Day’s highlight: Rainbow Ledges

Day’s lowlight: walking the edge of Rainbow lake for miles before I could jump in.

Each night I sleep more out here. I imagine my muscles knitting layers of new strong as I slumber. It’s a nice dream…I look forward to the day when I jaunt up the rocks and roots instead of heavily trod and plod. 

Two rounds of coffee for me this morning. Several hikers take off, and I stretch and dawdle….with short days every task can be stretched out. There is no need to hurry or worry here. 

When I do start hiking, it’s uphill. Up up and away to Rainbow Ledges. Have I mentioned the rock is mostly granite here? Giant slabs of the stuff. In fact, I’m walking thise giant slabs as trail on Rainbow Ledges. The trail is actually just the absence of moss and flowers….I’m surrounded by green mosses, yellow and fuchsia flowers, and trees that let up enough for another view back to Katadhin. 

Alright, alright!

Break time.

I meet the 17 year old (the one mentioned yesterday) at the top and we both take off packs and shoes for the first sweat-free moment we’ve had all morning. 

It’s sunny today…but the last weather news I had was rain. I looked and looked, but it was only blue sky with wisps of cloud. No rain in sight.

It was 5.2 brutal miles to swimming after that, brutal because we were so close to the lake most of the time. I pictured diving beneath the chilled yet swimable surface of the water where all the dirt and sweat would flow away. Great lengths of time were spent envisioning the swim.

When I finally rolled up, 17 was just in front of me. We plopped down and then I had my swim. In reality, it was a quick dive into the deep, and I was out soon after. Cold! 

It was amazing. 

Lunch.

I had a lake day after that. I only hiked a few more miles to a small dam, and set up my shelter with a view of…wait for it….Katadhin. 

An early afternoon meant naping, podcast listening, reading, and snacking.

Alright, alright. 

The trail unfolded before me, but first, breakfast!

I had already been up a while, drinking my coffee and writing (as I like to do), when I heard Hilary rustling in the next tent. 

We got up and put bags into bags, and those bags into other bags, and into our respective vehicles. My pack was looking bigger….I had 5 days of food to reach Jo Mary Road where my trail angel Ron would be meeting me….more about Ron later.

Hilary scrambled up the rest of the eggs with some homemade pesto. I put it on a bagel with some of the left over French fries from the lobster roll lunch a million days ago. I included a banana to the growing belly before calling it quits.

Way too soon, and we had ourselves packed. I guess it was time to hit the trail.

We see the campground’s helpful park ranger on our way out, and he taks a few photos of us by the AT sign…soon we are hugging out goodbyes.

Thank you for everything H! Best start to an AT Sobo hike ever!

Then, walking.

I walk through dappled green forests, I walk through a soft carpet of bright green moss, and I walk next to lakes and water and rivers. Wow!

The trail was gentle through the rest of Baxter State Park, and I was happy for the soft touch after such a demanding summit day. I breaked next to Little Niagra Falls, and lunched next to Pine Point. There were plenty of opportunities to soak the problem foot (which wasn’t having many problems by the way!)

I rolled out of the park mid-afternoon and up to the Abol Bridge Store for a giant ice cream cone and bug spray. The bugs were out, and having been kind of caviler about them so far, was finding welts all over the place. 

Soon mint chocolate chip was dripping down my chin…I couldn’t keep up with the melt!

I met a father getting ready to say good buy to his 17-year-old son who was going to be hiking the 100-mile wilderness solo to Monson. I reassured him that we look out for each other on the trail, and got excited by the thought that I’d only be seeing backpackers on this section…there were almost no roads, so it was to be a solid backcountry week.

Yes!

The route got considerably rockier and suddenly I recognized the AT. This: rocks, roots, large thigh-busting steps you wern’t sure you could make, and mud.

I’ve never been as strong as I was on the AT, and I was looking forward to that again….if I could make it through the breaking-in-phase.

I came to Hurd Brook Shelter when I was ready to sit down, and then sat down. There was a guy ready to finish his section-hike up with the Katadhin summit in the next day or 2. Oh yeah, and I met Clutch at the lunch break who was finishing his 10-year section hike….so fun!

The evening was filled with stuff you do when camping, and I chatted briefly with some other hikers. 

Sleep!

Will everything be this much harder than I remember? 

The 4,000′ 5-mile trip up Katadhin took us a solid 10 hours to hike up and down…this mountain is made of granite boulders, and this trail makes you climb up and over them like we were ants looking for the honey trail. 

Sometimes we would find help in rebar holds that were drilled into the rock, sometimes the help came from a friend pushing your behind up a ledge, or leaning down to give you a hand and pull you up.

Whew!

On a trail like this you and your fellow hikers are all in this together. You start to make friends- giving little encouragements, laughing with them when their shoe falls apart or they make a funny little sound when preforming their own style of acrobatics to scale the next feature, because this is a full contact hike, and it becomes a community triumph when you all make it to the top and offer to help take each other’s summit photos.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

As expected, I don’t sleep well. It’s probably the heady combination of starting my hike, that extra beer I should have forgone, and the thermarest that I’m convinced has a broken valve. No matter, I’ve been here before…on the CDT I didn’t sleep for the first week and somehow managed to move my body through space and time for over 100 miles. Determination and excitement alone can be a powerful fuel source.

Hilary whips up a tasty spread of steak and egg tortillas (homemade tortillas I might add, how did I get so lucky with this one?) and deep, dark coffee.

We ready our day packs as more and more hikers walk past our campsite to the start of the trail…the first ones having started just after 4am (and folks: start early for this one…the earlier the better!). When we were fed and caffeinated it was go time.

The Hunt Trail can be broken up into three parts: trees, boulders, and summit (all three sections have boulder gauntlets though).

We made good time on the first mile of the trees, and when the stair stepping rocks started going straight up, when the trail turned into a creek bed for a time and the next step required larger and larger steps to proceed, we became much more intentional with each footfall. If you tried to walk and look around at the same time you risked a faceplant, so we kept our eyes on the task in front of us. We started cracking jokes as the sweat soaked our shirts…then we reached the boulders.

One little boy refused to go any further, the exposure and sheer physical challenge of the section was painted on his red tear-streaked little face. As we passed his group by, all astonished at the task in front of us, he did get the courage to continue, and we would leapfrog with that group the rest of the day…he was in much better spirits after that.

When we could look up the rocky ridgeline and see the boulder section stretching up, up, and away into the sky, we sighed and worked on each boulder problem as it came. Each one required a handhold we weren’t sure would hold, and a leg stretch just beyond our comfort level (In 2002 this climb was a blur…the memory of this grand finale of the 2,175-mile hike was the people: Average Joe, Banjo, and Noodle and I were a tramily (trail-family), and I just remember laughing and dancing with them at the top of the mountain).

The day was clear and blue as promised, but there were some puffy clouds casting large shadows across the forest below. We could see lakes, so many lakes! And at one point, rain. We started to get a little worried about what rain would do to these vertical granite surfaces, and sighed with relief when we saw the wind blow the squall away from Katahdin. I would not climb this mountain in the rain.

Our old lady noises were getting getting louder and more frequent with each hour of the ascent, and finally we topped out of the boulder section to see over a mile of clear trail (trail still meaning boulders here…just smaller ones) to the summit.

Ok, but first lunch. We hadn’t had a proper break yet and we were starving. PB and J bagels never tasted so good.

After a quick feeding time we continued on. With eyes on the prize we worked our way to the summit…throngs of our new mountain friends coming and going. We celebrated with the ones already on their way down, and encouraged the ones still stumbling their way up (all of our legs were shaky regardless of the direction and speed with which we hiked).

And finally, the sign.

Now my hike could start! The Appalachian Trail officially starts (or ends) up here, but I’m going to count each mile I hiked today. One gentleman shared his story of finally finishing his 20+ year AT section hike at the sign today, he looked a little choked up….hiking all 2,175 miles can be a herculean effort, especially if you can only hike in the weeks between raising children, taking work vacations, and the march of time that 20 years brings to your body.

I met a few flip floppers: folks who hiked from Georgia to the halfway point at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, and then hopped up to Katadhin to have a more leisurely hike south back to WV, so I’ll probably be seeing quite a lot of them as we head south together.

Hilary and I took our turns posing with the sign, marveled at the gorgeous day we had in front of us, and murmured astonishments at the even more difficult looking descent of the Knifes Edge trail (no thank you!) going down the north side of the mountain. Then we turned around for the 5-hour descent.

I’m going to breeze through the efforts it took to climb, slide, and inch down that boulder section, but it is worth knowing our knees were screaming, and a fair amount of skin was left scraped on the unforgiving granite rock faces.

We had a quick (and relieved) snack break when we reached treeline, but remembered our celebration was premature when the rocks continued to elicit grunts and groans as we hiked around down and through them.

The last mile took forever, and we were convinced there had been a rip in space and time. Surely this trail was longer now….someone or something had stretched out this section into an unbearable last few miles.

Then: chairs, beer, splashing off the sweat and fatigue in the cold water of Katadhin Stream, and snacks.

Oh the bliss of food and drink after a day like that was amazing. I broke out goat cheese and crackers and cut out pieces of cork from the chilled bottle of white wine we had (oops, no corkscrew). Hilary prepped our dinner of fresh salad, corn on the cob, and pork chops, and we merilly passed the evening hours until the comfort of tent and sleeping bag called to us:

“Come rest your weary heads. Close your eyes. Good job my friends.”

Of course there were delays, but what was most important was getting all the way across the country without getting hung up in the throng of summer travelers. I kept texting Hilary:

“I’m boarding the flight!”

“Oh no, some mechanical problem…they say an hour delay?”

“People are getting off the plane now, maybe 3 hours?”

“Oh, boarding again! Lets see if this actually happens!”

And finally, I arrive in Portland, Maine…weary and bleary-eyed, and I find Hilary outside the airport with her handsome new puppy, Dill.

We pile into her car and try to catch up on 10 years of happenings, or is it eight? We can’t exactly remember how long it has been…but I guess that will be the theme for this reunion hike….not quite remembering all the details and pulling out vague recollections of places and faces…or just letting go of all that and being present to the now as it unfolds.

After a fabulous time touring her little pocket of paradise near the coastal fingers of the Maine coast, we eat good food and remember our time as roommates in the other Portland about 17 years ago. We lived in an old craftsman near Hawthorne Ave with a few other roomates: the bartender at a fancy Peruvian restaurant, and a bike mechanic with about 30 bike frames in various states of disrepair in the damp basement.

Hilary and I drank a lot of tall boy PBRs on the porch of that house, and played a lot of pool at our neighborhood hangout, the Goodfoot. Ah, Portland, Oregon in the mid 2000’s was quirky and fun.

After waking up to rain the next day we make our plan: shop for the last few items I needed for the hike, stock up on groceries for the few nights we’d be camping at Baxter State Park, and driving up the 3.5ish hours to Katahdin and the start of my Sobo Appalachian Trail hike.

When we pulled out of Hilary’s house early afternoon, we decided to take the scenic route….stopping for a lobster roll on the way (when in Maine…!)

Turned out we made a wrong turn, not having noticed the error as we belted out Ray LaMontaine songs into the sunny afternoon with the windows rolled down. So the long drive took longer, but it really didn’t matter….we were on a road trip, and had all day to get to our campsite at Katahdin Steam Campground. 

The evening consisted of tacos, campfire and stories of hiking injuries. I wonder what my AT hiking injuries will be this year? There are always a few…

We went to bed too late; I don’t think I’ll sleep tonight.