Date: 2008-07-12
From: Katahdin, Baxter Peak

To: Little Bigelow Lean-To
Miles today: 13.4
Weather: overcast clouds

These mountains are relentless beasts with no sympathy for weak souls. These mountains will break those who wish to be broken. These mountains will rebuild those who wish to be rebuilt. These are the unforgiving hills of Appalachia.My wake up call each morning is Cookie, when he gets up is when I get up. This morning it was at 5:20AM. My challenge for today was to ascend and traverse the Bigelow Range, which was a daunting task.As I ascended to Horn's Pond I began to remember everything from my last assault on this range with my friend Joel last summer.Being the egotistical hiker that I was at the time, I convinced my friend that we could easily traverse the Bigelow Range and Little Bigelow in one day. What and idiotic idea that turned out to be. Even with a extremely light day pack this range is a beast. It also did not help that we each ran out of water, and to add to the problem we could not find any water. It was a reality check for me at least, you'd have to ask Joel what he thinks about the trip. It was a great experience though, and it gave me new energy as I headed to school in the fall to begin my campaign to execute a full year of work in 2/3 the time.When we rolled into Horn's Pond we chatted with the caretaker while taking a small break. At risk of alienating myself from the Maine hiking community even further, I will not express my opinion of this caretaker, I was not very pleased though.The next task was the oh-so-steep ascent to the summit of the south Horn. I should mention that at Horn's Pond I broke my only functioning Leki Pole, so I was forced to complete the death defying ascent with no trekking poles. Quite a deed.The summit of the South Horn offered a view of the surrounding mountains, including the Bigelow Ridge in front of me. After descending a bit and walking the ridge I ascended West Peak. This summit offered me my first glimpse of Katahdin. It was a surreal feeling that after having walked almost 2,000 miles, I can actually see the end. For so long Katahdin was a distant goal, and now it's a visible objective. I might actually finish this thing.After descending to Avery Memorial campsite I ascended to the summit of Avery Peak.I should note that on this ascent last year I bumped into the Attorney General of Maine Steven Rowe, who will be a gubernatorial candidate in 2010. Since the person I was hoping would run is not, I do here by endorse the future candidacy of Steven Rowe, a great leader. That's for those of you who don't like politics in MY journal.At Safford Brook Campsite Cookie walked 2/10ths of a mile off trail to get us some water, while I sat at the junction watching our packs. Several SOBO's rolled through as I relaxed a bit. After partially ascending Little Bigelow, we had lunch at a particular spot with a nice breeze.The Little Bigelow ridge is a long and tedious one with seemingly no end. The important thing about this ridge is that I've now technically walked 2,000 miles since Springer Mountain Georgia. Many tears have been shed, many drops of blood lost, many days of happiness, and some days of sadness have led me to this point. Cookie and I decided to stay at Little Bigelow Lean-To tonight for logistical reasons. If we had went further today, we would have arrived at the Kennebec River tomorrow afternoon, which is no good because the current hours for the ferry service are 9-11AM. Tomorrow I shall walk 17.3 miles, giving me 3-4 miles to walk the next morning to the river.I think I'm going to run out of stove fuel before Monson. Should be interesting to see how that goes.Katahdin's on my mind.And that's the way it was.Kirby