katiedarlin

Katie Takes Katahdin
We had arrived at 100 Mile Wilderness LLC late afternoon On Tuesday July 26, 2015. We'd been driving for almost 3 days straight from Eagle Rock, Missouri, to Lawrenceville, Georgia and then all the way up to Monson, Maine. Already, two weeks before we had been working a camp so we were already running a little ragid and the next day was Summitting Katahdin.
Phil Pepins place is quaint, rustic, set apart, yet has a quality and all the desired ammenities you'd want for in the wilderness: hot showers, a bed, electricity, fully stocked kitchen, an adorable dog, and what we affectionately not so affectionately refer to as the pooper. What more could you ask for?

We were up at 4:30 to get on the road by 5:30. It was a two hour drive to Millenocket where Baxter State Park is and the start of the AT. We were lined up at the gate by 7:30 waiting to get in the park. Baxter is a beautiful, well preserved piece of nature that is a stickler for following the rules and reserving campsites. They only allow a certain number of people in the park a day.

I had borrowed a day pack from the Ranger Station to carry up and left the rest of my gear on the porch. I had just a few essentials and was not interested in carrying more up than I needed. I took Phils advice and had decided to Hike up the Abol Trail which was 4.2 miles to the summit and down the Hunt Trail which was 5.2 and the first few miles of the actual AT. This gave me a different experience going up and down s different side of the Mt. Katahdin is 5268 ft in elevation. Abol is kind of a straight uphill shot. My dad walked me to the start of the trail and I hiked off. He was saving it for when he could complete his own thruhike.

So prior to starting the hike people kept asking me if I was doing anything to train for it. I would just kind of nod them off, mumble something, and go not really. I had always been athletic and active but an injury to my knee almost two years ago left me afraid to do put any real strain on it. Eventually it faded and to much of my friends dismay I never went to the doctor. From everything I had read, it just takes a few weeks for your body to adjust and all that jazz. I thought heck I'm a Ryan, a little pain builds a little character, a lot of pain builds a lot of character and between my dad and I we had quite a bit of character.
Katahdin is also considered probably the hardest part of the AT and typically the whole hike builds up and prepares you for this moment, but as a Southbounder I got to tackle the hardest part first. I am also from Louisiana. There are no Mountains in Louisiana or rolling hills, but we do have levees.
The best way to describe the trail is that 1/3 of it is below the tree line with a steady incline, 1/3 bouldering where you're climbing straight up huge rocks, and 1/3 on top of the Mountain with kind of a slow rocky incline that plateaus out. I started with a fairly steady pace at the base of the mountain that slowly weened as I got farther and farther up the tree line. I remember passing lots of people: a few young couples, some guys, a group of teenage boys, and this sweet older couple. I stopped occasionally to rest and catch my breath. I hit the boulders and slowed a bit. This takes a little more thought as your scrambling to follow white blazes painted on rocks that you have to crawl over, balance on, and pull yourself up to. When I got to the last section where I was on top of the mountain, it was a relief that I could walk standing upright that last mile to the summit. There were a lot more people already on the top and we all kind of milled our way down the path to the peak. It took me three hours to get up Abol Trail to Baxter Peak which I didn't think was too shabby for a Flat lander from the South, until I later learned that Phil had climbed it carrying a chainsaw when he worked on the M.A.T. Crew.

There were a handful of NoBos and some section hikers finishing that day which was pretty cool to witness. Once I was at the peak, I sat down, rested, soaked it in, ate some food, and had my picture taken with the sign. Then it was back down the Hunt Trail 5.2 miles to camp. I just so happened to fall in step behind Christmas Tree, a Nobo who had just finished his thru hike. I overheard someone asking him what he was gonna do next and he said, I'm going to go home and do whatever my wife tells me to do. We chatted a little as we made our way down the Mt. It seemed a lot more leisurely now that the rush to get to the top was over and you had to be even more careful going down than coming up. It took us 4 hrs to hike back down and I met dad back at Abol Campground where we were spending the night before we headed South into the hundred mile wilderness. We set up camp, ate our dehydrated meal, and were kindly invited by the Austrailian couple next to us over for some blueberry pie. I don't really like pie, I didn't like blueberries, I definitely didn't like blueberry pie, but when someone offers you something on the trail you never say no. I can now say that I like blueberry pie as well as blueberries which grow wild on the mountainsides. The wilderness has converted me. You end up doing a lot of things you wouldn't normally do.