START TIME: 5:15 AM 
END TIME: 9:55 PM
Another grueling day. Jen slept an extra hour last night and was feeling much more rested when she woke up, but the shin splint in her left leg was bothering her all day. When I saw her in the late morning after she’d hiked 18 miles, she said, “It hurts on the uphills and the flats, but it’s excruciating on the downhills.” She hiked 10 miles with Melissa in the early afternoon and then another 10 with Warren into Grafton Notch. She got in later than expected last night and she was pretty drained emotionally and physically.
While she was icing down her shin and eating gobs of Moosetracks ice cream, she said this was her most painful injury ever, more painful than the badly sprained ankle on her 2008 AT hike, which was the size of a softball for 5-6 days, and the twisted knee on her 2007 Long Trail hike, when she walked 40+ miles through the pain for over two days. She’s the toughest person I know and it’s really hard to see her hurting so much—especially since I can’t be out there on the trail with her—but Melissa has really stepped it up by hiking big miles with her. Warren continues to come through in a variety of ways, like finding roads and trails that no one knew existed, hiking in and out as much as possible, and giving lots of advice on how to handle the injury, so we keep fighting the good fight.
ANIMAL SIGHTINGS: I saw the rump of a young black bear as it ran down a dirt road near Andover, Maine, in the mid-morning, and Jen saw another young moose and got charged a second time by another angry momma grouse.