Date: 2022-08-16
From: East Chairback Pond

To: Logan Brook Lean To
Miles today: 14.3
Weather: overcast clouds

We left East Chairback Pond at 8:00 after sleeping hard until 7. It felt good to roll over and cover my face at 5:30 to sneak in another hour and a half of sleep. We had a short 2 miles downhill to Katahdin Ironworks Road where our first food drop was arriving at 9:30. The drop came off without a hitch. Cold Gatorades were in the truck - wow. This treat was followed by a passing car handing us 2 Granny Smith apples. It was, objectively, one of the best apples I¢ve eaten. Grayson donned a new pack - a Hyperlite Southwest 2400. We emptied his Osprey Exos 48 and repacked. The Wxos went back to Shaws in the truck. Hopefully it can help another hiker. The Hyperlite proved to be a primo pack on day 1. It looks sharp and has a lot to like about it. We climbed a series of small hills before Whitecap Mountain today. We were shooting to get over the peak today to avoid the summit during a rainstorm tomorrow. We got our first true view of Katahdin today just over the summit of this final peak in the 100-mile. The north side of Whitecap drops into a broad, flat, forested valley dotted with lakes and ponds. The view sweeps from west to east with nothing in sight except forest, lakes, and mountains. There are no roads, power lines, towns, or buildings to be seen. No sign of man. It is wilderness every direction for as far as can be seen. Katahdin stood proud and massive as the westering light gave a depth and texture to it that it wouldn¢t have in a noonday sun. Pamola Peak stood in the shadows off the eastern flank, connected to tall Baxter Peak by The Knife Edge. The Peak anchors the eastern edge of a descending ridge that ends on the tablelands at Thoreau Springs. The Abol Trail meets the high ridge here after it¢s climb up the clearly visible Abol Rock slide on the south face. The Hunt Trail - used by AT NOBOS - continues it¢s descent across the tablelands and down a steep southerly curving ridge, now clearly cut by the setting sunlight, before turning east into the tree line at The Gateway. All this was plainly visible thirty miles across the valley. Over the mountain hovered 4 clouds at the compass points like seraphim guarding the throne room. I¢ve had this feeling, starting when we entered Maine and growing ever stronger, that we flip-floppers don¢t belong here. Like the tabernacle of the Jews, this 100-mile wilderness is holy in its own way, reserved for the traveler who has earned the entry through asceticism and perseverance. Now, to look on the mountain, and to see the peak itself - the Holy of Holies - is awe inspiring, overwhelming, and humbling. But I cannot shake the feeling that we do not belong here. We are passing through. Our pilgrimage does not culminate at this place. The NOBOs I¢ve said this too heartily agree with a laugh that says ¢Yep! We (NOBOs) think exactly what you¢re saying about you flip-floppers. I¢m impressed that you realize it.¢ I want to share with them that our pilgrimage is to a much better place. Our walk is not towards a cold, barren, and distant mountain but rather to the familiar, rolling hills of Georgia. To the Chattahoochee and the Nantahala Forests. To the headwaters of the Toccoa, the Etowah, and the Chestatee Rivers. To mountains that have been lived in and loved. Ours is a pilgrimage to our friends and to our family, to our cats, to our house, to our home. My boys will be able to visit our final destination on an afternoon. They¢ll be able to take their friends and perhaps their kids to Springer Mountain, or to walk across Blood Mountain, Preachers Rock, Raven Cliffs Wilderness, and will tell the story of our adventure. Our drives to the friends and towns on the north side of the Blue Ridge will take us through Neel, Unicoi, Woody, and Dicks Creek Gaps - the final road crossings on our walk. We get to end our hike at home. I am still envious of the NOBO here, just 70 trail miles from the end. But I dare not share with them what ending awaits the five of us - I don¢t want to diminish what I know they are feeling in these final days.