Saturday, June 22, 2019
Carlo Col Shelter to Bull Branch Campsite
7.1 Miles
Goose Eye Mountain West Peak, Goose Eye Mountain, East Peak,
Goose Eye Mountain North Peak, Fulling Mill
Mountain South Peak, THEN Mahoosuc Notch– Gosh! We had used up all our energy before we got to
the dreaded hardest mile on the trail. We
reached it at 2:45 and finished at 6:45.
Not the best idea to start the notch that late in the day. Stopping short yesterday set us up for
this.
But we were finally here.
With much trepidation we stood at the entrance to the Notch, which
looked like a war zone with downed trees, boulders and snow as far as the eye could see. We prayed that it wouldn’t rain because it
sure looked like it wanted to. Up north of
us, we could see rain and later found out that it hailed at Speck Pond
Shelter up ahead. But we only got
sprinkles a few times in the Notch.
Before we got started good, we came across a flock
of baby ducks trying to get out of the snow.
We watched them and videoed for 20 or 30 minutes before going on, so not
counting that time, we actually did the notch in 3.5 hours. I asked the question later on a Facebook
group how long it took other section hikers to complete the notch and found out 3.5 hours is not too bad.
The Notch is unbelievable. Hard!
Big boulders to go over and under,
no way to go around. Tunnels to go through.
Big expanses to jump over. Several
times Wait-up stopped in front of me and said, “Ain’t no way I’m gonna do that!” But he did, because he had too. And then I did it too.
Once we were down between the
boulders trying to figure out a way to get through and three young people came
through above us on top of the boulders jumping from one to the other. Going fast.
They’ve done it a time or two and were trying to beat their time, they
said. We were in awe. So we lumbered on.
We finally came upon a beautiful
path going out of the gorge the left and we thought were were finished. But Guthooks said we had .5 to go. We thought it would go on forever – it looked
like it did, we could see no end in sight.
But suddenly it was over and we
walked up a slight hill to find Bull Branch Campsite. It was a steep downhill to a creek to get
water, not something you look forward to
at the end of a long hard day. After
that chore and setting up our tent and cooking our meal, we fell into bed that
night, exhausted.
We were the only ones around.
We met a couple later about our age (Lee and Brenda) who went through
the notch his morning after staying at Full Goose last night. They are at Speck Pond Shelter tonight. If we had not stopped early yesterday, we
would have had company going through the
notch this morning. We caught up
with them in Andover and hiked with them for several days.
YouTube of Goose Eye Mountain and Mahoosuc Notch
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