Date: 2017-06-04
From: Roaring Brook campground

To: Katahdin Stream campground
Miles today: 10.0
Weather: overcast clouds

"Wait, so you've... lapped us?"The mountain runner looked a bit sheepish, but then added. "I guess so, yeh."We were nearly at the top of the Knife Edge on the way to Baxter Peak on Mt Katahdin and the northern terminus of the AT when the hiker passing us said he'd run past us a few hours before as we ascended the Helon Taylor trail from Roaring Brook campground. I vaguely remembered him being one of a group of three who'd blown past us at a rate exponentially faster than we were going. But since he'd reached Roaring Brook, it turned out he'd then driven back around to Katahdin Stream campground, hiked up the mountain and set off on the Knife Edge a SECOND time, at which time he passed us."If it makes you feel any better," he added, seeing the look of dismay on my face, "one of those guys is an Olympian."In a way, I should have expected this. Since we had already done about 143 miles since the border via the International Appalachian Trail ("Because 2189 miles isn't isn't long enough!") and were approaching Katahdin from its most difficult trail ("Because the most difficult five miles on the AT isn't difficult enough!"), I was feeling just a tiny bit of superiority to those who'd merely hiked the 5.5 miles from Katahdin Stream campground. So of course the universe was going to provide some benchmarking to put me in my place. Even without that bit of hubris, we'd already been put in our place during the walk up the Helon Taylor trail. Quite apart from the physics of it -- we were sweating up a storm through the exertion despite it being pleasantly cool and perfect hiking temperature -- in the first hour we'd met a young woman heading back down who said she'd gone to the top for the sunrise but it had been socked in. She looked like she'd just walked to the corner shop, rather than someone who'd set off at 1am.Then about half an hour after that, three mountain runners came leaping past -- including our lapper -- and then an hour after that, we encountered a Canadian guy called Dawson, who had quadriceps as big as my torso. He casually explained how he was "going out and back" -- IE doing our route, but twice -- as prep for some trail ultramarathons, one 80km and another 90km, on consecutive weekends in the near future.If not for these three encounters, we might have been feeling good about getting to Pamola Peak, the subpeak of Katahdin where the Knife Edge starts, in three hours instead of the four I'd been expecting. The fact is we were still doing barely more than one mile an hour.I'd been hesitant about going up in iffy weather, not wanting to do the knife edge in blowy or wet conditions or to have the famous Katahdin summit shot in the midst of cloud or worse. Scout was keen to reach the peak, regardless of cloud or blue skies, and one reason why I decided to go for it today on a forecast with a 40 per cent chance of showers was because the forecast was even worse for the next two days before having a day with a forecast merely similar to this one.All this explains why after being socked in occasionally in cloud on the way up to Pamola Peak, I was very very happy to see blue skies emerging above.We had a quick snack then tackled the descent to a col between Pamola and Chimney Peak. The trail beta was that the most technical part of the traverse was at the start for us, which was good by me, and we followed blue blazes down into scrambling rock on a route technical enough to make me have to think about my movements.At the col, my suspicions that this was entirely avoidable were confirmed by the presence of a social trail back towards the Helon Taylor trail that bypassed the scrambling. There was no bypassing the scrambling ahead, though, and it was clear the blue blazes followed the obvious feasible line. There was nothing technically extreme but it was certainly not a place where one would like to slip.After a short 30m pitch out of the col, the angle eased off and although there were some airy locations, the going was very straightforward and rarely required the use of hands. Still not a good place to slip, though, as the yawning gap off to our right made clear.But this was absolutely my element: grippy and trustworthy granite on an alpine crest. The lack of howling winds allowed me to hop across from one rock to the next, avoiding the obvious loose ones, and simply enjoying a truly beautiful route. This is why no matter how decrepit my knees get and wheezy my lungs become, I could never give up the sport of mountaineering.We ran into a couple of groups coming the other way and then just as we were heading towards Baxter Peak, our lapping mountain runner arrived to show us exactly where we belonged in the order of things.We were on the summit soon after, adding a rock to the Baxter Peak cairn and then getting our photos taken at the famous AT northern terminus. Four other sobos arrived while we were there -- people we're likely to be leapfrogging for the next few months. After the past nine days, in which we'd seen just a handful of people on trail and none in the previous couple of days, it was both odd and energising to be amid the hiker buzz again.I was still more than aware that the reputed "toughest five miles on the AT" lay between us and Katahdin Stream camp ground, even if the start across the Tablelands looked deceptively easy.Even with that urge to get the descent underway, following white blazes instead of blue ones, we couldn't help stopping and chatting to others heading up, including four Nobos who were finishing their hike together after 99 days on the go. They truly had the thru-hiker "look".The descent of the Hunt Trail was everything it'd been pegged: modestly technical, lots of descending on slabs of granite and the occasional reascent and circumnavigation to keep us on our toes. Our estimate of our pace meant we called to delay our shuttle from 4pm to 5pm, and it became obvious that even that was going to be running things close.But the climb up Katahdin increases exponentially in steepness to the tablelands, and that worked in our favour by becoming slowly more reasonable as our tired limbs headed down. At 4.40pm, we were 1.1 miles from the campground so I booked it ahead to make sure the shuttle didn't leave without us. An hour later, we arrived in Millinockett and groaned as we made our way from the van up the stairs to the hostel.We have a zero day tomorrow -- our first and long overdue, even if the universe had shown that in the grand scheme of things, we didn't achieve all that much today.AT fact of the day: Scout and I had talked about when we'd see our first Nobos. He'd estimated June 19 and I'd pegged June 21, but not only did we meet Nobos within a mile of the summit but the first Nobo had been here a full four days earlier.