We actually didn't get rained on for the first couple of miles. We crossed our first non-bridged stream crossing. Maine has the "wildest" trail on the AT. The mountains generally do not have switchbacks, trails are not "groomed" and the majority of stream and river crossings are "au naturel" as in, they do not have bridges. Hikers have to get across these rivers by crossing in the water, or fording, them. Many of the crossings are over small streams, but there are also some sizeable rivers which must be crossed. Some of these can be dangerous to cross in high water, but in low water it may be possible to pick a route across using rocks and logs to traverse. Our fords today were mild compared to many of the fords we will have to make, but I was still nervous about them. It has been raining hard for several days, and I knew I'd probably be getting wet.
The first crossing of the stream was actually dry, but pretty unstable. There was a log jam of fallen trees, about the size of my wrist, caught up on a couple of large rocks in midstream. Not an official bridge, but, if it held, at least a way to stay dry as I crossed. Lucky for me, it did!The next crossing, to get us back off the island was a different matter. It had started raining hard shortly before the river, and it was cold too. The river water was ice cold. We watched two other hikers crossing as we arrived at the near bank. They were teenage boys, and the older had already crossed once with his pack and returned to the bank to collect his brother's backpack so the younger boy could cross unencumbered. He was shivering hard and they began crossing immediately before he chilled too much. The water was waist high on both boys until almost on the other bank when it suddenly reached mid chest. That got me a little worried.
Rather than cross immediatley, I decided to look upstream a little to see if there was an easier crossing. I walked maybe 1/10th of a mile upstream, seeing several places where you could probably get most of the way across on rocks, but nothing that would get me all the way. As the distance from the trail crossing increased, I also realised I would have difficulty getting back to it on the opposite bank, which was steep and heavily wooded. Returning to the trail crossing I wondered if maybe there was an easier possibility just downstream. Granted it was closer to where this stream joined an even larger river, however it looked like there may be a possible crossing, not dry but it looked shallower, and seemed to avoid the very deep hole near the opposite bank. That assumption turned out to be correct. I crossed safely, with the water between knee and thigh level, and only one tricky spot around some rocks and onto some deadfall at the opposite bank.
Later in the day we arrived at our last bastion of "civilization" for a while, the Abol Bridge campsite. It's not much to write about, but there is a small general store and coin operated hot showers. Arriving and setting up camp in pouring rain, nothing felt so good as 10 minutes worth of hot shower!
We never saw the two young boys again today, or any other hikers, but late this afternoon three other southbound (SOBO) AT hikers that we had met yesterday arrived: Chris, Wes and Bob.
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