the next day we got an early start on another landmark day — 5 months on the trail!! we couldn’t believe it. we were warned by another hiker, southbound, that the upcoming climb was nasty, and the mud we would encounter afterwards would be up to our thighs. riiiiiiiight…the climb was quickly over and felt like nothing – not sure if it really was that easy, or if we were just flying high on the excitement that was increasing daily. and yes, there was quite a bit of mud, but we’d become pretty proficient at the fancy footwork necessary in avoiding the worst of it. though burglar takes the cake for the most original method of getting through a particularly sloppy section. i’m hiking along peacefully, when i suddenly here what can only be described as the sound of someone running, with surprising speed, through squooshy, deep mud. i look up and sure enough, that’s exactly what i see — hamburglar running (trying to run) with high knees across a little “highway of mud”. i wish i’d had a video camera! it left me doubled over laughing for a minute before i could plot my own way around it. so, a bit of fun, but no thigh-deep muck for us. we pretty much flew through the day, with a few short stops to eat and get water with the rest of our merry crew. we hiked along rainbow lake for a decent section, then up to rainbow ledges where we had yet another view of katahdin, growing bigger and bigger as we drew closer and closer.
another highlight from the ledges were the big, fat, juicy blueberries, just begging us to stop and pick them. i mean really, these were the most massive blueberries i’ve ever seen. even up in “blueberry country” in northwestern wisconsin where my family has a cabin, nothing compares to these. so after we stuffed our faces with berry goodness, we headed on. we were amazed that it was 2:00 and we only had 6 miles to go to abol bridge and end our 23 mile day — it felt fantastic. with one last stop at the hurd brook shelter for some water, we cruised on out of the 100-mile wilderness.
crossing the bridge, we finally got to see just how close to the big mountain we really were — it literally took my breath away.
katahdin from abol bridge
from there, we made a beeline for the camp store where we all proceeded to stuff our faces — chips, dip, hot dogs, donuts, soda, beer — so good!!
fooooooooood!!!!!
being the weekend, and the fact that the weather was FINALLY good, both campgrounds there were pretty full. but we managed to find spots for everyone and settled in for a nice evening. pipper, forest gimp, rabbit, and stripe were planning to summit the next day (8/17), but we, along with sage, sailboat, and rhino, decided to stick with our original plan of summiting on the 18th.
stripe woke us up at 4:30AM as he headed out for his big finish and it finally started to sink in that this whole adventure was really coming to an end. we slept in a bit and with the help of sailboat’s sisters (who made the long drive up to help watch ginger — no dogs allowed in baxter state park), we all slackpacked the 10 miles from abol bridge to katahdin stream campground, right at the base of the mountain. we had quite the gathering that night. some of the guys went into millinocket to get food and beer for a proper celebration, and found mouth in town! he hopped right in the car and joined us at the campground. stripe and his family drove out that evening to say hi — strange to see him all clean and in normal clothes!
it was a beautiful, windy evening and we just hoped that rhino’s confident prediction that the wind was bringing clear weather (stripe and co. had summited in a cloud…) would hold true and we’d have a perfect day on katahdin the next morning.
