Date: 2010-10-10
From: Katahdin Stream Campground

To: Katahdin, Summit Day
Miles today: 0.0
Weather: clear sky

Katahdin   Today is the day. If all goes well I will summit to end my thru hike.   Barry my brother came up last night to summit with me today. I was very excited that he did this. It meant a lot to me. I was hoping my wife would be excited about it to and want to see me but that is another entry and disappointment to write about later. Anyways me and my brother were a little concerned because of the snow, winds, and tempts that we had heard about above the tree line. I was a little more worried for him because I had already experienced this in the Whites so I knew how I thought it would be. Barry brought two winter coats. I had thought it was to much but the more I though about it I realized he was not acclimated to the weather like we were. I carried one of his winter coats in my pack for him. I did not want to regret not bringing it later.   I ran into Ups on the hike up this morning, she told me that this was her third attempt at summiting. Her partner Sideways gave up after two and said he was not going to try again. She said the winds were to bad the last two days. She said that compared to the last two days from where we were right now it was nothing. That made me feel better. That good feeling did not last long because we ran into about 20 or so day walkers heading back down who said they turned around because the winds were bad. That had us a little concerned again. The one thing that we did notice however was that not thru hikers had turned around.   When we got to the bolder field there were people turning around at that spot. I knew this would be the point where we would make the decision to keep going or to turn around. I really did not want to turn around after making it this far. We all stopped and added an extra layer of clothing. I was the first one up and over the first ledge. The wind grabbed me, I was expecting it but it still caught me off guard. I was nervous for about the first 10 minutes or so. I had no desire to turn back though. When I saw that Barry was Ok with continuing I kept going. We made it to what we thought was the Table Lands but when we pulled ourselves up and over the top we realized it was the bottom of the Hunt Spur. We were bummed out. We all stopped here because there was a wind block and we had our lunch. While were eating Cat Dog came up and sat and ate with us. Last time I saw her she was southbound in Monson. I asked her why she came back and summited again. She said she wanted to summit again be and share the excited of the summit with other hikers again. A few of us were skettical of that though because of what we heard back in Monson. Someone in the Riff Raff group told us that 151 and her had hit it off and were caught necking. It just so happened that 151 was summiting today, what a coincidence.   We had heard from one person today that summited and came back down that you had to walk at a 45 degree angle into the wind until you got to the summit. When we got to the Table Lands it was not the case for us. DC had been hiking with us since we started the bolder field. We all stopped at the top of the Table Lands known as the Gateway and took pictures. Yeti and Sequoia came up while we were there and we all took pictures.   The Table Lands looked like a long walk once we were up there. It is only about one mile though. There was a large section of the trail on the Table Lands that was ropped off and it said to please stay on the trail. The problem with this is it was a solid sheet of ice in spots. It made it difficult with the winds to walk on this ice. For safety reason we had to walk off to the side of the trail where there was no ice. When we got to the little climb that started us up to the summit it had a coating of snow on it. Barry and I were walking ahead with DC and Hopper in tow about 40 yards behind. I heard DC yell back to Hopper "are you alright" and then saw him running towards her. She was laying on the ground trying to get up. She said she was alright but had bumped her head pretty good and landed on her knee also.   We could see there were a lot of hikers at the top. I started to get emotional but was able to control it. When we got to the top we got the hoots and hollors and congradulations. There must have been 35 or more people at the top. I have not had time to go through my pictures to get an actual count.   There was liquor being passed around. I expected champain but was shocked at all the hard liquor at the summit. Then there were two individuals that got pretty wasted. We left the summit to head down about 1:30. We knew it could take possibly four hours getting down if the wind picked up. We did not want to get stuck in the dark at the bottom part of the mountain. Some of the thru hikers had been up there for a couple of hours already.   On the summit with us were The Colnel, Krazy Fox, Lazy, Buisy, 151, Cat Dog, Purdy, Burl, Big R, Fish, Superman, Tunes, Tootsie Pop, Ups, Detour (Ups frend), Q Tip, Tom Thumb, Hopper, Barry (my brother). There may be other thu hikers that I am fogetting and there were also many day walkers.   The trip back down and across the Table Lands was uneventful. We ran into Bismarck and Blue Sky on the way down. They took too long at the campground at the bottom and were late starting out. This caused them to miss a lot of the thru hikers at the summit.   When we got to the Gateway I was in the lead going down. The wind was not as bad as it was going up. I was slow going down trying to be careful of my knees. I had also been a long day with all the emotions when I hit the suimmit and now the facing the reality that my hike was over once I reached the bottom. When we reached the bottom of the Hunt Spur we stopped and took a break. We were all dreading going down over the edge of the bolder field because of the winds we had experienced coming up and over it. We were worried over nothing. There was practically no wind going down and it was a lot easier going down.   Barry had a lot of energy going down and would continuely disapear out of sight in front of us. It reminded me of bringing kids along. He did wait up for us every once and a while. On the last mile stretch he seemed to peter out.   We reach the end at 5:26 pm. Barry went to his car and we told him that I was going to the ranger station and register and get my 2,000 miler application. I went to the ranger station and registered and got my application, then I had to swing by Rob's site and visit him. I also got a large wall map of the Appalachian Trail, you could not beat the price at $4.95. When we got back to the car Barry was gone. He left without saying anything or even leaving a note. We ran into Lazy and Busy and asked what there plans were for the night. They had no plans so I asked if they wanted our lean-to site that we had for the night. They gladly excepted it. We decided to head to go to Millinocket for the night because of the fall Hopper took at the top. Her knee was turning a little black and blue. We also wanted to sit in a hot tub.   Once I had cell phone service again I got ahold of Barry. He was heading to the motel. We went there and them met up to go to dinner. We went out to eat at the Scootic Inn again. This time I ordered some steamed clams for an apitizer then I ordered a lobster for the main course. It was a very good meal. At dinner with the three of us tonight were Llano, Swift, Tiger Lilly, The Colnel, Krazy Fox, Big R.   After dinner the three of us went back to the motel and all went to the hot tub to rerlax.   It was a long day and we all went to bed early.