, declined the canoe ride and attempted to swim against the Kennebec current with his pack above his head. We met him a few days later and learned that a man had plucked the hiker from the water about a quarter-mile downstream of the trail and saved his life.

We opted to accept a canoe ride and safely reach the biggest physical challenge along the entire trail, Maine’s Mahoosuc Range. Our lowland travels, broken only intermittently by random isolated peaks, turned into the most continuous series of ups and downs on the Appalachian Trail. The Mahoosuc alpine territory offers extensive views on clear days. From The Horn, the Atlantic Ocean is visible. From all peaks, I could watch the approaching weather. On Saddleback’s summit, we leaned into the 30 mph winds and observed, far off, rain showering down in metallic curtains, connecting the clouds to patches of hillside basking in the sunlight.
It rained a lot in the Mahoosucs, which forced us to slow our pace along the steep, bare rock trail. Luckily, we met the hardest mile of trail, Mahoosuc Notch, on a dry day. This lone mile took two hours to defeat, because we had to scurry over and under its piled boulders in a tunnel only 25-75 yards wide, enclosed by mountainous cliffs. Sunlight never touches the boulders’ bellies, so even in late July ice remains and creates cold air currents that circle around the hot air above.
There would not be another challenge like this until our first day in New Hampshire. We realized that we had completed 281 miles when we saw the blue hand-painted sign marking the Maine-New Hampshire border. We knew we were about to enter into a new challenge and found the scariest moment of trail along New Hampshire’s Rattle River.
The night before our Rattle River crossing, heavy rains flooded the riverbanks, and rapids continued to explode through slots between the boulders all along the riverbed. The trail requires hikers to pass through this normally docile current, and there is no way around it. After an hour, we had piled up enough dead logs to balance our way across the first shoot of rapids. If one log broke, it would send us down a jagged slide of bubbling foam. If we made it across, we would still have to walk through two more raging, yet shallower, sets of rapids. We succeeded by taking our time, and I cried as all my nervous energy escaped on the opposite bank.
We had safely entered a new state and a completely different atmosphere of higher altitudes, consistently rocky trail and continuous fees. From Imp Mountain to the New Hampshire-Vermont border, there are few sheltered places to stay in the exposed environment. Fees are collected at the few safe camping areas and used to maintain areas along the entire Appalachian Trail. Hikers must have enough cash to ensure safe passage through the most exposed areas. After the Carter and Wildcat ranges, we ascended Mount Madison and trekked south along the Presidential Range’s backbone well above tree line. Even though it can take a week to hike the long stretch of bare rock and Bigelow Sedge, most people never witness the amazing views only available about 25 percent of the their time above 6,000 feet. Mt. Washington, New England’s highest point, boasts the worst weather and strongest winds (231 mph) in the world. With such unpredictable shifts in weather, it is almost necessary to stay inside the infamous Presidential huts, like Lake of the Clouds hut a mile south of Mt. Washington. Huts cost tourists and hikers over $65 per night. But thru-hikers can sleep on dining room tables or the floor and eat the guests’ leftovers for free, if they volunteer a few hours to help hut staff with daily chores.
The weather cleared for us at many points in the Presidentials, and we made the list of volunteers in a few huts too. But the best view in New Hampshire was the 360-degree panorama atop Mt. Kinsman at the south end of the White Mountains. We observed the Presidentials’ jagged peaks on the northern horizon and looked south on the upcoming trail where the landscape melted from tall mountainous cones into rippling hills.
As we lowered in altitude and latitude the forest began to reappear and diversify. Within a day, we passed through mixed forest, White Pine woods, hemlock, birch, spruce and maple. As author and hiker Bill Bryson wrote in his book, “Into the Woods,” we had just completed only 15 percent of the entire Appalachian Trail but already put forth 50 percent of the needed effort, as we crossed the Connecticut River into Vermont.
Vermont trail is like a rollercoaster track. It mostly rolls in a way where speed from descent carries one up the next hill, and so on. The woods open up and trees grow spaced apart, yet still thick enough to question where it might end. At points when the woods broke open, we found hamlets like Manchester or old-fashioned diners by a roadside. Our appetites already rivaled that of anyone walking 20-mile days, so we took advantage of most diners without letting any of our dehydrated food go to waste. A breakfast of omelets, toast, potatoes and sausage could, unfailingly, be followed by two lunches each and a pot of lentils for dinner.
Besides the good food, Vermont offered a sense of achievement as our pace quickened along its gentle terrain through the Green Mountains. For over 100 miles, the Appalachian Trail shared the Long Trail’s corridor so, by the Massachusetts border, we had hiked one-third of the historic Vermont footpath and noted our location as halfway through the New England stretch.
Yet our hike along America’s acclaimed footpath through nature began to seem a lot less like nature and more like a nature walk through the town park. Massachusetts’ White Pine forests, with their filtered red light and soft floors clear of most underbrush, remained a quiet, soothing environment to hike. But signs of human life otherwise continued. One night, we actually believed we were lost and woke to find ourselves at the edge of someone’s backyard.
But by the second week of September, touches of color brushed across the treetops, and the change motivated me to keep moving forward. Fields of goldenrod, wildflowers and ferns broke the monotonous walk along riverbanks and cornfields. Historic sites began appearing in greater number, and we passed by old rock fences that marked historical property lines.
Everett was the last mountain we climbed in Massachusetts before descending into Sage’s Ravine, a deep river-cut gap marking the Massachusetts-Connecticut border. We climbed the ladder of rock steps out of the gap to Bear Mountain’s summit, where a sign claims this as Connecticut’s tallest peak. But according to a man we met there, who had already climbed to the highest points in all 50 states, Connecticut’s tallest peak is actually a neighbor to Bear Mountain.
Connecticut’s 83-mile Appalachian Trail stretch completed our New England hiking experience and remained as removed as we would be from daily human activities until Pennsylvania. We entered into the Mid-Atlantic corridor at the Connecticut-New York border and faced our biggest mental challenges of the entire journey.
New York was, by far, the least enjoyable hiking state between Maine and Pennsylvania and might have been responsible for our decreasing excitement about this hike. Human sound polluted the trail, and it was common to spot construction just outside the narrow, barely protected corridor. Power lines, telephone poles, turnpikes and neighborhoods surrounded us. After crossing the Hudson River on a busy bridge, we even followed the trail through the center of a small zoo. Hiking through a state that seemed to put more effort into a zoo that the trail calloused our thoughts so well that we showed no surprise at the miles of grey, seemingly dead woods or at Nuclear Lake, so named for its severe contamination by a large nuclear spill in the 1970s.
New York did have a lot of deer, porcupines and high ridges with open views. But our morale deteriorated the longer we remained there. Maybe this is why New Jersey looked so appealing upon our arrival, despite the noticeable manmade marks on the landscape. We expected black air and pocked hillsides from industry but only came upon cow pastures and small county roads. The land slowly lifted into the Kittatiny Mountains and the least obstructed views since Connecticut. Bird clubs from all over the region flocked here to watch hawks sail on air currents along cliff edges. Hunters stalked the trail to access nearby hunting spots. Deer and bear populated the state. In fact, there was such a high bear population that most hikers left New Jersey with at least one close encounter.
The active Kittatiny Mountain trails lowered into the fast-paced, well-used Delaware Water Gap, the border between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Semi-trucks thundered past us as we leaned over the bridge, rather risking a fall into the muddy Delaware River than losing a leg to a speeding vehicle. After almost 1,000 miles of continuous walking, the contrast between our rate of movement and the surrounding culture’s was very evident.
It remained easy to adapt into a simple life with only the bare necessities at hand, but the Mid-Atlantic region’s consistent blur between development and nature stole a lot of enjoyment from our experience. It became difficult to pass by a town without stopping in for a while, and the scenery became ordinary and human. In Pennsylvania, we experienced autumn’s peak beauty. All the way from the Pokeno Mountains to the southern part of the state, we walked along flat ridgelines for up to 20 miles at a time before a short trip down into a gap and then 500 yards straight up onto the next long ridge. The valley’s forests below us blazed red and orange and restored some excitement in the journey.
We witnessed the acclaimed view from The Pinnacle alongside a large Amish family. A patched quilt of farmland spread across the green, flat land between the forested hills to its sides. As beautiful as it seemed, there were a few obvious environmental issues. Within a two-day stretch, we passed by three Environmental Protection Agency clean-up sites at abandoned mines. It hailed on us one day, and our feet almost froze each night. By October, it seemed the season was already changing again, and we were not walking fast enough to reach Georgia by Christmas.
We knew we had to quit at Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania, because I contracted viral meningitis just north, near Duncannon. We spent almost a week there at a $15 motel while I recovered but knew the journey must end. We wanted to keep it a positive experience, so we had to be honest with ourselves. We had reached our limit at 1,065 miles, but we would, some day, come back to finish the southern half of the Appalachian Trail.