Western Maine Mini Volume Camp

The Maine adventure weekend began when Janey and Gracie rolled into Tara's house mid-day on Saturday after busy weeks at work and promptly climbed into her bed and fell asleep. Two hours later they were all on the road to Sugarloaf. The day was quickly slipping away but we had a tough OD moosehoofing interval workout planned and hoped to watch the sunset from the top of Sugarloaf. In the car we heard flash-flood and severe thunderstorm warnings for the area, but figured we'd go anyways (ended up to be a beautiful evening and starry night!).

 (fueling up in the car)

They were some gnarly L3 (for t) and L4 (for j&g) intervals, which, to our delight, ended with abundant wild strawberries all over the mountain. The cool-down included foraging for berries and a lot of sitting down and eating.

killin' it

score!

At 9 pm we arrived back at the cabin and made a delicious dinner. Condor and NateDog arrived later on and we caught up briefly and went to bed. The big adventure began on Sunday AM. Us ladies planned the route, not paying much attention to adding up mileage and paying a LOT of attention to what looked awesome. After dropping a car off at a trailhead (our bailout point... which we ended up utilizing), we took of on a 5mi uphill dirt road run on the carriage rd in order to connect to the AT. Handfulls of wild raspberries and blackberries later, we ascended Little Bigelow and West and Avery Peaks. The run hike was great, with many'a false peak, many laughs, stories from abroad, streams, and Deb Regan's granola baggies. We also ate an entire jar of peanut butter in less than 24 hours. AND speaking of food there were wild blueberries ALL over! After one wrong turn and 21.5 miles of running/hiking, we stumbled into the parking lot... thrilled to be finished with out just over 7hr workout.

 mapping

 tara and gracie snacking on gummyworms+apples

 we avoided these stormclouds!

 nate dog

After the hike we took cold swims in Carrabassett stream and ate massive chunks of watermelon. We were happy to be done, almost as happy as we were to learn that Jane had water purification drops when Nate, Tara and Condor ran out of water with 2hrs to go. Everyone dunked in the river except Natedog. 

Teamwork came into play with the cooking of dinner- huge salad, chicken curry, Jane's special tuna thing, bed time cereals, and tea. We all passed out early. Natedog and Condor slipped out early, Gracey and Janer did a rainy TRX strength workout and trail run, and Tara stayed in and drank tea.

 

Lots of happy, tired, lots of miles, good eats, friends, tea, berries, tuna, hours, pics of jane eating, lots of peanut butter, granola, sweat, sore feet. Not enough, never enough, Bobcats. Can't wait to be together again!       ---Gracie Janer and Tara