Mount Katahdin

Up at 6:45, I took a short hike and saw a terrific view of Mt. Katahdin, all pink and snow covered in the morning sunlight. Dave and I thrashed around with unfamiliar gear trying to make it fit in newly acquired sleds. In the end we purged a mess of food and got started around 9:30. After some confusion, we finally found the unmarked trailhead up the hill a ways. Still within sight of the vehicles, we had our first sled breakdown. Dave’s borrowed sled rolled over and one of the pvc poles snapped. Those familiar with towing sleds, or pulks, might already be familiar with the construction technique of running a rope through the pvc piping and attaching the rope to both the sled and the harness. Anyway, that made it a simple matter to repair the sled; I wielded the sawblade from my Swiss Army knife and liberated a nice splint from a nearby gray birch. OK, ten o’clock and we’ve covered the first hundred yards of our thirteen mile slog into Roaring Brook, where there is (thank God) a snug bunkhouse waiting for us, and which should have a cheery fire going too, as the others are likely to beat us there.

Bill had the foresight to discuss trail signals for the run up. We settled on three sticks in the trail indicating any turns at intersections. This proved handy as we crossed the winter trail over to the Perimeter Road, as there were a few junctures not shown on the map. We turned right onto the road and skied with skins on the snowmobile route, packed into hard ice by the motorized traffic. The temperatures climbed toward 50 degrees and it became difficult to find places to stow all the layers of clothing we knew we’d need on the following days. We reached the Togue Pond Gatehouse and stopped for lunch. Everyone was there and in good spirits. Only 8 miles to go.

Me and my sled at Abol Bridge	Bill just past Togue Pond Gatehouse

We trudged along Roaring Brook Road, the snow a bit better because only the park rangers get to run snowmobiles on it. About 20 minutes up the road, the ranger stopped to talk to us. He said there would be no one up at either of the cabins because it was supposed to rain a couple of inches tomorrow and it would be just plain yucky for those poor rangers in their heated cabins. I looked at the sky, no clouds, no wind, just a pleasant warm day. I said to Dave “How on earth could you predict such weather for tomorrow?”

So anyway we trudged. And trudged. And trudged some more. We trudged as the sun slanted through the afternoon sky and turned the snow blue. We trudged as the sun finally dipped under the horizon and lit the hills all pink. We trudged as the moon came up, playing hide and seek behind the skeletons of trees that studded the hillsides. In our weary anticipation, big snow-covered boulders loomed out of the woods, looking like cabins and bunkhouses, with smoke pouring from their chimneys, only to revert to boulders on approach. And on we trudged.

Well it wasn’t really that bad, but it did get kinda old. Dave brought up the notion of “type 2 fun”, that which is not really fun until it’s over, then it’s fun to talk about. This was a type 2 day. Later, when our legs ached with each step and we were sick of our imagined buildings being nothing at all, Dave downgraded it to type 3 fun, or no fun at all. Well, of course that only lasted until we stopped for a little fuel, got on the other side of a Clif bar and he pulled out a nice silver flask, from which we took a “nip of courage”. It had got so long, trudging along in the moonlight, that when we finally reached the bunkhouse, we were skeptical, but there it was, and only 7PM, so we had plenty of time to pop open a couple of foolishly transported beers and plan our next day.

The bunkhouse was cozy and welcome, though I’m glad there were no more of us than 6. Officially there is the capacity for ten, but we would have been tripping all over each other. The woodstove was plenty good for cooking over and so our fuel situation was in no danger. We all took a turn at skipping on down to the brook for a pail of water. I brought my filter along and filtered a mess of drinking water, topping off any bottle I could find.

As predicted, the morning arrived gray. The ranger suggested we do our traveling early, so as to avoid the heaviest of rain. He also mentioned that the creek bed we had planned to ski on would likely be more of a kayak run and the rain was likely to beat any snow to crap. I left my skis at the cabin. After snowshoeing a bit, and the sled feeling more like a kedge anchor than a sled, I stopped for another purge. I pulled out a trash bag and filled it with items that earlier seemed important but now looked evil. I tied the bundle up and hid it under some brush near a bridge. I’m sure it helped some, but I still think it would have been less effort to merely tie a rope to my pack and drag it down the trail. Today’s trip was much shorter, only 3.5 miles, but steeper, as we would gain 1500 feet today, as opposed to the 1000 feet we gained yesterday.

Why me?

The rain pelted us. It came down in sheets. I was happy to have a new pair of rain pants, it’s been years since I’ve had rain pants that actually worked. On the way, we came to Basin Pond, which normally forms part of the winter route up. With all the mild weather, there were patches of open water so we took the upland route, steep, off camber, fulla rocks and a real sled muncher. I found myself straining at the waist belt, unable to move the sled forward. I had to step back and lean into the hill, almost touch my nose to the ground before that hernia-block of a sled would move forward. A few times I noticed a slight increase in resistance, turned, and saw the sled had rolled over. A slight increase. It was somewhere along this stretch that I felt that inevitable but disheartening dribble of cold water that had finally made it’s way past my hood, into my collar and on down to my polypro boxers. I was soaked. We were soaked. Anyone who wasn’t soaked to the bone was a God Damned Liar.

Once again, me and Dave were last reaching the bunkhouse. The Chimney Pond bunkhouse is much like the other one, but somehow seems to have less room inside. We entered a steamy jungle of smocks and trousers that snatched at our faces as we tried to navigate toward whatever bunks may be empty. Had I my machete with me, everyone would have been wearing ragged shorts and sleeveless coats the next day. Once again, all was well and we boiled rice and curried slop over the woodstove and settled in to planning the next day, our one chance to reach the summit. Based on ranger advice, we chose the Hamlin Ridge Trail as the safest route. Marian was our token peak-bagger. She had already bagged all the Northeast’s 4,000 footers in summer and had 113 of the 115 peaks in winter. The two remaining were Hamlin and Baxter, which we could see from the window. We knew the wind would blow the current low pressure system away and ring in the new high, with it’s characteristic plummeting temps. We adjusted our expectations and settled on Hamlin Peak for the morrow.

Marian cooking in tight quarters

Perhaps now is a good time to describe the gang that came along on this trip. There were six of us. I had actually camped with Marshall Moore, if crawling off drunk into a tent on the same riverside beach as he camped counts as camping together. Marshall will apologize for his shortcomings while pulling a gourmet pizza out of thin air. While you stride purposefully along, his cautious gait somehow puts him a half mile ahead of you. There’s no accounting for it, I’m going to have to reread Einstein’s concepts on the space-time continuum to see if there’s a way that this can be explained. Marian was a latecomer to the trip, one who Marshall vouched would not slow us down. He was right, as you have read already, she is an accomplished peak bagger and was always the first out of the gate to start traveling. These two were plenty experienced in lugging pulks along.

Next I’ll describe Martin and Bill. The first time I met Martin was at my wife’s Christmas party. Martin wore a flashing bowtie of mistletoe under his chin and a silly grin. The perfect assassin. No one would suspect. Well, except for his British accent and talk of car bonnets and such. Martin invited his friend Bill, and both had done this trip before. Many, many years before. Or at least attempted it. These guys opted to travel light, without sleds or snowshoes. Bill, being tall and lanky, took two strides for my every three. Needless to say, these guys were first up and first down every time.

Then there’s me and Dave. Dave is a heck of a telemark skier and I led him to think there would be some awesome skiing on this trip. And there would have been had the weather been anything but what we got. Warm, heavy rain in the middle of winter, way up North just wasn’t what I expected. As it was, no one took so much as one telly turn the whole trip. Me and Dave both way over-packed and so took our places at the rear of the pack. But heck, we ate good. Me, well, I always wanted to do this trip and never got invited so I just up and made reservations. And after all these good folk decided to join me, I got to go. Nyah!

So Sunday morning dawned bright, windy and cold. I was up at 5 and clanked around the stove, rekindling the fire and starting coffee. It was 5 below. Thank goodness I listened to Bill and coiled up the rope I left lying in a puddle out front. The previous night we found ourselves punching through the snow and into almost a foot of water with every step out to the outhouse. Not so this morning. On my journey out, I wished the folks could have stepped in a more orderly fashion, as the deep footprints were hard to follow, almost like a home dance lesson. As I sat on the frosty toilet seat, warm memories of staying in a teepee with my buddy Joe came back to me. He used to hang the toilet seat near the woodstove so it would be nice and warm for the trip out to the “shouse”. This one was so cold I was afraid my hiney would stick like a tongue to a mailbox.

We all gathered together and compared foot health. Somehow I had managed to wear the skin off my shins. Martin’s heels almost made me throw up, his blisters were so big. Bill was busy cutting donut holes in his moleskin to take the load off his blisters. We all bandaged up and set out for Hamlin Ridge. Mostly we snow-shoed but Dave and Bill took skis with climbing skins. I was the first to drop out. I thought the pain of my shins against the boot would leaven as I settled in to the hike. But no, each step continued to plague me. Dave decided to opt out at the same time, as he was having gear issues. So we turned back, lunched and relaxed. A short time later Marshall came back, having reached tree line and been blown over too many times. He said the wind snatched his glove away and sent it 50 yards over the horizon. Yes, a fine day for a stroll. The other three kept at it, crawling along the ridge, keeping to the lee side where they could, braving the howling wind when necessary. They finally turned back a half mile from the peak. The wind felt like it was between 50 and 70 miles an hour.

Meanwhile, we at Chimney Pond hiked around and looked at various sites. Marshall and I hiked over to Blueberry Knoll and enjoyed the view and the wind from there. When the others got back we had dinner and went out under the stars to visit Chimney Pond and have some cocoa. We looked at the summit that turned us back but I felt like it was a successful trip, good for the soul. It was time to get back, we had a long day ahead of us the next day.

Once again I was up before first light and all breakfasted before anyone else got up. I was packed and ready to go at seven, but was the only one. Finally I started out at eight, though not everyone was quite ready. We had seventeen miles to travel and I was anxious to see what the brook looked like, as the rangers had reported it was flooded and impassible. I hiked “barefoot”, no skis or snowshoes on my feet. The weather was cold but dry and I enjoyed the downhill hike - for a good fifteen minutes before we hit the dreaded Dry Pond Brook. As predicted by the ranger, the record-breaking rainstorm had caused the normally dry brook to flood. I looked at the trail blazes across 30 feet of cascading water. We thought about building a bridge but as Marshall said, “In this weather, if you go in it would be instant frost bite and you would lose some extremities.” So we bushwhacked the quarter mile through dense spruce. At a few places, I had to study the ground in front of me for footprints to see which way the trail went. There was no way that the sleds were going through so we unloaded them and had to make several trips. Everyone helped get the stuff through but it still took an hour and a half. Seventeen miles was starting to look kinda long. We repacked and headed on down the trail. Dave’s sled was completely destroyed so he tied the sled to his pack and had to lean on Marshall to carry some of his gear. We made it to Roaring Brook about 1 PM and stopped for lunch and sled repairs. A few more “splints”, lots of duct tape and some extra line and Dave had his sled back in service. All of the sleds took a pounding on this trip.

I retrieved my skis and traded boots with Dave, thinking maybe his T-1’s would be kinder towards my sore shins. We shoved off at 2:30, only 13 more miles to go. Hmm, where’d I put that flashlight? We skied on klister and made some decent mileage. I found that I could not skate with the sled, it had too much drag. So I repacked, shouldering my big pack and leaving loose, light items on the sled. My load became much more bearable, more like a small moose carcass than a sack full of anvils.

We got to the gatehouse after dark and my feet had had it with those ski boots. The trail was much flatter down here so I traded my skiing for barefooting it again. The last four miles were easy enough, just tedious. We finally busted out of the woods at 9:30, thirteen and a half hours after I started this morning.

Well, they say that adversity makes you strong. The next day I was so well-muscled I could hardly get out of bed.

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Your pal, Hal