Barefoot on Mount Katahdin

After enjoying the hike up Mountain Washington, Maine’s own gem of a peak, Mt Katahdin, came into view on our adventure radar. 

Heidi called ahead to make reservations for camping in Baxter State Park, home of Maine’s largest peak, and discovered the first major roadblock. It was a familiar issue at this point — BaseCamp was too big… Too heavy for Mexico, too tall for many bridges, and now too wide for Baxter State Park’s 200,000 + acre wilderness. 

After discussing options such as borrowing a car, or staying in a hostel with a shuttle bus into the park, we settled on another workaround. An analysis of the map showed that the Appalachian Trail enters the park from the southwest side. The AT’s beginning, or end, depending on the thru-hiker’s direction, just happens to be Mt Katahdin. Provided we could find parking outside the park at the Abol Bridge, we could hop on the AT and access Katahdin! 

I called the Abol Bridge Store and got permission to park BaseCamp for a few days. Then we packed our backpacks and boarded our bus for the trip to The Maine North Woods. The scenery was stunning as fall foliage gave way to dense pine forests.

Upon parking BaseCamp we began to notice serious looking hikers mulling about the tiny roadside store at Abol Bridge. We would come to learn that these were the fabled thru hikers of the AT. 

We set off on the ~9 mile hike to the Katahdin Stream Campground via the Blueberry Ledge Trail. Early on in the trek Zev began experiencing gut pain, and slowed to a hunched over snail’s pace. We started diagnosing worst case scenarios, like appendicitis, and were minutes away from making the call to turn around, when nature called, and the bowels were relieved. Zevy was a new man! 

We checked in with the Katahdin Stream Campground ranger upon arrival, and were invited to an informational talk at the AT hiker campsite along the Tote Road. After setting up camp we backtracked to attend the talk, which was mostly geared towards the thru hikers that were a day away from completing their epic journey from Georgia north. After the talk, as we were leaving, a late arrival that had been sitting outside the ring of benches, reached out and handed Zev a small stone elephant figurine. Zev looked at it, puzzled, and the stranger said, “That has kept me company since Georgia.” He had the unmistakable AT hang tag on his pack. “Hope to see you tomorrow,” he said.

Kai, Cove, and Zev were suddenly intrigued by these, “thru hikers,” and the questions came flooding in. “Where did they start? How long did it take them to get here? How do we become thru hikers?”

The following day we packed only what we needed for the summit hike, and left early on the 11 mile round trip adventure. About halfway up the trees were stunted and the views became expansive. Steep rock had us looking up at what appeared to be the summit, but upon reaching the top, we were merely looking out at an alpine plateau that lead ever upward.

Looking back, we noticed a lone hiker gaining on us. He looked familiar. It was the stranger from the day before. Zev had brought the small figurine in hopes of crossing paths with the thru hiker. He reached into his pocket and produced the small elephant to show the man. We made introductions, and learned that his trail name was Lantana. Together we hiked for the summit. 

The top was momentous for our crew, but we couldn’t help but notice the lack of celebration on Lantana’s face. Cove exclaimed, “You must be so happy to have completed the entire AT!” Lantana thought for a moment, and replied, “Not really, it has become my life, so what now?” We thought about that and Cove followed it up with, “What are you planning on doing now?” Lantana shrugged, and said, “I think I’ll hike back down into the 100 Mile Wilderness. I have enough food, and I have friends that are still on the trail that I want to see.” 

This enigmatic character had the boys captivated. “Do you think we could do the AT barefoot, Dad?”