Day 138 – Katahdin Stream Camground to Katahdin and back

I got out of the shelter without waking Zach. I hit the trail by 5:20. It was just light enough that I could walk without my headlamp, but cold so I wore my thermal undershirt and rain jacket and wool hat to stay warm.

The trail went up the campground road for a quarter mile, then followed Katahdin stream for a long time. It got progressively less well maintained – the further from a road, the harder it is to bring in materials. After an hour I was hot enough to strip to my shirt, and the path was much steeper.

The serious challenges started about 90 minutes in, when there were several vertical climbs that required challenging hand holds, using a knee (never a good thing to do when rock climbing), or grabbing metal rods that had been cemented into the rock. Again and again I’d look at a section and think “How am I going to get up that” but after a bit of working around it, I managed.

The steep section was only about 15 minutes long but there were several quite tricky maneuvers in it, and I worried about getting back down.

The trail then leveled out somewhat on what they call Katahdin Table, and you could see up to the general area of the peak, though not the peak itself. The Table is a sloped field with lots of blueberries and other alpine plants growing, and tons of small rocks and a few boulders.

The path was bounded by white string for a big chunk of the way to keep hikers out of the fragile alpine habitat.

The climb got steeper again as I left the table, and that’s where I ran into Pooch and Echo as they came down. They were both wearing heavy puffies. They said they had spent five hours up there, all by themselves, and seen an amazing sunrise. They looked awe-struck. Pooch showed me a photo of the sunrise. Somehow, photos of sunrises and sunsets never look anywhere near as good as the real thing, but I could tell it had been a good one. I wouldn’t have wanted to be climbing those tricky sections in the dark, but they had managed.

We said goodbye and they went on down while I went up. A half dozen younger people passed me between the table and the peak (no one before that – probably because I started so early).

There were about 10 people on the peak when I arrived. One group of five young men was particularly friendly. They offered to take my photo so I handed one of them my phone, and climbed the wooden stand with the Katahdin sign that is a few feet from the actual peak. After the photos were done we started talking and somehow it came out that I was doing a thru hike. They were amazed, as if they hadn’t heard of a thru hike. I told them my trail name was Batman, and they suddenly all wanted trail names. One of them pointed to a raven (or more likely a crow) who was hopping about nearby, and said “My trail name is Raven”. I explained that it’s bad form to give yourself a trailname., but then I said “Your trail name is Raven” so he could say someone else gave it to him. We chatted for quite a while. Then I noticed one of the five was sitting in a very relaxed position (literally laid back as if he were on a beach chair) while the others were standing. “Your trailname should be Chill” I said to him. All five of them were delighted. We talked about thru hiking, what they did for work (I got through two of the five – both mechanical engineers working in HVAC or similar, before the conversation wandered elsewhere), and what hiking gear they had bought. They were planning a longer trip to the Whites later on.

There were probably over 20 different people there during the time I was at the peak, and I think only two others were thru hikers.

The five were ready to head down – they had come up a different route that involved walking along the ridge towards another peak that from where we were looked marginally higher up, but they said the same was true when they looked at Katahdin peak (officially called Baxter Peak) from that other peak. We said our goodbyes and they headed east and I headed west.

Fairly early on in the descent I ran into Fresh and Trillian, Ratman and Joker right behind them. Since we didn’t expect to see each other again we said our goodbyes, then on everyone went.

There was some question as to whether to go back down the way I came, or take a different route. Partway down Katahdin table the trail forks – one way goes to Abol Campground and the other is the Katahdin Stream way I took up. Some people said Abol was easier going down, but required walking or hitching from Abol Campground back to Katahdin Stream, which was a pretty long way. At first I was thinking of doing Abol because I was nervous about the descent, but eventually I decided to skip the long walk or hitchhike, and take my chances on the descent.

As it turns out, going down those tricky parts was easier than going up. It just meant on each tricky part, spending a bit of time thinking about the process, and knowing what was down below, because you couldn’t always see your footholds, you had to feel for them. The descent was pretty fast. I ate some lunch going down, and the rest at the campground before filling up one last time on filtered water, then hopping in the car to drive home.

Within five minutes of starting my drive I ran into Ratman and Joker walking back from Abol Campground to Katahdin Stream. They hadn’t been successful getting a ride (or maybe they hadn’t even tried to hitch hike). I turned around and gave them a lift back and we said good bye again.

So that was it. The drive out to a paved road was long and dusty, but I was on my way home.

I ate at the same Mexican restaurant I had eaten at the evening before my flight back from Bangor after I broke my ribs – it turned out it was only a mile off my route. I drove until 11pm and stayed at a cheap hotel outside Sherbrooke QC. The goal was to visit my son Wolf in Montreal the following day for brunch.

So that’s it – I finished the AT! 138 days of hiking (really 134, since 4 days in the middle were my trip to Connellsville PA to visit my wife), tons of other hikers met, lots of friendly rides, friendly townsfolk, amazing views, many Knorr sides gulped down, about 500 wraps and 500 granola bars…. My knees hurt a bit in the end, but my ribs hurt a lot less than they did four weeks ago when I fell. I can cough and sneeze no problem now!

Thru hikers I had met in previous years had told me the hike changed who they were. I’m not sure if that’s true for me, but I do feel more relaxed, more inclined to assume the best in others. That’s partly because in an environment like the AT you have something instantly in common with everyone else on the trail – you’re hiking it. And also, everyone is doing something they really want to do. So people are naturally curious and open. And it’s partly because Americans are so damn friendly. But it’s also because I had six months off to pursue a dream, and I think that in spite of the 11-13 hours of hiking every day, I did wind up mentally more relaxed.

We’ll have to see how long I can keep that relaxed mode up after I go back to work, a mere 8 days after finishing!