Katahdin '08 Trip Report

This weekend was so yummy it was sinful. The absolute only thing I would change is maybe add a little more downtime because I'm exhausted today. But what the hell, you can sleep when you're dead, right?

It started off with a 4 day trip to Mt. Katahdin in Maine. Mt. Katahdin is the highest peak in Maine, 2^nd highest in New England...but of course, as a girl from the Rockies, I do tend to say "psht, you call that a hike?" to anything New England has to offer. Well, consider me corrected. Katahdin definitely has a Rockies feel. It's stark, grand, and hard as hell. You don't struggle with the altitude since it's only 5300 ft at the top, but the ascent from where we started (Roaring Brook Campground) was 4000, rather steep, feet. Which, uh, turned out to be hard. I'd almost say as hard as you can get for a day hike in terms of distance and terrain without getting into actual rock climbing.

The campground itself is pristine, with absolutely no overcrowding. No showers, but well maintained outhouses kept things somewhat civilized. I would highly, highly recommend staying there if you do want to camp/hike Baxter State Park, but the catch is that you have to make reservations in early January.

So, we arrived on Thursday, set up camp (which had the precision of a military operation thanks to A. having done the trip fro 7 years running. I was like, "ooooh that's clever!" every 30 seconds. He was like "haven't you camped before?" I was like, "mmm yes, but ah, you do it so very well." And then I batted my eyes. It never hurts to suck up to the man with the good equipment and a big, mmm, pack.

The next morning we dragged our butts out of bed at 5am so that we could get started at 6am. The hike we were planning is 10.5 miles long, and usually takes people 10-12 hours to complete. We had a couple of complete newbs in the group though, so we wanted to err on the safe side.  As you will see shortly, coming back in the dark would not be good possible without a headlamp, and even then very unsafe. You aren't allowed on the mountain without a headlamp/flashlight anyway.

So, onto the good stuff. As I said, the route we took is 10.5 miles. It can be broken into 4 sections:

1. The hike from the campground to Chimney Pond, a glacial pond at  the bottom of the basin that the Katadin range forms.  3.3 miles each way.
2. The hike from the pond to Pamona peak, which is east of the real peak, Baxter. The trail is called Dudley, or, in my words, "Yet another fucking boulder? Enough with the boulders." Only 1.2 miles, but it felt like it was 1.2 miles straight up.
3. The hike from Pamona, through the Chimney Notch, which requires a bit of real rock climbing and scared the shit out of people who are afraid of heights, to the Chimney Peak, and then on across the Knife's Edge to Baxter Peak. ~1 mile
4. The final section was on a "trail" called Saddle. I use trail in the loosest sense of the term. Whoever came to the top of this and was like, "that looks like a great place to descend!" was not thinking clearly. 0.5 mile scree, then 1.75 endless miles of bouldering. Saddle brings you back to the pond and then it's the last 3.3 back home.

This next part is going to be picture intensive, so I'll split it...

I would like to note that I was not warned about the difficulty of the hike. A's explanation? Oh, you're in good shape, I wasn't worried. Meanwhile some other people in our 9 person group spent the last 4 months training for it. But that's cool. Really. Your confidence takes all the searing pain away.

The only part A clearly said would be hard was Dudley ("If you get past Dudley you're fine...") which sort of makes one think that at some point it will get easier. But no. The sections were just different kinds of difficult. I'm making this sound awful aren't I, like I hated it? But in reality I loved it - I'm a little weird, and I do so love to whine.

Here's a pic of the first part, the trail from the campground to Chimney Pond.



See those rocks? They were mini harbingers of what lay in store for us. The view of the mountain from a lookout about 1/3 of the way to the pond was gorgeous.



Chimney Pond is a glacial pond very reminiscent of the ones in BC, as were the mountains ringing it. My brain refused to process that I would be climbing all the way up them though. Denial is wonderful.



Now it was on to Dudley. Dudley had my heart rate the highest by far, but I wouldn't say it was the hardest, since we were relatively fresh. It was actually a fun puzzle to figure out a route, very tetris-ish. Here's my friend C coming up. She trained for 4 months to do this, and did an awesome job with no complaints, I'm so proud of her.



It was after this that we began traversing the Knife's Edge. The Knife's Edge is not fun for people who are afraid of heights, because it is only 2-3 feet wide in parts, with a sheer drop off on both sides. It's a mile long, and C literally crawled the whole way. Which must have been fun. There is also a section early on called Chimney Notch which requires a small amount of rock climbing. Luckily we had 6 guys and 4 girls, so the guys helped the shorter girls find footholds when a stretch was required. Here's my friend K coming up the notch.



Apparently this is the first year no one cried on that part, although one person was pretty close.

It was at this point that the lies began. Here's A telling us Baxter isn't very far. Fog was obscuring it, so we couldn't really tell for ourselves.



Does a mile to go over this seem like "not very far" to you?



Or this?



Lies. All Lies. I did have fun pretending to be Frodo though.

The view back up the scree section of the Saddle is also very Lord of the Rings.



I started calling A. the Nazgul right around here. He kept saying that we were on the home stretch at this point, which I suppose was technically true given that we were past the peak and more than halfway done, but when your home stretch consists of this, it's not all that comforting.



Most of the way down I was chanting "Ow! Trail my ass! Ow! Trail my ass!" After almost 2 miles of that to Chimney Pond I was utterly wiped. The last 3.3 home from Chimney Pond were 3 of the longest miles I've ever covered. Sitting down at the campsite was NIRVANA. I finished in about 10.5-11 hours, but our stragglers took 13, so they were just in under the wire of darkness. You can probably see why getting stuck out there in the dark would be suboptimal.

Here are some labeled pics so you can see most of what I've been talking about. From the top of the Saddle.



Also from the Saddle



The basin from Pamona Peak



The next day we hiked to a gorgeous waterfall, bitching the whole way, of course, about yet more vertical travel. It was totally worth it though. Here's A. enjoying the payoff.



We finally packed up on Sunday. A. and I headed off to a bbq, where we played beer die and then I ran around playing drunk soccer in tevas. Suffice to say I had a few bruises the next morning. A. fell out of a tree pretending to be tarzan and dislocated his shoulder. So I think we both felt worse on Monday than we did the day after the big hike. We so smaht.

When we finally rolled back into town on Monday I was 100% focused on getting into a long, exfoliation-heavy shower, and then spending some quality time reacquainting my ass with a chair, but just after showering a friend called and asked if I wanted to go to the Sox game. Of course I want to go to the sox game! So we went, for free, on a beautiful night, the sox won, and I sat there with a stupid grin on my face for most of it.

Oh...and another thing...this morning I woke up to find another med school interview invite in my inbox. Mmmmmm. Who's got two thumbs and is happy? This girl. I mean REALLY. Now I'm waiting for puppies to start falling from the sky or someone to come up to me and tell me they want to pay for my med school. Or maybe just that I've won free ice-cream for a year.