McAfee Hikes

Date Written: 8/07/2024 | AT Mile 38.2 | Day Total: 19.6 miles | Gain 2815 ft

Woke up this morning before everyone’s else and did some camp chores. I went back down to the pond and jumped around the rocks as far as I could and relaxed there in the clear cool morning.

We are shooting for a 20 mile’r day today, before the terrain becomes too mountainous in the 100MW. So we tried to get up a bit earlier around 6am to get a move on.

Nathan got his trail name this morning, Juice box. I’ll leave it to him to tell you the full story.

Maddy and Noah took off a bit before us this morning but we planned to meet at Rainbow Spring campsite, ~7 miles away, if we had not caught them yet.

This morning we climbed up to Rainbow Ledges, a nice lookout on Katahdin. This is where we ended up meeting Maddy and Noah and Nathan slightly behind us wearing his fashionable Froggtoggs shorts.

We are all getting lots of flashbacks from Dolly Sods in WV. The terrain is still deceiving though. From Katahdin it all looks nearly flat but I promise it’s far from it. Not to mention the surplus of roots and rocks that tenderize the soles of your feet.

We spent a large portion of today hiking along Rainbow lake. It was beautiful and larger than expected.

We all settled in for lunch at Rainbow Spring Campsite like planned. There was a long small pipe slowly releasing spring water into the lake that we filtered from. After lunch we all decided to take a dip into the lake! It was chilly but felt spectacular.

I can no longer say that I’ve never been stung by a bee. I was walking the furthest back and felt a sting directly on the back of my ankle on my sock. It hurt for the better part of an hour but never swelled.

We trudged on to rainbow stream lean-to where we talked with Dry Bones. He attempted a thru hike in 2020 but had to get off because of Covid. He’s now a section hiker about to finished the whole AT in just a few days.

About a mile from that shelter we came across a few boys wandering the woods and seemed to be unprepared for how far they were in the 100MW. They had open cans of beans and were asking if bears were a concern in the area… They also asked Dry Bones if he hand any service.

We took a break at Pollywog Stream, I filtered some water and ate a Honey Stinger Waffle which energized me to climb up Nesuntabunt Mountain. The four of the were a little ahead of me and I caught up to them at Cresent Pond but pushed forward because I had a burst of energy.

I was the first up to Nesuntabunt Mountain and could hear their voices a few 100ft below me so I shouted MARCO and they responded with the classic POLO! It was late on the day so we planed on eating dinner at the peak. I had Penne pasta with pesto along with a few pieces of beef jerky.

There was a little service at the peak so I called my family for a quick checkin before we headed down to camp for the night.

We weren’t sure if we’d be able to spend the night at the shelter at the base of the mountain because it may be full or possibly homeless camping out there according to FarOut comments.

Either ended up not being true and we meet a kind hiker named Ian. He was glad to see that someone showed up for the night as he was the only one there at the time. We had rolled in just as it was getting dark and he kindly chattered with our larger group.

Ian was dropped off my his wife a few days ago and plans on hiking sobo to the Whites. We’ll probably cross paths tomorrow. We’ve already talked about a campsite ~12 miles away with supposedly good service.

Ended up hiking 19.6 miles today, definitely tried and beat. Good night.