Date: 2004-09-27
From: The Birches

To: Mt. Katahdin
Miles today: 5.2
Weather: clear sky

Woohoo, I finally made it!I spent a restless night and was ready early. I got to the Ranger Station at 640, well before the weather report was due. I set my big pack on the porch and fastened a label to it with my name as I had promised so my father could identify it. In the process I found that the duct tape I had brought would not stick to my pack and I had to use great loops of it to keep the label in place. So much for those little backpacker sized rolls of tape. Next time I use the real stuff and wind it on my poles!While looking at the previous day's forecast I saw a message for me next to the Trail Register. It said my father would be there at 8am! So I waited to let him see me off. I watched first all the thruhikers and then parties of dayhikers troop past me to the Trailhead and was a little nervous about the delay, as well as being keyed up and ready to go, so waiting was a bit hard.How many times have I said that things have a way of working out on the Trail? They do! My father drove in at 740 and by 745 I had made my greetings and gotten a hug for luck and was starting up the Trail.As southbounders had said, the first section up to the treeline at a rock formation called The Cave was not too difficult. Then the real work began! After winding up and around a few boulders the Trail came to a wall with a four inch vertical cleft in it. It would be impassible except for a steel T-bar and handrail at the top and several rock jammed into the cleft. I figured out that you grab the t-bar, put a foot on the first rock, haul yourself by the bar up until you can reach the handrail and get a foot in the next rock, then haul yourself up really far so you can bring one foot as high as it will go and hook it onto the t-bar as a foothold, then pull extra hard on the rail and scramble to the top of the wall. A nice introduction to the sort of climbing the next mile entails! The Trail goes up the spine of a ridge piled with boulders, going in great loops that start shallow, steepen over a peak then repeat. So you get a view of a great arc of rock to work up, then as you near the top of the loop you see less and less above and more and more below until you pop over the crest, usually in an extra difficult spot due to the steepness, then are confronted with yet another loop arcing upward.The sheer scale of it was simply enormous! At first I was well below the tops of other mountains to the west. As I made my way up they seemed lower and lower until I was well above them. The Trail went up a fairly wide space on the spine of the ridge, winding back and forth twenty or thirty feet. Not at all like the Knife Edge, another trail that followed a VERY narrow ridge with a steep drop to either side. Here I felt secure. To the left I could see a steep dropoff into a valley far far below. Sometimes I had the novel experience of seeing my shadow stretch hundreds of feet below me! But the path never got so narrow and close to the edge of the dropoff as to make me nervous, like when I had vertigo at Lehigh Gap; or climb rocks or ledges steep enough to fall more than a short drop, like the rock walls at Wildcat Ridge. So I felt secure almost the entire climb, just a lot of work! There were just a few "I can't believe it goes THERE!" moments, and most I found a clear route around or they turned out not as bad as they first looked. None of the narrow outward sloping sloping ledges or lack of foot or handholds that made rock climbs in the White Mountains a harrowing experience. What is more, the view of the surrounding countryside got more fabulous by the minute!But time was passing and as I aproached the end of a particularly big loop I fervently hoped the peak I was coming to was the "Gate" up at the top of the ridge and not Hunt Spur only halfway up. The only way to know was to keep going and see what was over the top.To my joy I came over the crest and saw a big wooden sign at the top of a short less steep section. It HAD to be the top of the ridge. Sure enough, the sign warned to be careful of the delicate alpine vegatation and spreading beyond it was the wide level section called the Tablelands.THAT was the really exhilerating moment of the climb. Then I KNEW I had made it! Once there, past the ridge, the hard part was over and the rest would be easy. I was ecstatic! I made my way more than a mile across the Tablelands, past Thoreau's spring in the middle. Contrary to what some locals had predicted, it was bubbling with water. Then came a less steep rise, much of it on those stone dwarf-looking stairs. From the foot the top looked miles away yet was less than half a mile according to a sign. Perspective gets distorted up there and judging heights and distances is confusing. As I got higher I could make out what looked like a goup of people on a level spot of a ridge leading to a higher peak to the right. I gradually realized they were at the summit and the "higher" peak was actually the lower end of the Knife Edge. I was nearly there!A few more minutes and I was at the summit. It was just before noon and the climb had taken 4 hours.There were a half dozen or so people there and I had them take pictures of me doing all the summit rituals. The traditional shot of me next to the sawhorse sign marking the north end of the Appalachian Trail. I got out the blueberries I had brought in a ziplock and got a picture of me having a blueberry toast, Daicy Pond Vintage 2004, and shared them with all the other thruhikers. Then I reached in my pack and got out the small rock I had carried all the way from the south end at Springer Mountain Georgia. Near the sign was a large cairn of rocks and I got a shot of me adding my rock to it. Then I ate a block of chocolate, made my goodbyes and started down.Going past Thoreau Spring it seemed only right to scoop up a handful of water and drink it in memory of the trip. Then I enjoyed fresh picked dwarf alpine blueberries one last time and put some in the ziplock for my father.The climb down took time and one ankle was getting sore but it was not as hard as I had feared. Still I was glad to get below treeline. Just before the falls I picked some dark blueberries for my father and had a last taste of them myself. Right after that I met my father, who had hiked all the way up past the falls to meet me. Not bad for a 75-year old!We made our way back to the trailhead where I signed off the mountain, then went to get my pack and make one last happy entry in the Trail Register. Little Bit had left a thankyou note for the food I had left her in the 100 mile Wilderness. She was at the Birches! We drove over so I could say goodbye to her and gave all the next day's summiters sodas. Finally we drove to Millinocket, where my father had already gotten a motel room for us. We had a triumphant supper at the Appalachian Trail Cafe. My father beamed with pride and told our waitress ¢This is my daughter, she just finished the entire Appalachian Trail!¢ Next morning we started the two day drive to my home in Philadelphia. We found ourselves driving through the heavy rain from the remains of yet another hurricane! I was thankful to be sitting inside the dry interior of the car rather than out hiking. I was ready to go home.