September 20-30

9/20

Spent most of the day in Monson, running a couple errands and watching some college football on the TV at Shaw's. Stopped in a little gallery for local artists and crafts-types. Sure sign you're in a small town: the key is still in the galley door as you walk in.

Finally got out of town around 5ish, and I just make about 2 miles into the 100-mile wilderness before setting up camp. It's really become noticeable how much earlier it's getting dark. It just seems like yesterday that I could put in full days hiking, going until 7 or 8 at night, with dark not falling until 9. Now, it's getting dark much earlier; really cutting into walking time. I packed a calzone out of town to eat for my first night's dinner. It was awesome ... except for the fact that since I'm now in the 100-mile wilderness, I'll be packing a wad of used tinfoil for the next 98 miles.

9/21

First full day in the 100-mile, and I see a moose! A huge bull about 20 yards away. An amazing sight; it's an absolute privilege to be in the presence of an animal like that. Unfortunately, he ran as soon as he saw me, so I didn't get a decent photo at all. Still, a huge thrill.

Also unfortunately, I took a nasty fall late on in the afternoon. I'll blame my heavy pack (7 days' food) for throwing me my balance off. I have a really sore hip, from where I fell right onto a rock, which will no doubt be sporting a lovely bruise for several days. Sore, I stop after only doing 7 miles; this is not a good thing to be doing when I'm still 91 miles from resupply.

9/22

Lots of uphill today, about 3000 feet of climbing. some really beautiful country, though, and the weather has been perfect: sunny, highs of about 62, cold but not frigid nights. I'm loving Maine. Sorry, fuller description later.

9/23

In a lot of places up here, especially above about 1500-2,000 feet or so, you're walking through extremely dense and very mossy pine forest. Except for the trail itself, which is only about 3 or 4 feet wide in places, the moss just covers everything; the ground, the boulders, the dead trees lying on the ground. It's like someone dropped a green shag carpet over the whole mountain. just cutting holes where the trees stick through. And the trees are so thick in these sections of the forest that walking off the trail is impossible. I can't imagine how they got up here to make the trail; visibility looking into the woods is only about 20 feet, and you'd have to be cutting down a tree for every foot of new trail.

It's also remarkable in two other ways. First is the smell -- an overwhelming pine scent, combined with the earthy moss. It's pleasant, but very, very strong. Pour Pine-sol into a bag of peat, and stick your head inside to simulate it, I suppose. the other thing I notice is the sound, or lack thereof. Especially when there's no wind, it's just amazingly quiet. There are no leaves to rustle, on the trees or on the ground, and the moss seems to soak up all sound. You can yell, and it sounds like you're in a room covered with acoustical tile on the walls. It's actually kind of eerie.

Late in the day, I ford the Pleasant River. This is one of the other things about the AT in Maine; there is water everywhere. Ponds, creeks and rivers everywhere. In some places, you have no choice but to get wet fording across a stream/river. The Pleasant River is about 30 yards wide, and about 2-4 feet deep. That may not sound like much, but when you're already carrying a pack, when the rocks on the bottom are mossy and slippery, when the water is running fast, even a knee-high stream can be very dicey. Oh, and it's so cold that your feet will be nearly numb after just a couple of minutes. In some places, there's a rope strung across the river so you can hang on to it with one hand to get your balance; though truthfully, they don't help much. Just gotta go slow and be careful.

9/24

Spent half a day on a side-trip to a place called Gulf Hagas. It's essentially a gorge (more accurately, a series of gorges) cut deep into a mountain of slate. In some places it's gotta be 150 feet deep or more. Very beautiful, though I'm not sure if it was worth the 5 miles of extra walking to see it, plus all the time taking photos.

After that, it's a long uphill slog. WhiteCap mountain at 3500 feet is the next-to-last mountain on the trail -- the last being Katahdin at the end. In between is about 70 miles of mostly flat ground (at least in terms of no major elevation gains; I'm sure it ain't no parking lot).

I camp a bit short of Whitecap tonight, with a crowd. This is the first time in a while I've camped with anyone -- I've basically been setting up by myself wherever I am when it starts getting towards dark. There's about ten people here at a campsite, several of them good friends that I haven't seen in awhile; Hoot and Sundance, Brahma and Sweet Potato, Gonzo and Mike. Guess that was the upside of taking the sidetrip -- all of these people caught up to me in the last hour of the day. We get a campfire going and hang out well after dark.

9/ 25

Summit White Cap Mountain this morning, and on yet another gorgeous clear day I get my first view of Katahdin, resting 70 trail miles away (Maybe only 40 by air). It's an exhilarating moment. After that, the trail descends the rest of the day. As always, a change in altitude brings about a change in climate. Down under 3000 feet or so, the forest is not conifers, but beech, birch, oak, aspen and maple. And it has all gone to glory. The leaves have been turning slowly over the last few weeks, but it seems like this week nature has really hit her stride. The birch leaves are a dusky yellow when fully turned, but an ethereal chartreuse when still in the process. The oaks turn various shades of orange, from almost-yellow to almost-red. Other trees are maroon and brown. And then there are the sugar maples, the exhibitionists of the forest, who put on a bright red so shameless that if it were a lipstick no decent woman would wear it. All this is under a cloudless powder blue sky.

At night, the sky continues clear, and the stars are children hiding in a dark closet, their faces shining with joy when they are finally found. Miles and miles away from any road or human habitation, there is no background noise or light. even most of the birds have flown south for the winter. A jet flying by, tens of thousands of feet above, is clearly visible and audible. A loon calling across the lake sounds like a roaring lion.

9/26

Alas, the perfect weather is coming to an end. Have heard word through the grapevine in the last couple of days that there is heavy rain a-comin', supposedly a hurricane or something. I'm pretty skeptical of weather warnings on the trail; you're usually getting someone telling you what someone else heard on the radio three days ago. But for what it's worth, this is supposed to be bad. More tellingly, the sky is clouded over this morning.

So I decide to head for White House Landing. WHL is the only bit of civilization near the trail in the 100 mile wilderness. It's a place that is mostly geared to the hunting & fishing types (some of whom will lay in here via floatplane), and has a bunkhouse, cabins, and best of all, food. They serve a one-pound cheeseburger that's supposed to be fantastic. It's over a mile off the trail to get to it, which is never fun, but after 5 days, with bad weather supposedly hitting tonight, I'm ready to walk an extra 1.2 for a warm bed and a cheeseburger.

Of course, that 1.2 comes at the end of 16 AT miles. Luckily, though, the terrain here is the easiest I've had since ... geez, Vermont, at least. It's rocky and rooty, but no big uphills or downhills, so I can really make time. Starting early, I kill the 17 miles by 5:30 in the afternoon. Had to make it early, because the only way to reach WHL is by boat, and the boat stops running at dark (which is bout 6:30). The way it works is that you follow the trail from the AT down to Pemadumcook Lake, across which you can see a few small buildings. There's an airhorn tied to a tree; you give it blast, and they come across in a boat to pick you up. Cool.

There are 4 hikers here. One of them is Ravon, who I first met right after the Smokies, way back in Tennessee, but who got ahead of me when I went off the trail for a week near Erwin, and who stayed ahead of me all the way until Monson. When I met her the first time, she was with her husband, who was hiking with her for a few days. Now she's with her daughter, who's along for the 100-mile wilderness. It's always cool to see how you never know who you're going to run into. Someone falls ahead or behind, and you say "see you up the trail." You might see them again tomorrow and every day for a week; or you might not see them for three months; or never again at all.

Within half an hour of reaching the Landing, I'm plowing into my one-pound burger. I also take care of the potato chips, plus two slices of pizza, two apples, and a full pint of Ben and Jerry's. I get the weather report; there is a hurricane coming through, and we're going to get at least some of it.

9/27

Get up this morning to rain. Not heavy, but cold drizzle most of last night, and low, heavy clouds. The forecast is for heavy rains starting this afternoon and continuing all night. So my choices are to hike out into what will soon by heavy rain, or stay here, in front of a woodburning stove on the shores of a lake, reading a paperback, eating apples picked straight from the orchard. Yeah, it's a zero day.

9/28

Alas, I think I may have taken the wrong day to zero. After drizzling yesterday morning, it stopped raining in the afternoon and didn't start again until well after dark. It wouldn't have been a terrible day to hike at all. But this morning, it's raining steadily, and looks to keep doing so all day. Oh, well. There are five of us that take the boat back across the lake, and hike back to the trail.

It rains all day. Lets up a few times, but never really stops until very late in the day. By midafternoon, I'm pretty much soaked all the way through. Slippery going in all the mud and on the rocks, but fairly easy hiking nonetheless. Cover 17 miles before stopping at Rainbow Stream Lean-to. It's actually kind of cool, though, when you can be soaked to skin in your clothes, to the point where you can literally pour the water out of your shoes, but then go into your pack and find that you've succeeded in keeping your gear dry, and that you'll be be warm and snug all night. Makes you wanna look at the sky and taunt nature. "That all you got?"

9/29

Oooof course ... the next morning when you get up and realize that you gotta put on all the same wet clothes you took off yesterday. Nasty. But it's all ok, because this is the day I make it out of the wilderness. Pretty uneventful day, really. A little bit more rain in the morning, and cloudy all day, I still make great time, and by 4:30, I've done 16 miles, and I finally see the sign, facing north ... "you are now entering the 100-mile wilderness. There is no resupply until Monson..." Sweet.

From there it's a few hundred yards to Golden Road, and from there another few hundred yards to Abol Bridge. Golden Road which is just a dirt road running through the woods, mostly used by logging trucks, and Abol Bridge is nothing but a bridge and a campground -- the latter of which, though, has a camp store, and that's pretty damn golden right now. I spend an hour here, eating two sandwiches and a bag of doritos (a full-sized one, not one of those wimpy little things), and drinking soda, coffee and beer.

But I've gotta make a choice now. I get a weather forecast for the next few days, and I find out that tomorrow (Tuesday) is supposed to be partly sunny, but that they're calling for more rain Wednesday and Thursday. When it's raining, they can and often do close the trails up Katahdin. even when the trails aren't closed, rock climbing in the rain is dicey, and summitting of a big mountain with no view is anticlimactic, anyway. If I don't summit tomorrow, I might be stuck around here for two or three days waiting for the weather.

So, an hour before dark falls, I start walking towards Katahdin. Via the AT it's ten miles to the campground at the base of the mountain, but there's a shortcut that's only five. I've been blue-blazing since May, so why stop now. Unfortunately, the shortcut turns out to be pretty much all tangled roots. With everything still wet from three days of rain, and with almost no light (new moon + clouds), it's not fun hiking, and I wonder several times if the official route might not have been easier. In the end, I make it to the last shelter on the AT after 10 p.m. at night, having done 21 miles. I'm actually not very tired; it's all adrenaline, I guess. I summit tomorrow.

9/30

Slate gray cloudy this morning. Absolutely no view of the mountain from the bottom. But it's not raining, and it looks to be another cool-but-not cold day. I'll take it, and hope the clouds on the peak blow away.

There is a crowd here. Because of the rain the last few days, there are several people who were ahead of me who have been hanging around Millinocket (the nearest town) for a few days waiting to summit. Very cool to be around good friends on a day like this.

The hike up Katahdin is the hardest extended climb on the AT. Over five miles of trail, you go up 4000 feet; the better part of a vertical mile. Lots of steep rock climbs, hand-over-hand boulder scrambles. In several places, there's rebar drilled into the mountain to give you handholds; there probably could stand to be a few more. As always, the rock climbs are especially tough for shorter people. At one point, I come up on Vigil Auntie and Y, two women hikers, struggling up a smooth rock face. We make it up only when I provide them a foothold (my hand) to get ahead, and they return the favor by giving me a tug up. One nice thing that helps a lot, though is that I'm not carrying my full pack. The Ranger station at the base of the mountain very graciously offers loaner daypacks to thru-hikers. I leave my full pack at the station, and I'm just carrying lunch, water, and camera. 8 pounds instead of 30 sounds great when you're going straight up.

The weather never does turn. The sun peeks out a couple of times, but it's mostly just a long walk up into the clouds. Part of the effect of that is that I never really get a sense of how far I am from the top. On a couple of occasions, I think I've almost made it, only to realize I'm nowhere near. But close to noon, I start hearing whooping and shouting up ahead in the mist, and I know I've made it. It's a huge crowd up here; people who have been stuck waiting for the rain to stop, and several who have skipped ahead to get the summit in before the rain coming tomorrow.

It's a cool feeling to see the summit of the last mountain. It's cool to finally see that sign you've seen in so many other people's photos. When you get there and you've got two dozen people shouting your name as you walk the last few hundred yards ... well, that's pretty special.

We all hang out for awhile, taking photos, exchanging email addresses, passing around scotch and champagne, talking about what we'll be doing next week, next month, next year.

Slowly, the crowd thins as people start heading down the mountain via different routes. I stay for awhile, and am rewarded by seeing more people come up. Ravon and her daughter make it up, as well as Bogey and Bacall, two sixty-somethings who are among the most popular hikers on the trail. True to personality and their trail names, they bring costumes to the summit for the photo -- he puts on a dinner jacket and fedora, she a purple dress and a boa. Alas, I am not nearly so creative. I just get a couple pictures leaning against the sign, and that's enough.

I walk down slowly; around 2:30, the sun finally comes out for a bit. The idea of running back to the peak comes to me, briefly, before I discard it. I'm done.