Summiting Mount Katahdin

 We had been planning a trip up to Baxter State Park since we first got to Maine. The weather there can be pretty harsh, so we decided to wait until later in the summer before doing it sooner. Our short trip consisted of a 3 day, 2 night stay. Camping next to the beautiful Moosehead Lake in Lily Bay State Park. 

The drive up from Cushing to Lily Bay was nice. Google maps took us North through Newport, Guilford and Greenville. After almost 3 hours of driving we made a stop in Greenville at the Northwoods Outfitters. It’s an outfitter store with a cafe attached to it. We poked around and ended up finding a GREAT deal on two Patagonia Nano Puff jackets (Little did we know how glad we would be to have these on our hike the next day)!

The campsites at Lily Bay were wonderful! Set in a large spruce and pine forest that was surrounded by the lake. Our specific spot (203) was spread out, flat, easy to navigate, and to top it all off we basically had our own private beach. The lakeshore wasn’t even 15 yards from where we pitched our tent! Sarah found a handful of colorful rocks along the shore.  We hit the hay before 7pm that evening. Tomorrow would be quite the day for us, so rest took precedence over anything else.

The alarm went off at 2:30am. We had the campsite broken down and packed within 15 minutes. Baxter was almost another 2 hour drive north from our campsite, so we’d have to leave Lily Bay by 3am. Hiking Mount Katahdin is no small task. The earlier you can start the better. I also was not sure of how the road conditions would be. GPS said it would take us a few hours to go 55 miles. We quickly learned why. After leaving our campsite, the road we were on quickly turned to rough, chunky gravel. We’d stay on this for the next 45+ miles! Driving on roads like this you always have these thoughts like “Man, I hope I don’t break down out here”..  Absolutely ZERO cell service, haven’t passed a house or anything for miles. It really was just the worst case scenario..

Well, I think we spoke too soon. Just after 4am, we made a right turn at an intersection onto the famous Golden Road. We still had about an hour left when we started to hear a loud hissing noise coming from the driver side of our FJ. GREAT. We definitely jinxed ourselves. We hit something and blew a hole in our front left tire. Sarah and I both looked at each other in a bit of shock. Not sure what we hit, but it punctured our tire leaving a hole the size of a dime. After about 20 minutes (and many mosquito bites later) we had the tire changed and went back on the road. The sky was just starting to brighten up from the rising sun which began to illuminate the scenery we had been driving through. Passing by large evergreen forests surrounding the banks of all the lakes and rivers. The sunrise made the area that much more beautiful.  

The gatehouse for Baxter doesn’t open until 6am. We got there about 15 minutes before it opened, so we took advantage of the time to pack our backpacks, eat a snack and go over the trails we were planning on taking up and back down. 

Once the gate finally opened, we headed straight over to the Katahdin Stream Campground to find parking. From here we would follow the Appalachian Trail also known as the Hunt Trail to the Summit of Katahdin.

 It would take 5 miles with over 4,000ft of climbing to reach the top. 

The climbing began right from the start. For the first mile it was just a gradual uphill through the evergreens following the river. Eventually the trail starts becoming more of a scramble than anything else, especially once we broke the treeline. We were climbing around, through, over and under boulders that were the size of a large vehicle! 

The weather was also pretty brutal. Sustained 30mph winds made the temperature drop to almost 30 degrees. Which was a bit of a change from the short sleeve weather we had started the hike in. Luckily we had planned ahead for this and brought with us hats, gloves, and jackets (Remember the nano puffs we picked up? Life saver.).  This made the hiking extremely slow going though. It took us almost 4 hours to reach the top of the ridge where we crossed Thoreau Spring before making the final trek up to the Summit of Katahdin. 

The feeling of walking up to the sign at the summit was amazing. Having grown up about an hour from where the AT starts on Springer Mountain, I had always thought I’d walk up Katahdin at the end of a thru-hike. This definitely didn’t take away from anything though (Just means we need to thru-hike the AT so we can hit everything in between). The views are STUNNING from the top. Being able to look back down across the ridges you had climbed up and would soon be descending was pretty incredible. Definitely did not feel like anywhere else we have been on the east coast. It was surprisingly busy at the top. People had come up from basically every trail. Even saw a group of thru-hikers making their way to the summit to finish their hike!

We decided to descend down the Abol Trail making our hike a loop rather than doing an out and back on the Hunt Trail. This trail would be a bit steeper, but it would get us quite a bit faster. It was almost 2 miles less in distance. As soon as you come off the top and begin going down, it DROPS. A lot. 

Taking you down a giant boulder field of loose rock and dirt for about 1.5 miles. It was very important to be cautious going down this trail. One wrong step would send you bouncing down for a while. Eventually though, the trail turns to a less technical dirt trail. It looked like the park service has been doing a lot of trail maintenance which really helped speed up our descent. The trail ended in the Abol Campground, and from that point it was just an easy 2 mile road walk back to the car. 

After almost 8 hours of hiking we finished. 

The total mileage was about 11.5 with over 4,500ft of climbing!

We stopped at the North Woods Trading Post just a few miles outside of Baxter State Park. This place has some really neat souvenirs and the best tasting panini we've ever had (Maybe that opinion is slightly influenced by the 8 hour hike we just finished). 

We opted to stay off the gravel roads and took the long way back to our campsite in Lily Bay. Arriving back at the campground by 7pm, we enjoyed the sunset on our private beach, cooked our freeze dried meals, and drank an old fashioned by the campfire. Tomorrow we head back home and start packing for mountain biking in Vermont as we finish up our time here in the  northeast.