Mountain View Pond to White House Landing

Day Forty-Eight
Monday, July 15, 2019
Mountain View Pond to White House Landing
20.2 Miles

We were up and on the trail by 6:15.

We passed the campsite where Brightside and Squeak spent the night and he was outside his tent, covered from head to toe.  He told us later that he had never seen so many mosquitoes in one place.  We told him it was no better where we were.  We are still wearing long sleeves and headnets most of the time.

The majority of  the trail today was flat and level and followed an old logging road.  Right past Jo-Mary Road we came across a couple of barrels of Trail Magic left by boyscouts.  It had a big bunch of candy and other sweet treats and Cheez-its.  Wow, we ate our fill and left plenty for others.  It was such a surprise to find Trail Magic in the middle of the wilderness. 

After Antlers Campground the trail became more rocky and rooty.  At 4:30 we reached Mahar Tote Trail where a .2 blue-blazed trail took us to the shore of a lake where  we could be picked up to go to Whitehouse Landing.  We had been leap-frogging with Brightside and Squeak all day and when we turned off, they kept going.  We had already hiked 20.2 miles.

Going down the .2 trail, a big black bear ran out of the woods and ran down the  trail in front of us toward the lake.  I only heard it, but Wait-up saw it.  He said it was really big, we were glad it was running the other way from us. 

We had read that you had to ring a bell to get them to come get you, but that is not the case.  It would be too far for them to hear a bell from there.  You cannot see the hostel from this side of the lake.  A phone number is listed for you to call for pick-up, which we did, and in a few minutes a boat came around the bend in the river and pulled up to the shore.  We jumped in and in a few minutes we were on the other shore, just in time for dinner. 

Several other hikers were on the porch of the main building, including Jurrasic, Flickertail, Shroom and a few others. We started the wilderness with Jurrasic but he got ahead of us.  He spent the night last night at Antlers Campground and only had to hike a little ways today, so he had a nero.  The others were new to us.

The dinner was good and ample.  We had a hamburger, some had a pizza.  As we sat around the table the conversation was all about the trail, the terrain that was ahead of us and some of our plans for our Katahdin summit.  Jurassic, Flickertail, Shroom and us were all planning to summit now on the 19^th.  We were concerned about the space available at the Birches Campsite and whether there would be others that we didn’t know about to vie for the 12 spots.  We speculated  about how we could get to the sign-in kiosk before the spaces filled up.  It was all a mystery to us at this point.  As it turned out when we got there, it worked out just fine. 

 After dinner we had time to shower in the standalone shower house and do our laundry in a washtub with water from a faucet pulling water out of the lake.  We hung our laundry out and it was mostly dry by morning. 

We had communicated with the folks at Whitehouse before we started our hike about mailing a resupply box and spending the night in a private room.  I had kept them updated on our expected arrival date, which changed a couple of times along the way. 

They had a bunkhouse and another house with separate bedrooms.  We had a room in that house with a few others in the other bedrooms.  The queen sized bed was comfortable enough, but we fought mosquitoes all night.  There were lots of gaps in the walls and around the windows.