Date: 2015-09-19
From: Monson, ME

To: Katahdin Summit
Miles today: 0.0

In 1999 I went to work for a software company that recruited heavily at colleges and hired mainly recent graduates. They put a lot of emphasis on company culture and one of the ways that they created a bond among new hires was to subject them to a trial by fire in an intensive three week "bootcamp." They had us working late at night and early in the morning working on challenging projects--it was a stressful initiation for someone long out of school in his early 30's. I remember our instructor telling us one day, "My job is to put you outside of your comfort zone." For the last two weeks, I have been outside of my comfort zone. But it was an incredible time.Shaw's Hiker Hostel in Monson, at the foot of the 100 Mile Wilderness, is an Appalachian Trail institution. It is also a chaotic, Bohemian kind of place run by a couple of former thru-hikers, Poet and Hippie Chick. When I drove up on a Wednesday afternoon, clean-shaven, dressed in street clothes, and in my late 40's I decidedly did not fit in. There were a group of 20-something hiker types sitting around in a circle, eyeing me as I pulled in. Pace Car, who I had not yet met, confirmed that night at dinner that there had definitely been some discussion among them--"What is this guy doing here?" I considered my night at Shaw's to be my first in the Wilderness. It was chaotic enough though that you could get lost in the craziness and after a while I didn't feel so conspicuous. Once Airlock arrived later that afternoon, we went to Greenville for dinner with Pace Car--my last taste of civilization. While we were there a torrential downpour rolled through. Our hiking shoes were sitting on the porch outside at Shaw's and were soaked by the rain. My shoes wouldn't be dry again for a solid week.We got a later start than I would have liked the next morning, but the day started off great. The hiking in the morning was familiar territory for us since we had hiked some of the same trails a couple of years ago and we stopped for lunch at Little Wilson Falls, a very scenic spot. Pace Car was there along with another young hiker, Breathless. Breathless modestly told me right away that she wasn't an AT Thru-hiker--she was just section hiking. Then she told me that she had just finished thru-hiking the PCT a couple of months ago. And she was yo-yo'ing the 100 Mile Wilderness--meaning hiking it one way, turning around, and hiking back. I wasn't even sure I could claim to be a section hiker. I told her I was new to backpacking and was having my doubts about the coming week.The rest of the day turned out to be more challenging than I had anticipated. It seemed like there wouldn't be an easy step for the next three days. Every inch of the trail was either a root, a rock, mud, a river ford, a step up, or a step down. There was no easy cruising. As we started running out of daylight we were still short of our mileage goal for the day. About a mile before our planned campsite, I ran into Pace Car, Breathless, and Goatsbeard camped at a beautiful spot along the river. I made an executive decision that we would join them and started looking for a place to set up my hammock. Airlock came along a short while later and we rushed to get set up. The next couple of hours were the worst of the week and were a serious blow to my confidence.First, I couldn't find the underquilt for my hammock. When you sleep in a hammock your sleeping bag compresses under your body weight and its insulation is compromised, contributing to something known as CBS (Cold Butt Syndrome). An underquilt hangs underneath the hammock and is meant to solve this problem. I had been using all my hammock gear as weight in my pack for my prep hikes so I couldn't understand how it got left behind. (We discovered when we got home last night that I had never removed it from Airlock's old pack after Mount Killington.) Temperatures can get quite chilly at night in Maine in September and I wasn't sure I would be warm enough without the underquilt.After I got my hammock set up, I went down to the river to clean up before dinner. I work at a computer screen all day long, and in the last several years my reading vision has deteriorated to the point where I really cannot read at all without glasses. I had my reading glasses clipped to the front of my shirt so they were easily accessible when I needed to read the trail guide. When I took my hiking shirt off, the glasses must have flown off into the river. Not only did I need those to read the map and guide, I had also planned to read my Kindle in my hammock at night to solve the problem of not being sleepy at 7pm when hikers go to bed. Airlock was obviously frustrated with me about the underquilt and glasses, but we set about making dinner. We cooked two Mountain House meals but my hiker appetite hadn't kicked in yet, and the macaroni and cheese was pretty much inedible. If you don't eat it, you have to pack it out so this only added to our troubles. As we were sitting there, I remembered that my iPhone, driver license, credit card, and $100 in cash were also in the pockets of the clothes I had taken off at the river. I ran over to make sure I hadn't also lost those. The cards and cash were there, but I couldn't find the iPhone. By now I was seriously demoralized. I remember saying to Airlock, "I just don't think I'm cut out for this." As it turned out, I had put my iPhone in a watertight pocket of my pack at the last river ford so we were only missing the glasses and the underquilt, which was bad enough. After dinner I got in my hammock and tried reading my Kindle with the font size increased. Thirty minutes later, the Kindle decided to crap out so in the end it didn't matter that I didn't have my glasses--there would be no reading for the week. I spent the next few days vacillating between feeling 100% confident I could make it through the week and feeling like I wouldn't make it through another day. Everything was so wet and slippery that I kept slipping and falling--sometimes quite spectacularly. I fell from rocks and bog boards, tripped on roots, and more than once ended up in a pit of smelly mud. My hiking legs felt good, but in one of my falls I had injured my shin.On Monday morning we had a food drop scheduled for Jo Mary road, a little more than 50 miles into the Wilderness. On Sunday, I had to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. My shin hurt so badly I could barely walk--I wondered if I had fractured it. As I was getting back into my hammock I heard a sound of tearing fabric. For a moment it felt like I was going to fall through to the ground. It was too dark to see what had happened, but the tearing stopped and the hammock held. A little while later it started pouring rain. When the rain subsided a little bit in the morning Airlock came out of her tent and threw out a possible option. It was a chilly, wet, miserable, morning--she said it was one of the most miserable of her entire hike. The food drop was scheduled for 9-9:30 a few miles down the trail. We could ride with the driver back to Monson, take a nero, and return to the trail the next day. I told her then about my shin and about the hammock. This was the only opportunity to bail. I have heard a lot of people say that the 100 Mile Wilderness isn't really a wilderness, but let me tell you--it is. There are no stores, phones, or any practical way to get help. There is almost no cell reception. If you have a problem, it is going to be many hours before assistance will arrive. I thought carefully about the choice--continuing on was a 50+ mile commitment. I decided I would take it easy for a few miles and see how my shin held up and make a decision once we got to the road. I gamed out contingency plans in case the hammock failed. Once we got to the road my shin had loosened up and felt much better. We resupplied, had a Coke, and decided to press on. I'm really glad I did.After that day my doubts disappeared. On the third night, I lucked into a perfect hammock hang and I finally knew what the hammock should feel like. I slept great every night after that. My injury steadily improved and I felt great hiking. We saw so many beautiful ponds, rivers, and mountains. The weather turned spectacular. I started feeling like part of the hiker crowd and made lots of friends. We seemed to be between hiker bubbles, and we were in a vast unpopulated area, but after a few days it seemed like if we ran into someone odds were that I would know them.Towards the end of the Wilderness I was hiking down a hill and saw another hiker coming up towards me--it was Breathless yo-yo'ing back the other way. "Yay!", she yelled out. "I knew you would make it!" It took me a minute to remember how uncertain I had been earlier in the week. The next day, when we all emerged from the Wilderness and gathered for lunch and then dinner at the little restaurant at Abol bridge, I no longer felt like an outsider--I was with old friends. We stuffed ourselves with cheeseburgers, fries, beer, and cokes and reminisced about the week. Spirits were high and everyone was excited about Katahdin.The next couple of days felt like a victory lap. Everyone had completed their goal--the easy hike through Baxter State Park and the climb up Katahdin were just formalities. A time to celebrate. Though my section hike was much less of an accomplishment than the thru-hikers, I still felt pretty proud. We had beautiful weather on summit day and it was a spectacular hike. I was the second one on top of the mountain that morning so I had some time to experience it in solitude. But soon there were a large group of hikers, congratulating each other and taking pictures. After a long, knee-crushing walk down it was all over.It would be another four days before I was back in my comfort zone. We had another night's stay in a hiker hostel and the car broke down on the way home delaying us for several days while we waited for it to be repaired. But it was a great vacation. I went white-water rafting, hung out in funky places, ate some great food, drank good beer, and jumped into the 100 Mile Wilderness with a bunch of seasoned thru-hikers and held my own.P.S. Here is a link to the video of Airlock on Katahdin:Airlock, Pace Car, and Cruise Control Summit Katahdin--Sasquatch