Summit Day
From The Cabin, the rest of our trip through Maine was a whirlwind. We had taken several days off to recover from New Hampshire, so we hurried to stay ahead of the next blob of hikers and beat the cold of late Fall.
We were very fortunate to have two weeks of mostly clear and warm weather on our dash to the finish line.
The final section before Baxter State Park was the Hundred Mile Wilderness. In this area there is no road traffic and scant phone service, so no resupply unless you pre-arrange and pay a premium for it.
A new feature of the trail in Maine was river fords. For most of them we took off our hiking shoes and waded. One had a bridge on an alternate route. The Kennebec River had a free ferry canoe operating during the day.
Before long we were getting distant views of Mount Katahdin standing tall over the horizon.
In the final week before reaching Baxter State Park, we hiked 140 miles, an average of 20 miles per day. The final two days the terrain mellowed out, and our mileages were 27.6 and 31.0. This hurt a lot, but we wanted to finish strong and camp with our friends.
After a day of rest, we set out to climb the mountain. We stayed with Pickup's family for a night and were dropped off at Abol Bridge Campground, right at the edge of the park, at 7:30 in the morning.
After checking in with the rangers, we started up the Hunt trail, a 5.2 mile hike with ramping slope and difficulty. Sometimes we were climbing straight up piles of boulders.
The view from the trail was beautiful. We looked back over hundreds of miles we had crossed.
Finally we reached the top. There were about 50 hikers sitting on the rocks, and we waited in line for our pictures.
This was a long time coming, almost 170 days. Now we travel together to Boston and then go our separate ways. Pickup and Strider return to work, I return to New Jersey to make up my lost miles. We traveled together from Franklin, NC, over 2,000 miles behind us.
There's still more to say about my trip. I have a lot to say about New Hampshire, and now that our mad dash is over maybe I can take more time for writing. Until then, know that the trails are happy and there are plenty more sunsets to walk into.
