We woke up, ate breakfast and got ready. Beast decided to leave later so Spoon and I took a shuttle to the trail, stoping at the local gas station for last minute things.
At the trail Spoon recognized some people he knew and we all got talking. Those people are slack packing (having their gear transported to the next road so they can just carry day packs and make longer days). Spoon said he had to do something and would catch up, so I hiked with the slack packers for a while.
We lunched at the lake that I was thinking of hiking to the day before, it was nice, but not as nice as I imagined it might be, or maybe I just told myself that so I feel better about not staying there.
The slack packers lost me just before the summit, I couldn’t keep their pace with my heavy pack, but I have to say I felt much stronger after a day of rest.
The weather was perfect, it wasn’t too hot, but not so cool that I needed to layer up when I stopped and it was mostly sunny, with some beautiful fluffy clouds.
I must have spent an hour at the first summit just enjoying the views. It’s a rocky top with 360 degree views of the lakes to the north and a ski mountain as well as the mountains we had come over the last several days to the south. I could see both mt Katahdin and mt Washington. I had signal so I had a quick call with Bettina, then hiked down to a campsite and back up the Bigelow Avery peak, where I also hung out for a while.
No sign of Spoon, which isn’t too unusual, he probably stopped somewhere to smoke weed and was just enjoying the day. Eventually a big group with lots of kidS came up and made a bunch of noise, so I decided to head for camp.
It was a rather nice hike down really, not too steep and good footing. I got to camp around 6 and Beast showed up within 10 minutes, I must have just missed her at the top. She said she was surprised to run into Spoon right away in the morning, he was smoking pot with some other hikers and hanging out and mentioned that he might stay at the camp between the two mountains. Spoon has been talking about taking it really slow because he’s meeting a buddy at the end of the trail and he needs to make shorter days to meet his friend, so I wasn’t surprised that he never showed up at camp, but it would have been nice to say goodbye.