What a day! My shoes were still soaked with mud from the day before. Always fun putting on wet socks and shoes (sarcasm intended). Today was set to be a very short 5.1 official AT miles because I didn’t know what to expect from Mahoosuc Notch or Mahoosuc Arm. Sparkle and I hiked it all close together with me leading so I could help find the best path through the jungle gym of boulders and try to find the best way through that wouldn’t set off her fear of falling. There were only a few deep pits that we had to traverse over and gave some difficulty but all in all, it was better than she expected and I just loved it. Also there were a few tunnels that had us taking our packs off to push forward and climb after them. I timed it to see how long it took us to get through the 1 mile of Boulder hopping and it came out to 2 hours and 19 minutes. I feel like I could have done it myself in 1 hour and 30 minutes but guess I’ll never know. I’m not going back to do it again. I was in no rush. We had all day since we always get up at 5am to pack up and go. After the notch was Mahoosuc Arm. Honestly, it wasn’t as bad as we were expecting. Was it steep? You bet it was! We had all day to do it so we just took it one step at a time and traversed the almost straight up climb along smooth rock using tree roots as stepping ladders. The view from the top was well worth it and then we had to deal with more mud. The 5.1 mile hike today took us 7 hrs 5 minutes to complete and arrive at Speck Pond Shelter. Oh , and it’s COLD up here! The forecasted lows tonight up at the summit, which we’re close to, is upper 20s to low 30s. Been a while since I had to sleep with my filter. I’ll be doing so tonight just in case. Never let a water filter freeze! Tomorrow will be in the low 40s up here but should get a little warmer as we hike lower to Grafton Notch. Right now, I’m at an elevation of 3,419 feet. First thing in the morning, I’ll be climbing Old Speck, Maine’s third highest mountain at an elevation of 4,170 feet. The hike down to Grafton Notch will take us to elevation 1,495 feet so it should warm up as we descend. Sparkle will get to meet my husband, Jason. He’s meeting us there and is jokingly calling himself my coke dealer because I asked him to bring me a Cherry Coke and a regular Coke for Sparkle. He gets to be a trail angel. LOL!