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By this time, it was 2:00pm and we needed to leave shortly if we wanted to reach our car at a reasonable hour. I half joked that we should take the King Ravine Trail back to the car, but was given a look by my wife that could not be misconstrued as anything but a NO WAY! We encountered a number of groups as we descended Mount Adams heading to the Airline trail and meet several interesting characters. Two young lads were heading to Maine having come from Georgia. I didn't have the heart to tell them that they were no longer on the Appalachian Trail and just assumed that they would eventually figure it out when they stopped at the hut. My favorite encounter however was the male and female team who passed us going down Airline. He was carrying a full pack with all their provisions while she sashayed behind him carried nothing. "She's not carrying much, is she" my wife said with a slight tone of displeasure since my wife was carrying all her own supplies.  "As far as he is concerned" I chimed in with a mischievous smirk "she is carrying the most important items of all, namely her perky breasts." 'You noticed that did you?" my wife said with a playful tone of admonishment. In my defense however, if all you are going to wear is a sports bra while hiking, people (males) are going to look. It's genetic!!

Several other groups passed us as we slowly descended Airline heading towards our car and the end of a long day. Most of these groups only did Madison or Adams so they were still able to hike with a steady gait while we were slowly exhausting what energy reserves we had left. I don't mean to minimize their achievements by suggesting that only hiking up Madison or Adams was somehow less of a challenge. It's just that I'm 47 and my wife is 44, so for us to have hiked the loop and still been able to walk that late in the day gave us a real sense of accomplishment. Besides, most of the groups that passed us were in their twenties and thirties and oblivious to the ravages of age. I even commented to one husband and wife team we chatted with during one of our breaks that this loop looked great on paper, but in reality took more stamina than we thought. I'm just glad we decided to do the hike this particular weekend, for we were planning to do the loop two days before our scheduled trip to the Bonds in the Pemi wilderness. Two days later when my thighs were still sore I realized just how unrealistic doing these two hikes in such close proximity would have been.

We continued our slow but methodical pace towards our car and salvation. We were running low on water having drunk nearly ten quarters since 8:20am when we started this Bataan death march. We were both beginning to long for our car and eventually our soft beds as we discussed what to make for dinner that night. We were too tired to go out to eat, so we decided to just throw some dead piece of meat on the grill and be done with it. At 6:00pm we emerge from the forest and collapsed in our car before heading back to the house.

The next morning we hobbled around the house licking our wounds before heading back to Connecticut. Besides the sore thighs we both had a bad case of sunburned even though we used an ample amount of sunscreen. In retrospect, as tired as we were after the hike, we have to say that it was by far one of the most awesome hikes we have done in a while. From what we hear, the Bonds are going to be just as spectacular. We cannot wait!

Submitted by Richard Kipphut
Cheshire, CT
Wed, 15 Aug 2001