Thank you to all my VFTT friends for the congrats and the green squares and the emails and phone calls. You guys are all so great and I am happy and lucky to have so many wonderful people in my life. I want to post a special thank you to Jen (Toe Cozy) for driving us and Bound to Portland, for driving all the way to Baxter and still not being upset with me for summitting without her and for always understanding me better than most, you are AWESOME (even the Snackpackers agree)!!! I will be putting up the updates to my trailjournals after the wedding but for now, here is a brief summary of the final leg of our journey.
It took 6 months and 2 days during a seven month time frame to walk 2176 miles through 14 states and I can safely say these were some of the best days of my life. We are back in the “real world” now and trying to readjust to city life and the stress of the final days before our wedding. The final 114.5 miles from Monson to the summit of Katahdin was an interesting journey. It took 8 days. We left Monson mid-morning on Friday Sept 19 with bone crushingly heavy packs on our backs. We had packed 7 to 8 days of food and we felt the weights and saw it affect our miles covered each day. The first 3 days we could barely hike 10 miles a day and our feet were painful and sore. As we ate the food and our packs got lighter we began covering closer to 15+ miles a day.
The weather was amazing for the entire trip through the 100 mile wilderness. We had 2 very cold nights and one misty foggy morning but otherwise we were treated to sunshine and warmth. Brian swam in the ponds and streams, at times 3 times a day, fully justifying his trail name. We spent most of our time towards the end between 2 larger groups of hikers but enjoyed the solitude of the final miles of our journey.
The last 4 days or so, we had our friend Bound hiking with us for much of the time. As we neared the end of the 100 mile wilderness, it had become obvious that our intended summit date of Sept 27 was going to be rained out. We tried unsuccessfully to do 3 consecutive 20+ mile days and resigned ourselves to a foggy, wet, slippery, rainy summit day. However, Friday morning as we passed through the Abol Bridge area near the start of Baxter State Park, we caught a glimpse of the magnificent mountain. It was breathtaking under clear blue skies and surrounded by the most vibrant foliage I have ever seen. To quote Bound . . . “it was a Face Melting View, an FMV”. I was pretty sad that our amazing journey was going to end without views from the top. After resupplying at the camp store, we hiked into Katahdin Stream Campground at the base of the mountain. Those 10 miles took just about 4 hours as the terrain was beautiful and easy.
As we got near the Campground, we saw the weather report for that day and it rated the beautiful clear day as a Class 2 day. This set off a series of panicking thoughts about the possibility that the next day, our summit day, would be a Class 3 day, where we would be prevented from going above tree line and summiting. As we hiked the last 2 or so miles to meet Jen and Adrian, we decided we should make a push for the summit and avoid the issues of weather altogether.
So, with 10 miles already on our feet, we left Jen and Adrian a note explaining why we had to seize this opportunity and apologizing for leaving them behind and started up the mountain at 1pm in the afternoon. We had clear skies and amazing views all the way to the summit. Our pace was slow because we chose to carry full packs to ensure safety on this late day ascent on a day with incoming bad weather. We had to do a lot of difficult climbing with those monstrous packs and reached the summit just around 6pm. After a short picture taking session and some rushed celebration, we left the summit at 6:30pm and headed down into the slowing incoming clouds and mist.
As we descended the boulders, the mist turned to drizzle and eventually to rain. We took our time and stayed close together, helping each other get down safely. It was just before 1 am that we finally returned to Katahdin Stream Campground, bringing to an end our epic day and concluding over 6 months of an amazing adventure. We summitted in typical fashion, at sunset with beautiful views and night hiked our final night of this hike, covering a total of 21 miles in 1 day, the longest day with the biggest bang.
We are excited to be home and stressed beyond explanation as we near the next BIG day in our lives, our wedding day. We took almost 5000 pictures during the last months and I will sort and upload the best few hundred and post a link . . . but of course not until after the wedding.
Thanks again everyone . . . this post has brought me much joy when I have needed it the most.
sli74
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