Day 121 Lakes, Ponds, and Sunsets

Today we hiked our last mountain before Katahdin and we’re camping by a lake tonight. 


I slept pretty well last night. We woke up around 6:30 AM and were hiking just after 7:30. 


Since we camped on the ridge last night, we didn’t have a ton of climbing to do to hit the peaks for the day. Two of the three peaks on the ridge were wooded and had minimal views. These peaks were West Peak and Hay Mountain.






However, the third peak called Whitecap Mountain, had fantastic views. We could clearly see Katahdin about 30 miles away as the crow flies. From this point, we still had about 80 miles of hiking to do. The trail is usually about twice as long as the straight line distance between two points. The first picture is Katahdin, and the other pictures are looking back towards the Bigelow Mountains, and the 100 mile wilderness behind us.







We hung out at the peak of whitecap for a bit, then did our final major descent of the entire trail. From camp to the end of the descent was about 7 miles. We hiked a total of 25 miles today. The last 18 miles were mainly just a woods walk.


We passed Mountain View Pond and Crawford Pond. 




The last 18 miles of the day were very flat and the trail was very smooth. We made excellent time and got to camp around 6 PM. 


We’ve run into quite a few southbound hikers, it’s very interesting seeing people right at the start of their thru hikes we are just finishing ours. Many of the southbound hikers have talked about how hard they found the 100 mile wilderness. I refrain from telling them that it is probably the easiest 100 mile stretch on the entire trail. Apart from the remoteness the trail is very flat and when there are climbs, they are very gradual. Compared to the White Mountains this section of the trail has been a breeze. But we just let the southbound hikers believe that it’s difficult. They’ll find out soon enough what difficult hiking looks like when they hit the Whites.


We are camping on a peninsula on Lower Jo Mary Lake. We have a private beach where we took a swim after dinner. There’s a nice sunset over the lake. If we’re lucky there will be a sunrise on the other side of the peninsula in the morning.





We plan to hike 25 miles tomorrow, 20 miles the next day, then take Monday off to let rain pass and summit Katahdin on June 25th. Right now the weather looks really good on the 25th, so it’s worth waiting a day to have a good weather.


Good night, 

Walker 

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