A somewhat rare view of my 2 person camp setup, with TK gone I had a whirlwind of gear juggling, first mailing my solo kit home, and then within a couple weeks having to coordinate to get my solo kit back. Also pictured, the wonderful Mica lake in the early morning, firmly in the halo of the morning’s alpenglow.

Ready to go the morning after staying at an abandoned cabin, which used to serve a tungsten mine in the Pasayten wilderness. Shared it with a couple who had thru-hiked the PNT the previous year, and with Elmo an older thru-hiker who had been accompanying me for a few days, till I turned south.

Another shot of my pack at a beach, but no snow this time and the weather was wonderful here. Took a couple hours off from hiking to go swimming and watch people zip around the far side of the lake on their motor boats. Blue pack’s time may be running dry, and I may have even replaced it by the time this goes up, getting lots of holes in the exterior pockets and the webbing of the harness if abrading apart, its hard to complain too much though, I’ve carried it almost 5000 miles at this point.

Having just woken up on Abercrombie Mountain for sunrise, a year out to the day from my Katahdin summit under similar circumstances. (Although I didn’t camp on top of Katahdin, don’t worry all you Baxter State park reps who scour the internet. I just climbed up under cover of darkness.) Abercrombie used to have a lookout tower on it and most of the wood components of this otherwise stone bivvy were probably salvaged from it. Mostly what’s left are the concrete footings and a little bit of twisted metal. The stones were all really flat, so it was actually super comfortable to stay in there, although I’m well insulated from ground conditions by my sleeping pad.