Thursday, July 11, 2002

Researching this trip, I had read many horror stories about people having to line up in the middle of the night to gain access to Baxter State Park and the trailheads for Mount Katahdin. Fortunately, we ran into several hikers at the Katahdin Inn Motel in Millinocket who said that mid-week access was no problem. As a result, Nathan and I slept "late" until 5:30 when the continental breakfast opened up at the motel, grabbed our breakfasts and ate in the car as we drove to Baxter State Park.

The parking lot at the Abol Creek trailhead (45° 52.434'N, 68° 57.868'W) was less than half full when we arrived. We parked, signed in at the ranger station there, hoisted our day packs onto our backs and set off toward the summit of Mount Katahdin.

The Hunt, or Appalachian, trail is the more common approach up Katahdin from the west side. However, it is over a mile longer each way and I had decided that the steeper Abol trail would be interesting to try. It is a bit less than 4 miles out, and 4,000' up to the summit. What that observation does not say is that 2,500' of that 4,000' is climbed in the middle one mile of the trail! It starts out deceptively enough, meandering gently upward through the trees but after a mile or so, breaks out into a rockslide chute that rapidly turns steeper.

Holmes lists the Abol Trail as "on trail" but acknowledges that it is a strenuous second-class climb. Although thoroughly blazed with blue paint on the rocks, I hesitate to call this a "trail." There is nothing particularly threatening about even the steepest parts, but it definitely is a strenuous scramble up alternating stretches of talus and scree interspersed with desk-sized to car-sized boulders.

Once we reached the ridge, we were very glad that we had taken the more difficult route. The wind was howling out of the northwest and anyone hiking up the Hunt trail would have been exposed to that wind nearly their whole trip up the mountain. We hunkered down briefly in the lee of a rock wall constructed by campers over the years, donned our fleece and Gore-Tex parkas and continued along the ridge toward the summit. Clouds would intermittently drift over the ridge, but the summit was continuously socked in as we approached.

By the time we reached the summit, Nathan was pooped from fighting the 40 MPH winds and zonked out in the shelter of the summit cairn while I set up for our summit photos. The official altitude of the summit (45° 54.265'N, 68° 55.315'W) is 5,268' but the wags who built the 12' cairn now claim it is one mile high. There is no benchmark at the summit, proper, although we did spot one along the ridge before we started up the last fairly steep pitch to the summit.

Fortunately, no one was around to notice my contraband electronic device as I recorded a GPS waypoint at the summit. The powers-that-be at Baxter State Park take a dim view of all things electronic, but I hardly think my momentary use of a silent radio receiver destroyed the wilderness experience for the granite boulders at the summit.

I had originally hoped to find another highpointer who would be doing Katahdin the same day as we were in order to spot a car at the Roaring Brook trailhead. We would have then continued east across the Knife Edge and down the Chimney Pond trail. This would (in theory) have afforded us some different views on our way down. However, given the temperatures in the 40s, winds of 40 MPH and the damp clouds blowing over, we were just as glad not to have to traverse the Knife Edge that day.

As we left the summit and headed back toward the Abol Trail fork, we encountered a couple of other hikers and exchanged photo duties at the sign marking the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail. I asked Nathan whether he would like for me to drive down to Georgia and meet him at the other end, but he declined the invitation at least for the moment.

The clouds lifted briefly on the upper part of the summit ridge and we were able to see far enough over the steep southern face of Mount Katahdin to spot a lingering patch of snow left over from the winter. Having seen snow in the summer around the Rockies and Sierra, but above 10,000', it was interesting to see that any would still be left at only 4,500' or so by July.

As we continued back down the summit ridge, we paused briefly to take a photo of this plaque and the benchmark we had spotted on our way up.

When I looked up from taking the photo of the benchmark, the clouds actually lifted completely off the summit and I wished (fleetingly) that our timing had been just a bit different. However, the clearing was momentary at best and within a minute or two, the clouds had once again descended and blotted out the upper few hundred feet of the mountain.

As we made our way along the ridge, we encountered a steady stream of hikers coming up the Hunt trail. Amazingly (well maybe not), many of them were clad in shorts and t-shirts with no evidence of foul-weather gear or even adequate water for a four or five hour hike. One wonders why did they look a bit like fresh-frozen hiker-cicles?

We spotted the blue blazes marking the Abol Trail as it branches off from the white-blazed Hunt Trail and paused long enough to take one last panorama. (755k file) before we made our way to the edge of the ridge. The scramble back down the rockslide chute was, if anything, more "interesting" than the scramble up, but we made it without incident and arrived back at the car in the same number of pieces as we started.

Eight highpoints attempted, eight completed. A very successful trip! We celebrated the accomplishment with dinner at the "River Driver" restaurant a few miles east of Millinocket. Not inexpensive, but definitely worth the drive and a great place to relax and enjoy a good dinner at the end of the highpointing portion of the trip.