Date: 2007-08-22
From: Mt. Katahdin

To: .5 miles beyond Abol Bridge
Miles today: 15.6
Weather: scattered clouds

"Welcome back bitch." I could envision the mountain with dark eyes and a contemptuous sneer telling me this as I struggled up the mountain today. My chest and lungs felt like they were going to explode several times. When I climbed Katahdin in 2000 with over 2,000 miles on my legs, it took me less than two hours to summit. This time around, with torn up lungs and fresh legs, it took me three hours to climb to the top. What made it worse was I was only carrying a daypack, having left my pack at the ranger station below. It didn't help that I was dehydrated from the day before, and I didn't have much sleep because of a persistent mouse from the night before. The little bastard crawled on me several times; twice I sent him flying across the shelter but he didn't give up. I didn't see a soul on my trek up the mountain - probably because I started at 6:20 a.m. - but a couple walked up about 30 minutes after I arrived. I chilled up on Katahdin reflecting on the start of another long hike. As I was up there, it hit me (as it so often does when I'm on a high mountain or in some wild part of the country) how fortunate I am to have the physical and mental strength to be able to just grab my pack and head off for some 4-5 month hike. Not many people will even have the opportunity to do something like this and I think we thru-hikers sometimes take our freedom for granted. The views from Katahdin were amazing; I really couldn't have picked a better day to climb it. The last time I was on Katahdin, the day started like the one today, but a heavy fog rolled in and the wind picked up something fierce by the time I reached the tableland. I spent about an hour and a half on the summit, and quite a few people eventually rolled through on the various trails leading up the mountain. The hike down went much faster, but I can tell my knees will be screaming at me tomorrow for going so fast. I did miss one step, somehow completely missing the rock I was going to use as a foothold. I wound up falling five feet to the rock below. No biggie, but I did scrape my thigh something fierce on the way down. When I got to the ranger station, I grabbed my pack, cursed its weight, and headed south. My goal was to hike the 10 hours out of the park and find the first available spot. I thought it would take five hours at most, but man I was dragging. I stopped quite a few times and didn't make it to Abol Bridge until well after 6 p.m. I'm fairly out of shape, and a 50-pound pack (I may be exaggerating; I never had a chance to weight the damn thing) does not help the situation. I stopped in at the store for a sandwich and some Gatorade and decided to pitch my tent at the first decent looking spot inside the "100-mile wilderness." The warning sign is pretty laughable since there are at least two places for hikers to resupply. I've decided not to use either one because I suppose I'm sort of a purist - to a point. Once I reach the White Mountains, my purism is going out the window because for some reason, the AT skirts all of the peaks in the Presidentials (Washington excepted) and I intend to climb a few of them, AT be damned. What a night I had for the first night of a thru-hike. At around 9:30 p.m. I awoke to what sounded like a couple of police sirens going off on the trail. "What the f-," I actually said as I rose up out of my sleeping bag. For some reason my sleep-groggy mind thought it was coyotes calling in backup to come f my ass up. (I later found out it was just a couple of loons making that noise.) After a few siren wails I heard two animals come running towards my tent. I let out with a big "F OFF" and one of the animals broke to the right and the other stopped short of my tent. I let loose with another loud "F OFF" and shined my light into the woods. It spooked whatever was out in front of my tent and it ran off. Whatever circled around my tent (if anything did, I may have imagined the whole damn thing) stayed put. For over an hour, I i kept picturing a coyote attack (which my rational mind knew was b.s. because coyotes rarely, if ever, have an organized attack on humans - if there are even coyotes in Maine.) on my tent, and I mentally prepared for the coming battle. After a while, logic took over and I told myself "this is f-ing retarded" and I drifted off to sleep.