Date: 2017-07-27
From: Rainbow Lake Campsite, ME

To: The Birches Lean-tos & Campsite, ME
Miles today: 21.1
Weather: overcast clouds

During the night and early morning, it rained. When I emerged from our tent to go to the privy, I found a note left on a rock beside us - "Butterfeet says Hi". So he did not give up when he left the trail to go see some colleges. While I was in our tent, having breakfast, Coins came by to say goodbye.Aidan and I only got going at 8:56. The trail continued to be mostly flat, with tree roots. Aidan's knees were both painful and I worried that he would grind to a halt. But in the first hour he produced 1.5 miles, which I extrapolated to an 11pm finish. Not pretty, but at least I wouldn't have to leave him with the tent and food to make his own way, and hike through the night to reach the camp early in the morning for the climb up Katahdin. We had one nice climb up to Rainbow Ledges at just over 1,500 feet. Along the way we paused to eat the tiny succulent Maine blueberries that grow in profusion along the trail at the peaks. If somebody entered the 100-Mile Wilderness with no food, they could probably make it to the far side by subsisting on those berries. Mind you, they are so small that you'd spend hours each day foraging. Plus, they are on small, ground-hugging bushes, and foraging for them involves a lot of bending over, something that a heavy backpack makes strenuous. At the Rainbow Ledges we had a very clear view of Katahdin. The exit from the Wilderness is rather uncelebrated, but I took a photograph of a sign warning hikers entering from that direction that they needed to be carrying at least ten days' supply of food since there would be no possibility of resupply until Monson. Of course, we'd seen hikers resupplying at several logging road crossings (and we'd done so ourselves), or waiting to be picked up, so the concept of an untracked wilderness needs some modification.We trudged along a dusty gravel road across the Abol Bridge. Right beside it was The Northern Restaurant. We stopped there for lunch. I ordered a pitcher of pink lemonade, which threw the waitress for a loop, but the manager okayed it. But it came half-full of ice. I prefer ice-free drinks generally, and with all the weight I've lost, it only takes a couple of cold drinks for my core temperature to drop precipitously, and I start shivering and searching for my warm jacket. Fat is a great insulator. For my second pitcher, I asked for no ice, which required a fresh consultation with the manager before it could be delivered. I had a poutine to start, followed by a tuna panini, while Aidan predictably had a burger and fries. At the next table were Sugar, Cirque (who had tented beside us the previous evening), and Zebra. When the others left, I invited Zebra to join us at our table. She talked about her job as a journalist back in Poland, and what she intended to do in the US until the date of her return flight - it involves a lot of hitchhiking. When Aidan and I set out to complete the afternoon leg of our day's hike, she and Cirque joined us. Cirque lives in Brooklyn and is a manic talker, whose main conversational style is a shoot-from-the-hip, stream of consciousness format that is funny but in time tiring. We reached the start of Baxter State Park and signed a register, and the sign-up sheet for the thru-hikers' shelter at the foot of Katahdin. The mosquitoes were so bad that I skimped on filling in some fields on both forms, and Aidan and I ran for it. We had 9 miles to go, and at a 2 mph pace, that would have left us reaching the campsite around 9 pm. So once again we went into hyperdrive and reached the camp by 7:30. Coins was already there, in his sleeping bag in a shelter, along with one other hiker. I set up our tent on the sole platform that I could see. Sugar, Cirque and Zebra trailed in over the next hour. While we were having our late dinner, a park ranger came by to register us, collect the $10 fee per person, and issue us with our permits to hike Katahdin. Shortly after we went to bed, it started to rain, and Aidan and I scrambled to ensure backpacks, boots, etc. were under cover in our respective vestibules.Tipperary