Breeze and I had been planning for a few weeks to go camping over the summer, just because it was something to do. And as I sat in the mail room during the last few weeks of school, bored, a random idea popped into my head. And without really thinking about it, I texted Breeze
"Do you want to climb Katahdin this summer?"
And within minutes I received a "It's done."
And that was it. That was the thought process, or lack thereof. Never mind that neither of us has ever done anything close to climbing a mountain, that we're not particularly athletic and that one of my mantras I live by at is "exercise is for pansies." By the time we realized that Katahdin was a real mountain, a challenging mountain, we'd already told people and it was too late to back down.
So, we made our reservations, bought out hiking boots (you should have seen the look on the salesgirls face during this exchange: "Hi. We're going to climb a mountain." "Okay, when." "In a week..." "Oookay... what mountain." "*pause* Katahdin..."), and drove 3 and a half hours to the secluded Baxter State Park in the lovely town on R10 T1 or something ridiculous like that.
We arrived at Baxter, set up our tent and were downright giddy. We were going to climb a mountain! It wouldn't be as bad as they said, after all, we were taking the shortest trail up! The first night we tried to hike out to Katahdin Stream Falls, but the rain sent us back to our tent and we both realized too late that wearing our only sweatshirts in the rain on the first night was a stupid idea.
We spent the rest of the evening in the tent, reading Lost on a Mountain in Maine together (which led to some fun Donn Fendler jokes the next day, especially about how great it would b if we found his lost dungarees) and trying to ignore the fact that the weather did not look good for the following day. We set an alarm for seven am the next morning, hoping to get an early start so we could take our time climbing the mountain.
Of course, when we awoke the next morning, all we heard outside the tent was rain. Gross, and not safe. So we rolled over, and went to sleep until 10:30ish. Now the rain seemed to have ceased, leaving the air only a little misty. We decided we couldn't leave without at least attempting to defeat Katahdin, so on went our boots, and off we went.
The beginning of the trail was absolutely beautiful. We'd chosen the Abol Trail on someone else's recommendation and we were sure we could do it. Breeze mentioned something about her shoes being a little uncomfortable pretty early on, but I didn't think much of it until later. As we continued in, the trail started getting steeper and instead of being on a nice path, we started walking over bigger and bigger rocks. While a little annoying, this still wasn't very difficult. Soon however, the dirt was gone completely and we were just on rocks and scree. We were constantly slipping and everything was still wet. Soon the rocks turned into boulders and we were climbing up the Abol Slide, the same route Thoreau took when he climbed Katahdin. Here, the path became very challenging. Fog kept rolling in (which honestly, after reading about Donn Fendler in Lost on Mountain, scared the crap out of me) and it was sometimes hard to see where the next paint spot marking the trail was. I had to use muscles I didn't even know I had to pull myself on to rocks. If these had been rigid rocks, this wouldn't have been such a problem, but they were smooth and slippery and the trail was incredibly steep. The fog was thick enough that would couldn't see the top or the bottom of the mountain. We knew we couldn't climb back down the slide without risking slipping and hurting ourselves so our only option was to keep pressing forward. At times Breeze had to give me a leg up to get me on top of the boulders, they were so big and other times other boulders would be overhanging the ones we were pulling ourselves on to, causing us to almost hit our heads. By this point, I think Breeze and I basically just kept repeating "Are you kidding me?" every time we looked at the next boulder.
After about four hours though, we made it to the plateau (or as I kept calling it, the tableau). We were suddenly standing on practically flat ground. We were sore and I knew we shouldn't push on to the peak, because it would take us longer than our set turn around time and the last thing I wanted to do was get stuck on the mountain at night. Although, I suppose that was the second to last thing I wanted to do because we did push on so I guess the last thing I wanted to do was not make it to the top.
Anyway, onward we pushed, past Thoreau Spring, towards Baxter Peak. Around here we ran into a man who'd been coming to Katahdin for 20 years and had never been able to climb the Abol trail because the weather was never good enough. He was going to do it today, he said, but he knew better. Too bad we didn't. We asked what the easiest trail to climb down was and he said the Hunt Trail, but that it would leave us about two miles away from our campsite. Fine. We didn't care, we'd rather walk an extra two miles (more than that actually, the Hunt Trail is about longer than the Abol Trail.) than climb back down the slippery boulders.
We were less than a mile a way when Breeze told me she couldn't keep going. Her shoes were murdering her feet, every step killed. I looked at her and found myself asking if she minded if I could go on alone. The peak was only about another ten minutes away, the terrain was easy and if it wasn't foggy she could have seen me. Plus there were plenty of people around in case something happened. Breeze was fine with sitting and waiting, so as she slid off her shoes to re-bandage her feet, I pushed onward. I kept reminding myself how much I wanted to do this, and tried not to think about the fact that after I reached Baxter Peak, I had to climb five miles back down. Finally, I could see the peak in the distance and got kind of giddy. I reached the peak with a man from the army right on my heels. He took my picture for me and I headed back down. Breeze had come closer to where she could actually see the peak but now we were both faced with descending the mountain.
We booked it man. I mean, seriously. We were so tired, we just wanted off. Soon we found ourselves behind two men with their children. As we climbed down the boulders, I mentioned that we'd climbed up Abol and now had a two mile walk back to our campsite. Not a problem, they said. They could give us a ride back to our tent. Perfect, I immediately accepted the offer. We passed them and soon found ourselves scurrying along a ridge with probably about ten to fifteen feet on each side and then a drop in to the fog. The white trail markers seemed to lead off the edge of a cliff and it wasn't until you reached one that you could see the next one, prompting more groans of "Are you kidding me? Seriously." Still, it was so much easier compared to the Abol Trail. Soon we reached the treeline and were racing the sun trying not to be caught in the woods at night. The trail seemed endless. Finally we reached Katahdin Stream Falls where we'd tried to get to the day before. Only about a mile more. We were practically running, more like falling forward and continuously catching ourselves. We were exhausted and just wanted to sleep. After what seemed like forever, we finally reached the end of the trail. We sat and waited for the people we'd run into and it was so nice to sit in their car.
We learned that the two men were climbing the highest peaks in each state. They'd done twenty so far, all the ones out west, besides McKinley. And Katahdin, we were told, had been a challenge, a definite surprise. And they took the easy trail, was all I could think.
They dropped us off at our tent and we laid down and pretty much refused to move until the next morning, when I was more sore than I'd been in my entire life. My legs were bruised from pulling myself on the rocks and crawling around on boulders. But hey, we did it. We climbed Katahdin. And you know, I would do it again. Not the Abol Slide though, I don't think I ever want to do that again... at least I don't think so...
Photos of our adventures should be able to be seen here:
My Katahdin Photos
If that doesn't work, please comment and let me know.
