| Mile | 2127.9 |
| Miles Since Last Update | 5.3 |
| Day | 160 |
Barely slept. Woke up at 3 am. Tore out of camp as fast as I could. My goal was to get to the scrambling section of the katahdin climb before the sun rose.
Got to treeline and chilled for a bit. Notyet caught up to me and we sat a while and reminisced. We’d met on trail over 5 months ago and this would be our final day on it.
The scrambling up the hunt trail was kind of wild. Very steep. Very small rebar holds that had to be relied on to prevent 20+ foot falls. Adrenaline was kicking in pretty hard though and I didn’t find the section really “difficult”.
We had agreed to all wait at the gateway, where the trail levels out for the final mile. I sat there for a while. Katahdin is a different mountain than anything else on trail. The surrounding landscape is very flat. You can see 4000+ feet down very clearly. Notyet caught up again, we reminisced some more, knowing the last mile would be a cakewalk physically, but not mentally.
The group caught up and we all pushed to the summit together. It was very eerie. It felt like the quietest the trail had ever been. At this point we weren’t rushing to camp, or to get miles done before our food ran out, or to make a shuttle or anything like that. It was just a very calm walk to the end. It felt like something that shouldn’t be happening.
And then we got there. We’d all gotten up early enough that the weekend crowd was not there yet. It was still very quiet and stayed that way for a long time. Was nice. Being up early paid off.
We took the pictures and sat up top for a while. I kept thinking some kind of overwhelming wave of emotion would hit me, but it never really did. We were done, kind of.
Crowds started showing up shortly after. The descent recommended to us was via the abol trail, which is less dangerously scramble-y, but much steeper. It no longer felt like I was done. It took a couple more hours to get down and get into Millinocket.
Staying at an Airbnb with Notyet, Piph, Chris, SlimJim and Digs. We’ll all part ways pretty soon here and I’ll miss them a lot.
Guess I’m done now. Need to hop thru a bunch of hops to get out of Millinocket but it’s not really the trail anymore.
My feet hurt.