"The mountain seemed a vast aggregation of loose rocks, as if some time it had rained rocks, and they lay as they fell on the mountain sides, nowhere fairly at rest, but leaning on each other, all rocking-stones, with cavities between, but scarcely any soil or smoother shelf.." (Thoreau, The Maine Woods, 1864).
Before three weeks ago, I had never heard of Mt. Katahdin let alone Henry David Thoreau. But on July 28, I found myself sitting in a car driving to Maine's Baxter State Park not knowing exactly what I was getting myself into. My family had decided to climb Mt. Katahdin, one of the most challenging mountains in the East, that morning. Mt. Katahdin sits at the center of Baxter State Park's 209,501 acres and looms 5,276 feet above the whole park.
We were about twenty miles away when I got my first glimpse of Mt. Katahdin. I couldn't believe that I would be climbing that monstrosity. Three quarters of the way up, the mountain disappeared into clouds. But my dad, who had climbed Mt. Katahdin when he was younger, was excited to try it again, so I figured that it couldn't be that bad.
After entering the park and speaking to the rangers, we were told that the only trail that was open was Abol because it was supposed to take between 7 and 8 hours roundtrip and it was already noon. Frankly, I didn't believe that a 7.6 mile hike would take seven hours, but the rangers kept giving us warnings about time. They eyed my skater shoes with disapproval.
Twenty minutes later we were parked and ready to go. We packed some water in a backpack and started up the trailhead and into the woods. The first part of the trail was 1.8 miles to the tree line through a heavily wooded trail that turned out to be quite steep. My mom and my sister decided to turn back after about one mile but my dad and I continued up the trail. As it got steeper, we often had to jump from one side of the trail to the other to avoid small streams that had started from the previous night's rain.
Finally, after an hour of stumbling over wet rocks in skater shoes, the trees began to thin and I could see the top of the mountain; it was still covered in clouds. After another half hour of hard hiking, the trail widened out to about the size of a road--a nearly vertical road covered with car-sized boulders--and all the trees were gone. We had reached the Abol trail slide.
We slowly started trekking up this steep trail. Climbing over the boulders was hard and in between we had to watch our footing carefully for fear of falling on the loose stones that lay everywhere, not properly held in the ground by the sand that ran up the mountain. We doggedly scrambled up this treacherous trail, often having to jump from one rock and throw out our hands to grasp at an even bigger rock, while contemplating the fall in between the two rocks.
I finally pulled myself over the edge of a rock that had been taunting me from a distance for a while and was ready to throw my hands up in triumph when I saw that I was still not on the summit of the mountain. I sagged to my knees, half laughing at myself for thinking that this was the end. But this was the Tableland, a large flat plain sprinkled randomly with rocks, where Abol Trail meets the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. In the middle of this plain was Thoreau Springs, a marker for the spot at which Thoreau ended his climb. I quickly read the sign and looked up. The clouds had cleared away. There it was, Baxter Peak, the summit of Mt. Katahdin, one rocky mile away.
Once again we started off, looking out to our right, where the Tableland falls away to a drop of over 4,000 feet. We gradually neared Baxter Peak passing people who looked tired but elated that they had made it up the mountain. And then, we were there at the top, the very end. It was spectacular. We could see the ocean, a million lakes, and every other mountain in Maine.
We stayed just long enough to take a few pictures before we started back down. It was 4:30 pm. We needed to head back right away.
Back at the top of the Abol trail slide, I looked down and groaned. The thought of what the Katahdin map had said about this trail, "...not recommended for descent by inexperienced hikers" had me worried. Nevertheless, I started down the class IV trail (always dangerous, falls can be fatal) because I didn't really have a choice.
We had to slide down the trail on our butts because many of the rocks were too smooth to walk on. The going was slow but we kept at it, stopping only once to find out that we had run out of water.
After struggling down the slide for a while, I saw the welcome sight of a tree. We were nearing the tree line. We were able to stand up and hike once we were back in the forest. We made good time going down after that. We emerged from the woods at 6:30. We had done the hike in 6 hours--not bad for a kid in skater shoes.
Because of bad weather, Thoreau never made it to the summit, but I bet he would have liked the view.
Gabe Ryan--Home-schooled
