Date: 2008-10-06
From: Stealth site .1 before Hurd Brook Lean-to, ME

To: Katahdin Stream Campsite, Baxter State Park, ME
Miles today: 13.5
Weather: broken clouds

It was a lovely nite, hearing that stream all nite, and I stayed nice and warm. I didn¢t sleep that well at all, as I woke at 3:15 a.m. and my mind was going crazy due to what today and tomorrow are going to be about. I was also hungry (go figure). I finally fell back asleep, but woke again 2 hrs later, so I said screw it, I got up at 5:30 a.m. I started the morning off by headlamp, got my food down, and Howard was still standing guard on the rock. I pulled my tarp over and sat on my hammock and peered into the woods while watching the faint morning light start to change the colors of the forest from black to brown to tan. It was in the upper 30¢s, but there was no wind all nite¢¦totally still.My mind was churning, I was trying to soak all of this in¢¦this was my final morning eating breakfast, this was my final nite stealth camping, my final everything by myself. What, at first, took me a bit to get used to¢¦camping by myself that is, I now treasure, feel safest doing, love in my depths, and I will miss this so much. It is empowering to know you can handle yourself alone out here.I got packed up and was hiking by 7:15 a.m.. I told Karen I¢d be at Katahdin Stream Campground in early afternoon. I had been hoping to make it a little closer to Abol Bridge, but I just couldn¢t pound out more miles each day than I did. And so it goes¢¦.First thing was getting across 2 separate sections of Hurd Brook, which involved boulder hopping and sliding a long dead logs. I went to the lean-to, which was empty already and sat down to read the register. This is the last lean-to on the trail. So the entries were either ¢Woo hoo¢¦my first lean-to,¢ or they were these nostalgic entries by those of us finishing this thing. I¢ll be honest, the thought of being back at the beginning, made me sick. I know sobo¢s at this point are still fired up, still trying to get their first 20 miles in, but knowing what I know¢¦I could NOT imagine being at the beginning again. I signed the register, and stood there to try to notice what seemed like a sacred place for nobo¢s and sobo¢s, and then I moved on.I hiked over a few bumps, but in general, I was zooming¢¦running on pure adrenalin. I mean, I haven¢t felt this excited about a day of hiking in a LONG time. I was convinced a moose sighting was in store today too. I found myself at the end of the 100-Mile Wilderness by 9 a.m., because I was at the warning sign, which is close to the Golden Rd. Just before the Golden Rd. there was more trail magic left b Smiley. I grabbed another Coke and a few packs of Gatorade Powder, and then headed to the road. There¢s a double blaze on the road, but it¢s a bit confusing on where to go, because it looks like a path goes into the woods too. So I got my map out and confirmed, you do roadwalk all the way to and across Abol Bridge, (which I didn¢t see yet).It was a clear, perfect Maine day, and I thought about Flip and Flop who would be summiting today and how perfect of a day they are having. I walked a big and then started laughing. I don¢t know how I get these grand ideas or images in my head of these places along the trail¢¦.so Abol Bridge, I¢d envisioned being something like Bear Mtn. Bridge, which goes over the Hudson River. Abol Bridge goes over the Penobscot River, but this thing is a crappy one-lane bridge with a walking path that looks like it could fall into the river at any moment. There was a big sign at the bridge saying, ¢Moose Inspection Station Ahead.¢ All part of the conspiracy¢¦¢¦I walked to the middle of the bridge and my heart stopped. I had THE trophy view of Mt. Katahdin, totally clear, the Penobscot River and the multi-colored foliage between the two. It made me cry, I couldn¢t believe I was seeing this mountain this closely and that I would climb it tomorrow and that I would be FINISHED tomorrow!!!! No words for this feeling¢¦no words at all. This had to be a Class I day up there, and I took a lot of pictures. I think this is the best picture shot of Mt. Katahdin honestly. I stood there with this stupid grin on my face and hiked across the bridge where I saw the Abol Campground Store. I went in, didn¢t really need anything, but still felt like I just ¢had¢ to buy something here you know? There were 2 sort of good ole¢ boys having morning coffee and talking as good ole¢boys do in the morning, and the woman who worked there. It¢s a small store, but with a descent selection of hiking food and nicky nacky crap too. I was looking at the deli sandwiches in the fridge, but decided to ask if they were fresh. So, today is Monday and I asked if the sandwiches were made fresh.   The lady said they were delivered on Saturday. Hmmm¢¦delivered on Saturday, so chances are they weren¢t made on Saturday. I thought I¢d pass on the sandwich. At this point, I don¢t want to do anything that might get me sick. I did end up buying some peanut M & M¢s and a map of Mt. Katahdin¢s hiking trails, which has more detail and info than my map, which is mostly AT focused.I was almost in a daze, a little lost, not sure what to do. I mean, here I was¢¦at Abol Bridge!! You read and hear about these places forever and when you finally make it, it feels like you¢re supposed to do something there. Weird¢¦I know. I ate some M & M¢s and started walking down the road, but saw no blazes, so I turned around and asked the men in the store which way to go. So you are walking down the Golden Rd., after the store, that road curves to the right and another older road goes straight. You follow that older straight road and then you see a blaze that takes you back into the woods and to a sign that states, ¢Baxter State Park .2.¢ Being here sort of felt like seeing the sign for Springer Mtn. for the first time¢¦not real. I walked down the trail and got another great photo of Katahdin only with a swamp in front. Then I came to the sign saying, ¢Baxter State Park.¢ !! WOW!!!! I¢M HERE!!!!!!! I came to a hiker kiosk where you register saying which trail you¢re hiking, where you¢re camping and it had a bunch of information as well as a weather report from Sunday. That report said it was a Class IV day for Chimney Rocks Trail, but I didn¢t know what that meant for Katahdin. I assumed it was a Class I day for Katahdin due to the perfect weather. I registered and moved on¢¦.hiking on totally flat groomed trail that went right along the Penobscot River and then it forked and you follow the Nesowadnebunk Stream for several miles. There was a high water trail, but I didn¢t take it. I figured the 2 fords couldn¢t be any worse than the one Karen and I did. There were incredible water chutes, slick rock and all, but I could hear traffic so I realized on the other side of the river was the Golden Rd., and I wondered if Karen had driven past me yet. While hiking, I felt a high today that I don¢t think I¢ve felt before. I mean I am in BAXTER STATE PARK HIKING TO THE BASE OF MT. KATAHDIN!!!!!!   And then¢¦a bit after noon, I ran into Smiley, Homeward Bound and her family, and they told me the news that Katahdin had been closed for 4 days due to the snow and ice and there was talk about it not re-opening at all for this year. Ok¢¦insert needle into balloon and deflate¢¦this is what happened to me. My heart sunk deeper than I think it ever had and I realized I had better give some serious mental energy to this ¢what if¢ because I don¢t think I¢d be able to deal with both the cognitive and emotional impact of this possible reality, if Katahdin ended up being closed for the season. I mean really? Am I going to have to get in the car this year, drive all the way back to Virginia and then drive back to Maine next year to finish 5 f¢ing miles!!!!!!   After ALL of this?Wow¢¦.what a downer. I didn¢t have the energy to take pics, I didn¢t care about taking a .1 mile sidetrail to a waterfall, I started feeling pain all over my body again. I was also trying to keep perspective though, which as I¢ve said over and over¢¦is everything out here. I know this exact scenario happened to some people back in 2005 (?) and when they told me the story, they said they went back and analyzed their hike and realized if they¢d just hiked 30 more minutes a day, they would have made it.Well, see folks, I don¢t believe in that tactic¢¦that¢s crying over spilled milk in my book. Given the chance to do this year¢s portion again¢¦I would not change anything. I did what I did, hiked the way I hiked and made the choices I made based upon the here and now, what I needed and what I was capable of in the present. I¢ve successfully prevented ¢the goal¢ from becoming the focus and I am proud to say I¢ve allowed the journey to define my experience, not this one day¢¦of climbing Mt. Katahdin. So I know I¢d be at peace with this aspect, however¢¦.the mind game now is that in the present, the only thing left to do IS climb Mt. Katahdin. So I played the scenario in my head¢¦getting into the car and driving home with this final mountain left, and it put me in a pretty dark place, but I needed to see and feel where it was going to take me.I spent the better part of the lasts 2 hrs of hiking trying to process this situation so that I could try to create a sort of mental and emotional roadmap to follow if I indeed had to negotiate this possible ending. It was not easy, but was so necessary.While going through this, I passed Elbow Pond, no moose, but I started seeing many day hikers. I went over this crazy log/boardwalk thing, which was a little nerve racking because there was some huge group of people on the other side all standing there watching me do this. I about lost my balance twice, but caught myself thankfully.Once I got over, I saw it was a group of Japanese people. I asked their guide what this group was about, and they are a tour group of Tokyo that went through some Alpine Tour company and are all over here exploring some of the beautiful hikes and wilderness areas in the U.S. They climbed Chimney Rocks Trail (another trail that takes you up Katahdin) and one woman in this group is freakin 77 years old!!!Also in the group was a 2005 thru-hiker, a Japanese man named Jackaroo. He told me he so understood what I was feeling like today, and I shared with the group what I had been thinking about, that I was literally in my last mile before reaching the base of Mt. Katahdin, and they all started clapping!! Oh man, I about started crying. How sweet is it that they would celebrate this with me, and they didn¢t even know me. Jackaroo said he really believed they¢d open the mountain again. I hope he¢s right. I got a great pic with all of these people and welcomed them to our country. As I hiked away, I thought, ¢Well, that could have been my biggest spontaneous celebratory moment, marking the end of my hike.¢ I was glad I shared it with them.I got to Tote Rd. and the AT follows this dirt road .5 to Katahdin Stream Campground. You all have to realize this was all bitter sweet for me. I wanted to be elated, I wanted to be ecstatic, but it was so hard not knowing if these were the true final moments of my hike this year.I went down the side road to the campground, saw site #23, saw Karen¢s car and finally saw her. Oh..what a relief, to be hiking to her in the midst of all of this. I yelled over to her and she got a huge smile on her face. It was 2:30 p.m. We hugged and she immediately saw something in my face she described as my looking shut down and my eyes weren¢t animated like normal. I said, ¢I don¢t think the mountain is going to be open tomorrow.¢   Karen had already been keeping up with the closure and already knew when and where to find out about the next day. This too was a bitter sweet moment, I¢d been longing to be at this point, my last location before climbing Katahdin, with her, ready to camp my last nite, and now¢¦.who knew what was happening. I didn¢t know Katahdin had already been shut down for the past 4 days and as of now, we knew there were about 37 hikers waiting around to summit. So it¢s early afternoon, Karen already had her hammock hung, and the temps were dropping, it was grey and windy. She told me it had been in the 30¢s ever nite I¢d been out, and I told her I was ecstatic about how warm her fleece bag liner kept me. What a gem that thing is. I was starving, and she had read my mind and brought me a giant sub sandwich for lunch, so we got into the car and I scarfed it down while listening to Karen¢s adventures from the past few days. She¢d been exploring all of these logging roads and ponds in the area, but after she dropped me off 4 days ago at Kokadjo-B Pond Rd., she headed back down Maine 11 towards Millinocket, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw a cow and calf moose!!! She stopped, they weren¢t startled at all, and Karen got the trophy picture of them standing right next to each other looking back right at the camera. WOW!!! She asked if I¢d seen moose, and I had to report that nope¢¦it never happened. I¢m finished with lunch now and we¢re sort of at a loss of what to do. It was going to be another cold nite, and so we decided, if Katahdin was not going to be open tomorrow either, we¢d pack it up and head into town instead of camping out in these temps (I¢d have to relinquish the fleece liner to her obviously), but it was so early in the afternoon, so Karen goes, ¢Do you want to go see a moose?¢ I¢m like HELL YES!!!!We hopped in the car and she had already found a place in Baxter State Park (on the other side of Mt. Katahdin) called Sandy Stream Pond that pretty much always has moose there in the evening and morning. We took off, and the roads in Baxter are maintained dirt but are very narrow and the speed limit is 20 mph, so it takes a while to get places. We had to drive down to the Togue Pond Gate and then go left and V to get to the other side of the mountain. The trip probably took about 1 hour total, and we got to the parking area at this place. There¢s a campsite and other trails too. I gave Karen shit that it wasn¢t enough that I¢d just hiked almost 60 miles in the past few days, she was making me hike almost 1 more mile now too!Actually, it was .4 to the pond, lots of people were coming and going, telling us of moose there right now. We ran into a park ranger, Bill, who was pretty intense. He gave us a map, explained not to go off trail, and then went into this whole thing about there being 25 photographers there this morning, so if we show up and feel a ¢cloud of angst,¢ just walk away. He said in his opinion, winter was here, based upon the animal behaviors. He said Chucky (the resident woodchuck) was eating grass like crazy. He said he didn¢t think Katahdin was going to re-open this year. Wow¢¦not what I wanted to hear. This guy, who obviously gets automatic respect because of his position of authority, borderlined on being a bit alarmist though, and as we walked away, both Karen and I brought up that we picked up on that energy. Hey, I respect that park rangers know their stuff, they are the ones afterall that work here everyday, but in my opinion, making a huge prediction about the weather/seasons based upon the amounts of grass a single woodchuck was eating¢¦well¢¦it seemed a little too far to stretch for me to give it credibility, so I chose to go with what I knew at the moment, which was that the forecast did call for temps to be back in the 60¢s. So we headed on and were on a boardwalk and then saw a sign saying view point. We followed it, got to the shoreline and there were probably 4 other people there. Sure enough, on the far side of the pond was a cow, standing in the water, dipping her head down and eating!! WOW!! It was BEAUTIFUL!!!!!! Moose are amazing to me, incredible how they¢ve adapted to survive in such harsh conditions. The cold wind was whipping across the pond and I couldn¢t stop looking at her eating. There was a sense of sadness to this all for me too though, because while standing there, hovering over ALL of us was a very snow covered Mt. Katahdin with the sun momentarily peeking through the thick grey clouds that were over it. It was a stunning scene to witness, and Karen said, ¢Wow, you¢re not even aware of the beauty of the scene around us are you?¢ I looked up and realized she was right..I hadn¢t even really panned the view and noticed Katahdin to our left, the pond in front of us, mountains behind it with the foliage, more mountains to the right¢¦.an amazing site. I was distracted in my mind, still processing that this mountain before me was so close and for all I knew¢¦may be completely untouchable to me for this year, and I was watching the moose and freezing my ass off all at the same time. In some way, I was ¢beauty¢d¢ out, just needing more than anything to be done, to be able to go home, to feel a sense of completion, to know I could look ahead and not have this thing still out there. I never expected this to happen honestly and I felt a deep deep sadness in my heart at this moment.We stayed as long as I could stand the cold, and got a few good pics. Apparently we had just missed 4 other moose including a bull moose. I¢ve not seen one of them, but beggers can¢t be choosers you know? I will say, I¢m still sticking to my conspiracy theory though, because after watching this cow for about 30 minutes, I¢m sure I picked out the loop in its movements and I¢m sure it¢s an animatronic robot moose like the animatronic animals they use so much at Disney World. It looked an awful lot like the one I saw at Crawford Notch on the side of the road, so I think they just moved it up here for awhile. Karen agrees and she pointed out you never see them move anything but their heads while feeding.      Anyway, by now it was 5 p.m. and time to drive back to the gate house to see if Katahdin would be open tomorrow. I felt sick driving back there. We pulled up and I hopped out. I asked the woman in the station and she said, ¢No, Mt. Katahdin will not be open tomorrow either, and I¢m a little concerned because we have so many hikers waiting to climb it.¢ I asked her what they were needing to happen in order for it to be safe to climb. She said at least some of the snow and nice needed to melt, not all of it necessarily, but even though today the sun was out a lot, it didn¢t really touch the snow and ice. Oh man, not good news.This did mean, however, that I¢d be clean and warm and fed real food tonight, so I was really trying to find something positive here. I hadn¢t been able to get my body core warm all afternoon, and I felt like puking honestly. We drove back to the campsite and quickly pulled Karen¢s hammock and tarp down (she had done a great job setting up by herself too¢¦damn). She had also purchased a bunch of firewood, but with me riding in the car, we had no room for it, so we gave it to the Canadians in the site next to us, who were there camping just to climb Katahdin too. Before leaving, we walked to the ranger¢s checkpoint at the base of Katahdin, and there¢s a register there. A woman named Lori had left me a wonderful note in the register, and she has been following my journal. Thanks Lori! Karen leafed back in the book and found Persistent¢s entry from 10.4.07, so I snapped a picture of it. It was a little hard to read everyone¢s comments (before 10.3.08) about being finished, realizing the dream, etc. etc. About 5 hikers actually summited on 10.3.08, and they left early in the morning before the mountain was closed at 7 a.m. I heard it was one hell of day up there though.We headed back into Millinocket, checked back in to the good ole¢ Econolodge. It takes 20 minutes from Katahdin Stream Campground to Togue Pond Gate and another 45 minutes from the gate to Millinocket. I wanted to time this because now, if they did open Katahdin, we knew the gate opened at 6 a.m. and I wanted to be there the moment it opened. Here¢s some other things I learned by the way, that I don¢t think is common knowledge for most of us:Togue Pond Gate opens at 5 a.m. in Spring/Summer and 6 a.m. in Fall/WinterBaxter State Park closes only to overnight camping on October 15, but is open for day use after that dateAs long as Mt. Katahdin is safe to climb, you can climb it after October 15, but you can¢t camp in the park overnightTogue Pond Gate closes at 10 p.m. each nite, but if you¢re in the park, you can still get out because the gate is only pinned shut and you can unpin it, swing it open, and repin itI¢m not sharing this information to encourage anyone to do anything unsafe or illegal, but the message I¢ve always gotten is that it¢s impossible to climb Katahdin after Oct. 15, and that¢s not entirely true. As long as the rangers judge it as a Class I or Class II day, you can climb Katahdin as late as the weather permits. I found some hope in this.So we got to town, went to the grocery store to pick up some salads for dinner. When we checked into the Econolodge, we ended up in the same freakin room Karen had checked out of this morning! Geez¢¦and there were only 10 rooms left in the place. In the lobby was huge group of hikers sitting around, drinking and playing cards. I couldn¢t handle feeling the almost desperate energy the place was filled with. We were all on tenter hooks for sure. I took a shower, was beyond exhaustion, felt like puking and had a sinking feeling in my heart. I shot off a few emails to Persistent, V8, and my mom letting the know what was happening. We were supposed to go visit V8 on the way home and be there the day after we summited, but now didn¢t know when that was going to be. I needed to sleep now, and as I closed my eyes in a haze, I told Karen I was not looking forward to waking up in the nite and in the morning¢¦because for the first few seconds upon waking, you are unaware of ¢life,¢ and then in moments you are bombarded with reality and the emotions that are tagged to it. I knew each time I woke, I¢d have to go through that sudden shock of my current reality¢¦.yet another unknown to deal with, only this one¢¦well¢¦..it¢s the worst one of all.You know folks, I¢m trying really hard not to focus on the worst possibility, because I also have the choice to focus on the chance that Katahdin will open, but at this point, I¢ve fought so hard to get here¢¦for what seems to be a never ending amount of time, I just don¢t have an awful lot of fight left in me. I need this to end¢¦.I need to finish.~Certain