[at-l] rescue in Mahoosuc Notch on Wednesday

[Tom McGinnis]

--- On Fri, 7/17/09, rockdancer97 at comcast.net <rockdancer97 at comcast.net> wrote:

> 1997 Rhymin' Worm had a very close call in the notch. I
> don't remember if I was with him or just heard his story
> but the impact of the story is what remains. Up until that
> point a lot of thruhikers were feeling pretty confident
> about reaching Katahdin, after all we'd been through a
> lot & survived. It struck me that my hike could be over
> in a quick flash, right up until the last moments when I
> reached the summit of K. --RockDancer

### In '79, I tripped on some short stretch of flat ground in the notch, and while I didn't fall, my hiking stick (a wonderfully light bamboo fishing pole bottom, with 1900? miles from Springer on it) went pirouetting through the air, and then disappeared VOOP! right down a narrow little hole. I looked in there, couldn't even see the bottom, and just thought "Well, that's it! Gone!"

I'd already had one brush with losing it, just two days back in Gorham, when I left it in the back of an AMC van that had dropped me off, and drove off a tad too quick. On a lark, I hitched back to Pinkham and inquired about it, and lo!, they had it in lost&found!!! Their comment was "Oh, we know how you hikers feel about these things...." Yowie. POINTS TO THE AMC on that one, for sure.

But there I am, in the bowels of Mahoosuc Notch, with not even a splinter of my stick showing from my squatting look down the hole. DANG. So I leaned up, turned northbound, and started off.

And got about 30 feet.

The pack came off, I took another drink, I peed (so what sort of battle am I girding my loins for???), and then I started down the hole.

It was rough -- sharp on my bare back and chest and then knees and thighs -- until I found myself completely in the hole, hanging upside down by the toes of my boots, reaching down as far as I could to the one slight, glowing circle that I guessed to be the top end of the bamboo floating in the subterranean gloom. My fingertips touched it. "There it is!" And my joy -- my *satisfaction* -- was immediately displaced by a sideways image of myself hanging impossibly upside-down in this hole, one rolled pebble away from slipping completely in, totally vertical, unable to turn, and totally screwed. Totally, totally, *totally* screwed.

I thought quickly if there were anyone in back of me that could save me. But I was not only moving too fast, but knew that no one had left Gorham with me in the down pour that was my Mahoosuc welcome. Could I count on anyone coming south? Yeah, right. (Errr, no.)

I concluded (in the third person, as is the wont of all who spend wayyyy too much time with their own thoughts), "Slip, my boy, and you are a dead man. They will find your backpack and wonder. They'll find your bootsoles staring up at them (should they look in a *hole*), and find your molding, stinking remains, with the bloodied finger tips and crazed, bug-eyed hung-upside-down look on the face." I concluded I'd better not slip.

...

Yes, I still have that stick.
And yes, per RockDancer's observation, we all started walking carefully, the closer we got to Katahdin.

There was even another cautious tale to be told. A gal named Kathy? lost her footing at that marvelous lake with the clear shot to Katahdin from the lake's north shore. She/they had had a marvelous hike (I'd never even met them, but their register entries were a joy to read and I was maybe now a week behind them), and while at the leanto for the night, excited in the proximity to Katahdin and all, she went to the lake for water. She slipped on a rock, fell to one knee, and broke her patella (an incredibly painful event)... Right there within view of The Big K. An enduro bike happened to be bopping by on the old logging trails, and she was taken 20-30 miles out to a road (can you imagine how painful that would be???) and then taken by ambulance to where a helicopter would pick her up for transport to (I do not remember). The gal and her friends were heartbroken at the loss of her companionship... a "perfect hike" ended, and painfully, so close to the end.

So for the last few miles, we were ALL on edge. Yowie.

sloetoe
(another memory-dump moment)