Saturday 14 July 2001. The reason we took a site for two nights was that we planned to do the Lake Durant to Long Lake section as a day trip without the heavy packs. The start was 8:33 am and the car was touched at 3:21 pm, six hours 48 minutes for 15.5 miles. This was the only day with anything approaching a sustained climb and we made it a fairly easy day by using daypacks.

Sunday 15 July 2001. Another long day, and with fairly heavy packs. We covered 15.8 miles in 7:02 going from the Long Lake trailhead on Tarbell Road to the Seward lean-to on the Cold River. We started rather late at 10:08 am and finished with plenty of daylight left at 5:10 pm.

Monday 16 July 2001. Because we had extended yesterday we could push today's destination farther along and make for a fairly easy last day. We left the Seward lean-to at 9:34 am and got to Moose Pond a few minutes after 4 pm. The day was extended because we lost confidence in the trail markers near Duck Hole and doubled back to the junction where the horse trail splits off to ford the Cold River (9/10 of a mile from Duck Hole). After consulting the map, guide, and trail sign we decided we had been on the right trail in the first place. I'd estimate that this added 1.2 miles to the trip but it isn't shown in the day's accounting. The four miles from Duck Hole to Moose Pond is easily the worst part of the whole trip and I'm glad we got it out of the way.

Tuesday 17 July 2001. The last day covered 9.3 miles with the last 1.2 miles along Averyville Road. We started away from Moose Pond at 8:41 and touched the sign post at 1:09 pm. The 4 hours 28 minutes included dumping our packs and relaxing a few minutes before walking the road section.

Before starting the hike we set up one basic ground rule - we had to walk every step of the trail. We didn't say we had to carry everything, we didn't say we couldn't stop at convenient roadside locations. By walking some part of the trail on 11 consecutive days, I'm satisfied that we hiked the trail end-to-end. The elapsed time from start sign (actually a tenth or two before the sign - at the bridge) to the finish sign was 10 days 2 hours 18 minutes. The estimated total hours walking (as defined above) was 63 hours 25 minutes. That's an average of 5 hours 45.9 minutes per day (11 day total) and with 133.15 miles covered an