John, Tyler and I were up early on Saturday morning, July 17, 2010, and ready to hike Katahdin before 6:00. So far, the trip had been wonderful - the lean-to site at Roaring Brook was great. I've camped beside brooks before, but this one truly earns its name - Roaring Brook is a fast-running brook with numerous little waterfalls, causing the constant "roar." We worried a little about bugs sleeping in the open-air lean-to, but there were none, and the weather was perfect - we had left the 90 degree humidity at home in Gorham. I would guess it was around 75 up there, with no humidity.
We had arrived Thursday afternoon, after leaving Gorham around 8:30 and taking a side-trip into Corinna to see John's brother Willie's new house. We visited there for a while, continued on our way, and were at Roaring Brook before 3:00 p.m. With a threat of thunderstorms predicted for Friday afternoon, we decided to hike on Saturday, and spent Friday exploring, napping, playing games, and generally relaxing. Tyler spent a lot of time fishing and we had trout for lunch on Friday.
For our hike, we packed five waters and two sandwiches each, plus various snacks like Fiber One bars. Patrick had a water filtering contraption, and I would highly recommend one, because carrying more than five water bottles makes the packs heavy, but five were not enough - Tyler drank 4 1/2 before we reached Baxter Peak. Even with a water filter, you need lots of water, because there is no water above Chimney Pond. On our hike, we didn't find water again until we reached Bear Brook, nine hours after leaving Chimney Pond. (Luckily, we found Patrick waiting there for us, and he was able to fill all of our water bottles for the remaining 1.5 miles of the hike.)
John, Tyler, Patrick and I signed out at Roaring Brook at 6:08 a.m., heading for Chimney Pond. That was a fairly easy hike of 3.3 miles, and we arrived at Chimney Pond at 8:47. After some picture taking and snacking, we headed up Cathedral. (About half way up we decided it was thus named because people on it prayed for it to end.) Climbing boulder after boulder, we took frequent breaks and didn't reach Baxter Peak - elevation 5,267 - until 12:30. Patrick was already there - he was well ahead of Tyler, John and me. While Cathedral was a very rugged 1.6 mile hike, it was pretty much what I expected. I was leary of my ability to hike it, and had some things come up in the weeks before the trip which caused me to not be able to afford good hiking boots, so both Tyler and I hiked in sneakers, which was probably a bad idea, but I'm not sure how much that affected us. John had good boots and was having as difficult a time as Tyler and I did. Anyway, I was happy that we made it to the top and in my opinion, it wasn't that bad. After all, I'm a 45-year old office worker who doesn't exercise regularly, and had only hiked a few times in the past few years. (We had hiked Tumbledown about 6 weeks earlier.) But then it got worse....
While I expected that Cathedral would be tough, I had no idea that the hike from Baxter Peak to Pamola Peak would be so grueling. The Knife Edge trail between Baxter and Pamola Peaks is 1.1 miles, although Patrick reminded me that mileage is measured as the crow flies. It certainly felt much longer. I expected a rocky trail, narrow in areas, and perhaps some climbing/descending over boulders. What I did not expect was that the entire trail consisted of boulders, most of which were pointy and required great balance and careful foot placement; nor did I expect the difficult, dangerous areas in which you had to seek out hand- and toe-holds, carefully pulling yourself or lowering yourself through the trail. We came across a group traveling in the opposite direction, and John mentioned what a beautiful day it was, and how lucky we were to have such good visibility. A fit-looking young woman, panting and puffing, replied that she preferred no visibility, because "I'm afraid of heights!" We laughed and told her she'd picked the wrong trail to hike with her fear of heights, to which she responded "I didn't know I was afraid of heights until today!" I was feeling the same way.
We continued along the Knife Edge trail, up and down over two or three other peaks, and were totally exhausted by the time we reached Pamola around 3:30. Actually, only Patrick and Tyler reached Pamola. Looking at the rock-scaling climb up to Pamola, from where Patrick was waving to us, John, Tyler and I decided we would go a different route. We could clearly see an easier way to get there from where we sat on the peak across from Patrick, so we climbed down to it, then back up via our own trail, where unfortunately the three of us separated. This was the first time I was actually scared during the entire hike - I could see and hear no one, was off the marked trail which I knew was a stupid thing to do, and many of the boulders on which I was climbing moved as I stepped onto them. I was envisioning an avalanche, and was cursing myself for going off the marked trail. Nonetheless, I finally heard John's voice, and saw that he and Tyler were at the top - Tyler had gone to the peak, and John and I weren't far from it, but had short-cutted over to the Helon Taylor trail.
Finally. Done with that damn Knife's Edge and heading down! Yaaayyy!! Right? Wrong. Down was just as difficult. The Helon Taylor trail is 3.2 miles of - you guessed it - more boulders. Up and down, up and down, for that length of time, after already hiking 9 difficult hours, wasn't fun. It's hard on the knees and hips, and our legs were already exhausted from the previous 6+ miles of climbing. We thought the trail would never end, and came across many other hikers who felt the same way. At every spot where the trail would flatten out some, and there was a drop-off ahead, we were convinced that beyond the drop-off we were going to hit tree line and get off these @%)#@&)$#*@ boulders; we were always disappointed to get to the drop-off only to see more boulders on the other side. Even hitting tree line didn't make it better. The trail was very narrow, and the boulders continue until the end.
From the time I started cursing my decision to make this trek - somewhere along the Knife Edge - I just kept putting one foot in front of the other - what else can you do? I refused to look ahead because it was so discouraging, but instead looked behind me periodically and patted myself on the back at how far we had traveled. However, about half-way down Helon Taylor, it became increasingly difficult to put one foot in front of the other - they just didn't want to go. We started scaling rocks backwards - forwards was too painful on the toes, jumping hurt the knees, and going sideways was too painful with my one bad hip. Backwards was the only non-painful way to descend. Because we were so tired, and knew that when hikers are tired, that's when accidents happen, we descended very slowly, and didn't reach Roaring Brook until 7:50 p.m. - nearly 14 hours after we had signed out at 6:08 a.m.
For anyone as out-of-shape as I am, who still wants to attempt this hike, my only recommendation would be to forego the Knife Edge and perhaps take the Hamlin trail down (although I have never hiked the Hamlin trail, so I can't comment on it). Reaching Baxter Peak is an accomplishment in itself, and had we not done the 3-hour grueling hike across the Knife Edge, I think the hike down would have been much more enjoyable.
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