Date: 2009-08-30
From: Portland, ME

To: View Entry
Miles today: 114.5

At long last, my AT adventure has come to an end. On August 27th I summitted Mt. Katahdin, marking the end of the journey. Before I reached Katahdin I hiked through the Hundred Mile Wilderness. It was not as remote as it is made out to be. There are logging roads that criss-cross the trail, a state park, and a side trail leading to a B&B. The thing that made that section remote was the fact that there were no towns along the way. The Hundred Mile Wilderness seemed even less remote to me thanks to Sunchild. I first met Sunchild my first week on the trail. I was hanging out at a hostel in Monson when he walks up and announces that he's going to be doing Trail Magic for a couple days. His family owns a little hunting cabin .25 miles off the trail in the Hundred Mile Wilderness and was offering to slack-pack people to his cabin to hang out. I took him up on that offer and slack-packed 13.5 miles to his cabin. I spent the rest of the day relaxing and drinking. He grilled cheeseburgers, brats, and hot dogs and had potato and pasta salad, cole slaw, and watermelon. Later on that day he offered to slack-pack people another 16 miles to a parking lot in the state park. I was able to slack-pack the first 30 miles of the Hundred Wilderness, which was awesome because the first 30 miles was the most difficult part of it. The first 30 miles was like a rocky roller coaster. After that the trail flattened out like Kansas and led me past lake after lake. It was a really beautiful section of trail between the lakes and the woods. And I got to see a moose, so I was able to complete my animal wish list. All that set me up for my trek into Baxter State Park and Mt. Katahdin.It was an amazing feeling to finally touch the sign on top of the mountain. It felt like an electrical discharge surging through my body as I touched the sign. It was an emotional moment for me reaching reaching the goal I had been working towards for 5 months. Climbing Katahdin was like no other climb on the entire trail. It is fitting that the most unique climb of the trail occurs at the end. The first couple miles were relatively gradual and much like the climbing I've done on other mountains. But as soon as I got around treeline that all changed. The route switched from hiking to scrambling and climbing over rocks. It got really steep as well, I gained 1200 feet in .8 miles. After that it leveled out to a plateau and the final 1.5 miles wasn't too bad. I first saw the sign on the summit when I was about .25 miles from it and that sighting filled me full of adrenaline. The weather was pretty good all day too. It was quite windy, but there was ample sunshine. It was about 40 degrees with 25-30 mph winds on the summit, but none of that mattered to me. The views from the summit alone would make one forget about the weather. I had a couple of day hikers take photos of me on the summit and then I sat down behind a boulder to soak it all in. I sat there for about 45 minutes letting the significance of the moment set in before heading back down. When I came down to the campground parking lot I waited for about 15 minutes before getting a ride into the nearest town. I got a ride from 2 guys who had climbed Katahdin that day as well. As we were talking I mentioned that I had relatives in Portland who were going to pick me up on Saturday. One of the guys said he was from the Boston area and drives right past Portland on his way home and offered to drive me to Portland. I gladly took him up on that offer because not only would that put me around family quicker but it would save Kirk and Jamie an 8 hour round trip car ride. When I got into town Kirk and Jamie took me out to dinner to celebrate. I've spent the last few days taking it easy and letting things slowly sink in. It still doesn't seem to have fully sunk in yet, and I suspect that it will take a week or two for it to fully dawn on me. In the meantime, I will work on uploading the hundreds of pictures I took.