From the summit of Crocker to highway 27 is about 7.7 kilometres (4.8 miles) along the Appalachian Trail - less than the indicated 8.3 kilometres (5.2 miles) on the sign, but still a long way to go after having already come so far. We could see on the topo that the ridge of the Crockers slowly descended as it ran north, with a few bumps along the way. We were tired of bumps and of the trail going over them, and we hoped fervently that the A.T.'s designers had done a good job charting a course for the trail that traversed around these bumps instead of going over them (the section of topo we had for this area did not show the line of the A.T. on it).

We were, pleasantly, in luck: the trail at first descended steeply off of Crocker, then started a very judicious course that combined a gently-descending grade with traverses around all but the very smallest of bumps along the ridge. The trail quality varied quite a bit, from typical rocky and rough sections to smooth sections that were slabby or grassy. Once the northern end of the ridge was reached, the trail dropped off sharply and descended down in a few curving switchbacks to highway 27, where our second day's journey ended. It had been another solid day: over 22km of distance and over 4,000 feet of gain, and it was nice to be done.

I had invited several friends on this outing, but for various reasons, all of them couldn't make it. In retrospect, this was probably a fortuitous thing: this backpack was harder than I expected it to be, and things may not have gone so well if we'd had people along who were not as keen as I was to bag six 4000-footers over a distance of fifty kilometres in two days. And so, it all turned out well: I didn't make any new enemies, hiked a hard but beautiful and rewarding section of the A.T., and bagged six more of my NE 111er peaks!

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