Date: 2017-06-03
From: Deasey fire lookout

To: Roaring Brook camp ground
Miles today: 17.0
Weather: clear sky

"The CDT is good training for this."Scout's pronouncement, as we hunted for the trail on the descent to the Wassataquoik River, was certainly correct. The Continental Divide Trail often punishes anyone who zones out for a while and stops paying attention to where they're going.Like the CDT, the IAT's longest section of trail in Maine isn't really trail so much as a route. Although clearly better marked than before, with SIA/IAT signs augmenting what seemed to have been flagging with blue tape, staying on trail requires constant attention, particularly when the route suddenly veers off from one direction to another -- such as counterintuitively heading uphill after steadily going down.So far as we could tell, we were the first ones through here since before winter. Even then, probably only 50 people use this route each year, which isn't quite enough to keep the tread obvious.But this is where decades of experience in the outdoors, and particularly on remote trails, pays dividends. We later read a lean-to log book entry in which an AT Nobo completely lost the trail and never found it again, having to head back towards Katahdin. Fortunately we could tell within a few metres when the faint trail degraded to no trail and we had to start hunting for a trail marker or some blue flagging.It was a challenge but give this to me any day over road walking.Katahdin was still socked in when we left our fire lookout this morning, leaving us wondering if we were likely to get good weather on our summit day. Such were the shifting forecasts, often hour by hour, they'd become a standing joke and deemed to be about as accurate a predictor as our star signs.The unspoken part of today was the single biggest obstacle on IAT: the ford on the Wassatquoik River. My suspicion is it'd be fine, since the snow melt was long since over and there'd be nothing more than nuisance rain since, but we were still a bit worried about the "slippery bowling balls" riverbed Cheryl and Kirk had told us about a week before.I was grateful we hadn't had to push on to the fire warden's cottage the previous evening since it felt a lot more than the 0.9 and 0.8 miles the signs variously described the distance from the fire lookout and the camping was poor. The forest was still dripping on us as we headed past the station, where the main part of the roof had collapsed but it was interesting to note the porch seemed to still be watertight and usable as a kind of bivouac.From there to where we picked up an old tote road again was when we had to be on the ball to follow the trail. With one excursion to see Earl's erratic -- a mammoth boulder dumped here by some retreating glacier -- we followed the tote road until we hit the river.The first sight of it boosted my confidence in our ability to cross -- there was no colour in it from the recent rains and it seemed like we could cross it almost anywhere, although there might have been a short swim to get across the main channel. I suspected the ford site would be well chosen, and it was. The river bed there was even -- although it was as slippery as we'd been told -- and the water only ever got up to the "octave line" -- where it makes male hiker's singing voices a little sharper -- on me for a brief section in the middle of the stream. Scout, with his lankier legs, didn't go deeper than mid-thigh.All this made us very grateful to reach the far bank, since it meant we didn't need to do the 6.5 mile unmaintained detour to an old logging bridge and it also ensured we'd get to Roaring Brook campsite that night and without feeling worn out ahead of what was going to be a tough day over Katahdin the next day.From there, the route was all on old logging roads as we went past Wassatquoik lean-to and Katahdin Brook lean-to until we found ourselves on a substantial but gated road. It's best we don't elaborate on how to reach Baxter State Park, at which point we followed an old logging road to Katahdin Lake Wilderness Camp and then a substantial trail to Avalanche Field trail head.It turned out Frodo had hiked in to meet us, found it both buggy and rainy, and had retreated to the trailhead. But she left the cutest note ever on a piece of bark advising us of this.Soon we arrived at the road and could slackpack the 1.5 miles up to the park, where she'd booked the bunkhouse and provided a truly awesome meal for us. IAT fact of the day: After nine days shadowing us on the trail and making our lives inestimably easier, Frodo is about to head back to California for nearly a month. But she had a parting gift because if we climb tomorrow, she can take all our stuff to Millinocket, allowing us to do the ascent with just a day pack and not a full IAT/AT pack. Thanks Frodo. I'm sure trail karma will flow your way.