On August 4th I married the light of my life, Elijah, and the next day we hit the road in a rental car. We were headed to Maine—we dropped our rental car off in Bangor, and then took a bus to Medway. From Medway, we got a shuttle to the AT Hostel & Outfitters in Millinocket, Maine, where we would spend the night before we heading to Baxter State Park the next morning.
August 8th was our Katahdin summit day, and the beginning of our long walk to Georgia on the Appalachian Trail. It’s now the end of week 7 of our journey, and we’ve been holed up in Rutland, Vermont for a few days as I recover from a sinus infection. I thought I’d take some of this downtime to reflect on the past two months so far.
Once we got dropped off at Katahdin Stream Campground, Elijah and I each selected a loaner daypack to use for the scrambly hike up to the northern terminus. The ranger building near the trailhead had a pile of different styles and colors of packs to choose from. I picked a blue pack and Elijah chose a spunky orange Hawaiian printed jansport. We left our hulking backpacks at the designated lean-to, strung up our food at the bear hang, and began our hike on the Hunt Trail, the official route of the AT up Katahdin.
The way to the top of Katahdin was a long, drawn out uphill, with plenty of lowkey bouldering involved. It was a sunny day and once we cleared treeline we got expansive views of the surrounding woods—peaks interspersed with backcountry lakes. We passed so many northbounders on their final day of their journeys. As we clambered up, beneath a blue sky, it was inspiring to come across thru-hikers making their way back down the hunt trail, ecstatic or just content after ending their 2,200-mile long treks.
The alpine vegetation reminded me of what I’d recently seen in Alaska, on my last backpacking trip before this thru-hike attempt. I love the plants of high-altitude, rocky provenance, plants that have evolved to thrive under the reign of sun, wind, and snow. The trail leveled out at the “tablelands” then began its last climb up to the peak.
Up at the top, we took in the scenery: a cataclysm of boulders, strewn upon the mountainsides. I saw the silhouettes of distant hikers attempting “the knife’s edge,” a precarious trail that also terminates at the peak. Hawks of some sort swooped overhead, a pond down in the valley below glittered in the afternoon sun.
We stayed a while, savoring the start of a long walk ahead of us. Then we headed back down to the tablelands, where we chose to take the Abol Trail to make a loop out of the day. It was shorter in distance, but much steeper in tread. It took a lot of patience to manage our footing on the rocky trail—loose pebbles and dust made the path slippery. Perhaps returning on the hunt trail would have been a better idea. But we popped out at Abol Campground, where we loaded up on water—the descent took so long that we’d run out a couple hours beforehand.
Abol campground was 2 miles down the gravel road from where our campsite at Katahdin Stream was. We set off, hoping to catch a ride with someone headed that way. A red sedan passed me with my thumb stuck out. Noticing the Quebec plate, I wondered aloud to Elijah if hitchhiking just wasn’t a part of Canadian culture. A minute later, the car came back around, and the driver asked if we wanted a ride! He apologized for driving past us, explaining that it took a bit for him to realize what we were doing. Thus went the first hitch of the thru-hike, from three Montreal friends: two Bens & a Michael, who’d come to Baxter to climb. The driver (I forget if he was a Ben or a Michael) actually wore a Miguel’s T-shirt, and we got to gush about how much the Red River Gorge meant to us Kentuckians.
It turns out the Canadians were staying at Katahdin Stream Campground too. We disembarked from their sedan, and when we said good-night, dusk had already settled in the mountains. I hadn’t expected Day 1 to have dragged on for so long. We strung up our hammocks & ate a pasta dinner. As I gathered water I spotted a fat toad by the stream. And the moon, full or damn well near, was out & sending its light down into the backwoods of Maine.
The next day we planned to hike out of Baxter State Park, over Abol Bridge, and get a few miles into the Hundred Mile Wilderness.
As we were leaving the campground, we found Cory, the kind ranger that helped register us before we started up the Hunt Trail. He asked us to be on the lookout for smoke from a potential wildfire that someone had called in. Anything for you, Cory.
No smoke was spotted, and after winding past Baxter’s many ponds and waterfalls, the trail followed alongside the Penobscot River all the way out to the border of Baxter SP. Near the park’s edge is a campground store at Abol Bridge. There we got ice cream & tried a whoopie pie, which seems to be a signature baked good of the state of Maine.
At the campground store, a Baxter SP ranger came around and doled out information to the various northbounders clumped at the picnic tables and in the shade. He walked over to me & Elijah and we explained that we were heading south. So he asked us if we had any questions about the hundred mile wilderness. I replied yeah, but at this point I think it’s between me and God.
Elijah and I crossed the bridge over the Penobscot River and got a good look at Katahdin, 15 miles away. We turned away, and headed back into the woods. It sprinkled a tad on our few miles to get to Hurd Brook. We found a cadre of Boy Scouts set up around the shelter, so we crossed the brook and found ourselves a little patch of tamped earth to call home for our first night in the hundred mile wilderness.
More on that lovely little section later!
-Dan
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