Date: 2009-06-23
From: Baxter Peak, Katahdin summit

To: Katahdin Stream Campground
Miles today: 5.3
Weather: light rain

Subject: Katahdin Was Terrifying, ¢This would be really beautiful if I wasn¢t miserable¢ -Anya, or Class 2 = Do Not Hike This Mountain We did It! Anya and I hiked Mount Katahdin, the largest mountain in Maine, also the longest continuous rise in altitude on the AT. When I say ¢we did it¢ I mean that we survived by the skin of our teeth! This may sound dramatic, but let me explain. We began our hike at Abol Campground at 7am, having spoken with Paul at the AT Lodge/ Hiker Hostel in Millinocket who also owns the AT caf© down the street. Paul is a really sweet guy with an awesome cat named Yogi who has an affinity for hiker funk. He (Paul, not the cat) lent us two day packs to hike Katahdin with. The ranger station at Katahdin Stream Campground will lend you day packs for the climb. However, we wanted to start at Abol Campground, hike over the mountain to Baxter Peak, and start our southbound thru-hike coming down the Hunt Trail (the official AT route), ending at Katahdin Stream Campground. When we signed in at the camp register (required for all hikers summiting Katahdin), the ranger came out and asked if we had ever hiked the mountain before. ¢No¢ we said, ¢We are hiking to begin a southbound thru-hike.¢ ¢Congratulations¢ she said, nonchalantly gave us a word of advice that I cannot recollect now and then went back into her office. ¢What is the class today?¢ I asked. ¢Class 1 or 2¢ she said, saying that she was listening to the weather report now. Since she seemed done with us, and nothing was said about the warnings between Class 1 and Class 2, we began our hike. Dora (Anya¢s mom) came along for the first fifteen minutes to hike with us before she went back to the car and to Millinocket for the day. The weather report was 30% chance of rain, but Anya and I had hiked in rain before through approximately 60 miles in Georgia. Besides, the sky was kind of blue near the mountain and we even heard some birds chirping. For those of you who do not know the weather class system in Baxter State Park it is as follows: Class 1 = Nice day for hiking.Class 2 = Not recommended for hiking above tree-line.Class 3 = Not recommended for hiking above tree-line (with some trails closed). Class 4 = All trails closed. Do not hike. If caught hiking you could be subject to arrest and to a fine. Okay. It does say ¢not recommended,¢ but in the nonchalant way the ranger threw out Class 1 or 2 after knowing we had never hiked the mountain before we figured it couldn¢t be that bad. After all, we had hiked in a little rain before, it wasn¢t raining now, the sky was blue, birds chirped, what could go wrong? A lot. Class 2 should read: ¢Hike if you¢re insane, the rangers haven¢t yet closed the trails because insane, insane people can hike in these conditions!¢Not yet knowing what was in store we started up the Abol Slide Trail, which we had heard from Paul was the easiest trail up the mountain. Anya had begrudgingly agreed due to the chance of rain to do the Abol; she wanted to do the Knife Edge Trail, I did not.The beginning of the trail was rocky, unlike the trails we were used to in Georgia. The trail then started following a stream. When I say ¢following¢ I mean that the trail WAS the stream. The blue blazes went through the water as we climbed and rock-hopped or just plain stepped in the water for a good mile and a half up the mountain. Then we arrived at the rock slide portion of the aptly named Abol SLIDE Trail, it was foggy up ahead. We picked our way up sandy dirt and over rocks. We passed three middle aged women hiking the trail and said hello. They had hiked Katahdin before but had never hiked up the Abol Trail. They had however done the Hunt/AT Trail, our planned route to hike down from the famous Baxter Peak of Katahdin. They assured us that it wasn¢t too bad and said ¢we¢re old ladies and we did it, you young kids should have no problem.¢ We hiked on, passing them. We never saw the ladies again and assume they turned back. As we went up the mountain the rock slide turned into huge rocks boulders. Also, the wind picked up and it seemed like we were hiking in a cloud. Wind brought misty rain and we donned our rain jackets over our down jackets and pulled the hoods tight. We passed a father and son coming down the mountain. They had turned back deciding against continuing the climb. We pushed on since we figured we would be a the top soon and then we could come down on the Hunt Trail, so we continued into more wet fog. Soon we were scrambling over boulders, the blue blazes were not well marked, and many times we didn¢t know the best way to get over or around a boulder so we heaved ourselves over it. Anya started to get cold. I wondered when we would reach the top since both of our shorts and Capaline long-john pants were soaked. Looking down, the Abol boulder climb looked extremely dangerous to descend, so we pushed on hoping for a glimpse of what was ahead. Above and below was all covered by fog.After what seemed like a long time (really only being about 3.5 miles climbing up, but perhaps made longer with the weather) we reached the ¢tableland,¢ a plateau near the top of the mountain. We had been pelted by misty rain in belts of wind on the way up and thought we had seen the worst of it. We were wrong. The wind on the tableland was powerful. So powerful we had to lean into it as we hiked directly into the wind and my cheeks felt as though they were going to blow open. Anya said that she couldn¢t breathe when she hiked directly into the wind. We stopped sometimes just to hold onto the ground as we felt like we could have blown away. After hiking a while we came to Thoreau Spring. We saw the sign that told us how far and where each trail up the mountain was and it said Baxter Peak was one mile away. We contemplated with that crazy wind we had experienced whether we should go down now, but the wind was better here and neither of us wanted to do this trek up the mountain again just because we missed the mile to summit. We decided to summit Katahdin. After hiking what felt like a lot longer than a mile, We got there and it was so foggy that we could see nothing of the beautiful views we had heard about at Baxter Peak. We turned around and soon I heard voices. Two young guys from Maine had hiked up; they wore shorts and looked ill-prepared. We spoke with them and asked if they had experienced the same wind gusts and rain. They said they did and they had come up the Hunt trail, our descent choice. We kept going feeling better that someone else was as crazy as us hiking up in this wind. We soon passed a large group of guys and then two guys who looked more prepared with rain pants and jackets, also hiking up. We made it with relative ease back to Thoreau Spring and Anya found an abandoned Frisbee on the way which she retrieved. It was an Ultimate Frisbee; we figured they must be playing ¢ultimate¢ Frisbee if they were playing at the top of Katahdin. Believing again that the worse was behind us we snapped some pictures of the signs at Thoreau Spring.While snapping photos we came across a woman from Connecticut, Nikki, who was also making the descent from Baxter peak. She had come up the Hunt Trail and described it as very challenging. She was thinking about descending on the Abol trail, since it is shorter than the Hunt, and we advised against it since we thought it would be very difficult to descend that boulder climb and rock slide, especially on a day like this, and it wasn¢t very clearly marked. She started with us down the Hunt trail and it wasn¢t very far on the flat part of the Hunt that we encountered hurricane like winds. The wind was so strong when you lifted your foot it went in the direction of the wind. Anya hiking poles kept flying out from under her, and we had to stop and get low during large gusts. Anya and I were scared. Nikki told us that nothing she had hiked in Connecticut was like this, and that she had hiked Mount Washington (the most dangerous mountain in the U.S. known its ridiculously fast winds) and she said that it wasn¢t even close to this when she went. Anya and I knew we had to descend since we couldn¢t crouch and hold on the ground for long. We slowly descended after Nikki, who went ahead of us while we decided what to do, all of us agreeing that this was insane, and wondering if this was a Class 2 we would hate to see a Class 3. We found this very dangerous and would not only advise but would strongly dissuade any hiker to hike in these conditions! We finally got to a descent off of the tableland and soon the wind was a little better but still extremely strong considering now we had to climb over rocks hand over had to descend, hanging on for dear life every time a wind gust threatened to throw us into a freefall off the trail. The trail and the wind got a bit better and we could pick our way for a bit between the rocks instead of on top of them. We ran into a young man and an older man hiking up. The young man¢s name is Collin and we found out that he was starting his southbound thru-hike. We introduced ourselves, asked for information about the Hunt Trail ahead of us, and gave him information about the ascent to Katahdin. It was 3:00pm when we ran into them and we hope that the wind that we went through up there was better or at least not worse than when we hiked. Perhaps we will run into Collin later and share stories. Because of the wind and the wet Anya got very cold and if we stopped moving she shivered uncontrollably. I gave her my dry pull over fleece, but it didn¢t seem to help so we had to keep moving. This trail (now the AT with white blazes) was very well marked, which is helpful when you¢re scrambling over rocks and around rocks and there is no clear trail, so we knew where to go more or less for most of the way. The Trail would be a challenge on a clear day. With the wind picking back up and threatening us as we lowered ourselves precariously down the mountain many times sliding down boulders to follow the trail it was terrifying! There were moments when Anya and I got so scared that we were close to breaking down. We supported each other, waited for each other, and encouraged each other and finally after much climbing and fear and adrenaline, made it below tree line. I was never so happy to be under the cover of trees. The wind was much less and we were more protected from the rain, but everything was slippery and wet and saturated with water, as had been the rock faces we had been descending before. To make it worse, Anya¢s shivering seemed to increase and we had to keep moving or she would shake and her teeth would chatter uncontrollably. After much hiking and wondering when we would be at the Katahdin Stream Campground we came to Katahdin Stream Falls. It was a big waterfall coming off of what looked to me to be a river, but was named as a stream. Anya remarked that ¢this would be beautiful if I wasn¢t so miserable.¢ We had to get her out of her wet clothes and warm so we hiked the last mile and found Dora had hiked in a 14 of the last mile to meet us. She had been asking anyone who came off the trail about us and they had informed her of how serious the weather on the mountain was. We SURVIVED!!! We got into the car with the heat blasting and Dora drove us back to the Econolodge to eat, shower and rest. We are grateful to have come out shaken but in relative good health. Anya is asleep, I am clean and fed and we have learned some lessons. We will avoid at all costs, if we can, going above tree line in any inclement weather. We will never hike Katahdin again in a Class 2 warning, if we ever get the guts to hike it again at all. It is serious and very dangerous and we hope that our trip can help other hikers to wait for a clear day, even if the rangers seem nonchalant about it! They are not up there! We also know the value of being prepared. It was very important that we had our essential gear and since we carried day packs our loads were pretty light, but would never not carry essentials in the interest of weight; it could mean your life. It was having some food or water or gloves or a hat that I think helped us to not have an even more near death experience than we had. We know that the AT will not all be like our experience on Katahdin. We know as southbounders we are starting on the harder end. But we hope that our experience on that mountain is the worst experience we have on the AT. We both feared for our lives on multiple occasions and wish they would give more warning from the ranger stations about the weather to hikers.To Better Days, Hikes and Views, JoshuaDay 1- It was very hard. We almost died. I think I was borderline hypothermic. I know I am mildly traumatized. Rain- yes. Mud- none. Bites- none. Wind- nuts. Anya