5/24/06 – Mount Katahdin, ME – Abol Trail

7.8 miles, 4000'


Drive to Maine & Cadillac Mountain

Erin had her 10-year high school reunion to attend in Exeter, New Hampshire, over Memorial Day weekend. I had been planning on attending for a while because I was so interested in meeting the people and seeing the place that made for such a formative experience in Erin's life. Even the mountains in New Hampshire were formative for Erin; Mount Washington was her first peak! Of course, we took this trip to New Hampshire as an opportunity to visit some of New England's state highpoints. I had only been to New England once before, and that was a brief one-night trip to Boston while I was figuring out where to attend college, so I was excited to explore a part of the country that I had never seen before. Our priority was Maine's Mount Katahdin, but we hoped to get some more highpoints while we there. We only had three days to ourselves before the reunion, so I thought efficiency would be the order of the week. As it turned out, we'd be quite inefficient in our driving – we'd put over 1400 miles on our rental car before we returned it – but the trip was a success nonetheless.

Our flight got to Boston late Monday night, and we drove up to Concord before getting a hotel, arriving there a little after midnight. The weather forecasts weren't too thrilling, so we decided to give ourselves the best possible shot at Katahdin by attempting the peak on Wednesday, leaving us with Thursday to try again if the weather held us back. Since we had a whole day for the drive to Maine, we decided to drive up Mount Washington first. If Katahdin blessed us with good enough weather on Wednesday, we could then come back and climb Mount Washington on foot the next day. If not, at least I could say that I've been to Mount Washington, even if I hadn't climbed it. As we drew near Mount Washington Tuesday morning, the clouds enveloping the Whites and the low snowline had us concerned, but as we pulled up to the base of the Mt. Washington Auto Road, an "Open" flag flying from the entry station greeted us. Once we started talking to the attendant, however, we saw that our fears were not misplaced. Washington, he explained, had received 14 inches of fresh snow the day before, and they only had the road open to timberline. That turnaround spot was subject to be moved to a lower elevation if the weather didn't hold, and people were not permitted to park their vehicles to attempt to hike the rest of the way to the summit. What a letdown! He said the road to the summit hadn't been open all season, so I was regretting that I hadn't called ahead of time.

With those plans dashed, we pointed the car north and started heading for US-2, our route into Maine. I quickly used Erin's cell phone to call Baxter State Park's ranger station to make sure that we weren't driving to Katahdin in vain. We found out that they had opened the Abol Trail to Katahdin's summit on May 15th, but that other trails and campgrounds were still closed. The ranger also said that hikers have to commit to both ascending and descending via the same route. I didn't know anything about the Abol Trail, but Katahdin here we come! The drive through western central Maine was gorgeous as we crossed countless rivers and streams and passed through endless forest. We arrived in the paper milling town of Rumford, where we saw the impressive cascades of the Androscoggin River at Rumford Falls. We continued along meandering US-2 before switching to state highways for a few miles to get to the Interstate more quickly. It was early afternoon as we approached Bangor, and I realized that with our Mount Washington detour cut short, we would get to Millinocket, Maine, rather early in the day. Acadia National Park, the country's easternmost national park, appeared to be only an hour out of Bangor, and look, a road that leads to the park's highest point, Cadillac Mountain! We were sold. As I'd find out later, Cadillac is both the tallest mountain on the US's eastern seaboard and the Hancock County highpoint.

We stopped by the visitor's center before beginning the drive to the summit. We found ourselves wishing we had more time to spend in Acadia. The rugged terrain on the island would have been fun to explore on foot, and the park map indicated that the trails are plentiful. The park is mostly located on an island, Mount Desert Island (though the locals pronounce it as if it were spelled "Dessert"), which juts out into the Atlantic Ocean. Glaciation made polished knobs out of the island's summits and carved deep, north/south gouges into the island leaving it with a series of long lakes and a sound splitting up its granite core. As the car climbed toward the summit, views opened up down to the main town on the island, Bar Harbor, and the nearby islands called The Porcupines. At the summit, the view of the ocean was panoramic, and so different from the summit views I've grown accustomed to in Colorado. After wandering around for a bit, we noticed that the true summit appeared to be not at the knob where the road ends and all of us tourists were flocked, but a short walk away near a radio tower. Once over there, we found the benchmark confirming we were at the highest point. We remained here in relative solitude, enjoying the views, before we got back in the car. We had asked people in the park where to go for some good food in Bar Harbor, and we were told to visit the Fish House Grill. We found the restaurant, which was situated right on the harbor next to a beautiful hotel, and we got our lobster fix after sampling some of the locally brewed ale. We were stuffed once we left! Along the drive to Millinocket, we saw a moose troweling for food in the boggy Interstate median. We got to town just as the day turned to dusk, and we stopped at the first motel we saw.


Katahdin climb & other New England highpoints

We woke up at 5:30 the next morning for the drive to Baxter State Park. Let me take a moment to offer up three cheers to Percival Baxter. He made it his lifelong mission to create a park including Katahdin, and when he couldn't accomplish this through legislative means during his time in Augusta as a state representative, state senator, and governor, he bought the land himself in a series of deft transactions. Baxter State Park remains the largest state park ever donated by an individual. For more on Baxter's quest, I thought this article at American Heritage was excellent: The Man Who Loved Wilderness.

When we got to the park entrance, we registered and paid our fee at the ranger station, and the park employee explained to us that we must take the Abol Trail and only the Abol Trail, and he warned us that our route would follow a "rockslide". We also found out the round trip mileage for this hike is much shorter than the route that the Wingers describe in their highpoint. We were correct to presume that this would mean a steeper climb, but neither of us realized just how relentless the ascent would be. We hit the trail at 7:30 just before a large group of fifteen pulled up in a few vans, so we raced on ahead to preserve our solitude. The trail starts off easily enough, but before long, running water had taken over the trail. The water was regularly several inches deep and punctuated with deeper pools, so our rockhopping began much earlier than we had been expecting. Once we got away from the water, the trail transitioned directly into the Abol Rockslide, a steep 2000-foot gully that leads straight up part of Katahdin's south face all the way to the summit plateau. The lower section of the rockslide was interesting because it cuts this rocky swath through the trees. Meanwhile, the first views of our expansive forested surroundings were beginning to open up.

The relentless ascent up talus was taking a lot out of us, but we were still pleased with our pace. With the route's steepness on our side, we were hitting a 1500'/hour pace as we drew nearer the cloud-enshrouded summit plateau. When we'd stop to take a breath, the views behind us were outstanding. Looking upon the incredible size and number of the lakes brought to mind the quote I had read of Thoreau's from Katahdin where he said the view resembled a "mirror broken into a thousand fragments."

We've done some hiking in Pennsylvania since January, but it's tough to gain more than a thousand feet at a time. So it felt good to be climbing a mountain of some significance for the first time since early this year. As we neared the top of the gully, the scrambling got tougher with some definite class 3 here and there. The route is well-marked, but I imagine that if you get off-route, the rock would get much looser and more treacherous. We topped out in the area of the summit plateau known as Tableland Flats with very little visibility. While it wasn't very cold, we still needed to layer up here to keep the winds at bay. When the trail pulled more to the left than up the peak, we found ourselves wondering whether we were heading in the right direction until we came across a signed junction pointing the way to the last 600' of the climb. It was a different world up here with low grasses and rime ice covering everything. We even had a small snowfield to cross along the way.

The lack of visibility kept us guessing when we'd reach the top, but finally we saw the sign atop the summit. We took a break and were impressed with the fiercesome drop-offs to the north. We'll have to come back here someday when the weather's better. It has to be spectacular looking down to Chimney Pond, nestled in the cirque north of the peak! As we returned to Tableland Flats, we bumped into an older lady who said she's climbed Katahdin more times than she can count. She was able to illuminate the reason why all other trails were closed. She explained that though the rangers could open the Helon Taylor/Knife Edge trail, they don't do so until the area around Chimney Pond has melted out (she said it was still under three feet of snow). They manage that fragile timberline area by barring all access until the ground is less saturated and muddy, and since people could descend from the Helon Taylor Trail to Chimney Pond, that means that the trail remains closed until they consider Chimney Pond ready for use. Similarly, the route that the Appalachian Trail takes to Katahdin was closed because the remaining road to the Katahdin Stream Campground was too muddy.

We started the descent, carefully picking our way through the boulders until we reached the gully. The loose rock demanded our concentration, especially since we hadn't hiked down talus like this in quite some time. About halfway down the mountain, we bumped into the large group that had arrived at the campground that morning when Erin and I were departing. It was actually a group of middle school girls from outside Portland, Maine, led by a trio of chaperones. The group of fifteen had just split into two groups because some of the girls were having more trouble than the others. The lead chaperone said that she's taken girls up this route in previous years, but I have to admit I'd never take that many children up a steep and demanding route like this. I can't imagine being responsible for them all! When we got to the latter group, one of the girls had lost it. She was crying, saying that she doesn't want to go any further, and just all around frightened. She let out a scream when the woman in front of her lost her footing momentarily. I wonder how much further the group made it. They still had a long way to go, and it was already past noon when we passed by. We proceeded down the Abol rockslide and reentered the trees. We weren't looking forward to hiking on the stream-trail again, but it went much more quickly during the descent than on the ascent. We got back to campground and the car at 2:25, completing a seven-hour round trip.

As we drove away from the Abol Campground, we stopped at Stump Pond to gawk at a trio of moose in the shallow water. There was a bull and a cow scavenging for food and a calf treading water. Further along at Abol Pond, we got our one and only distant view of Katahdin. To our surprise, I think we could see our route, a grey gash in the otherwise forested slope. As we were signing out at the entrance station, we asked the ranger when the black flies start getting bad. She and I had noticed these smallish black flies all over us while we were packing up the car, but since they didn't bite us, we assumed that they were some other bug. The ranger said that we had indeed encountered the dreaded black flies. He explained that if it had been sunnier and the temperature had risen, they would have gone after us.

Earlier during the hike out, the two of us had decided that our plan to return to New Hampshire on Thursday for Mount Washington had a good chance of failing, and I admit that we were also feeling pretty beat while coming down the mountain. Instead of Washington we opted to visit some of the other New England highpoints with our remaining time. After Katahdin, we drove on that afternoon and evening all the way to Fitchburg, Massachusetts, where we stopped for the night. I had forgotten all about it, but as we were checking in at the Super 8, the Lost recap show was on, which meant that the finale would start in a half-hour. We both hurriedly got showered in time to watch the excellent finish to the season before going to bed.

The next day we took a beautiful drive through northern Massachusetts, stopping in North Adams for lunch before driving to the summit of Mount Greylock. Scores of backpackers were resting atop Greylock's denuded summit while we wandered around and learned, among other things, that Greylock is almost 600 miles from Katahdin via the Appalachian Trail even though the distance is about half that as the bird flies! Next up was a steamer of a hike to Connecticut's highpoint. That hike requires that you reach the top of two named peaks, Round Mountain and Mount Frissell (where we saw Gerry Roach's familiar signature from two days earlier), before descending to the highest point in Connecticut. The tortured sedimentary rock and blooming trillium flowers were the highlights of that short hike before we returned to New Hampshire for Erin's reunion. Before our flight back to Pittsburgh on Sunday, we drove down to the Rhode Island HP, Jerimoth Hill. In 2005, that state's highpoint received some new owners, and they allow access every weekend from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. So all things told, we picked up four state highpoints during our trip. We're thinking about returning later this summer for Mounts Marcy, Mansfield, and Washington to finish off New England.