Snowman Says: On the AT - Katahdin!

September 21, 2008 | Miles: 5.2
Start: The Birches Campsite, Baxter State Park
End: Mt. Katahdin

We did it!



After a fairly sleepless night, we hit the trail at 7:15. I felt like crap. I was excited, but my body was not. I was dragging. D pratically left me in the dust. After a “discussion,” we slowed down, and I started to hit my stride.

Fittingly, the mountain was in clouds. It was a misty, raw, breezy day on the mountain. It made the climb up less than comfortable as a good deal of the AT is exposed, but once we hit the Tableland and a mile to go, we didn’t care. That final mile is the longest mile on the whole AT. I never thought we’d get to the summit.

At about 10:15, the sign appeared out of the mist. As I took the last couple steps towards the summit sign, I tripped on a rock. I crashed into and ended up underneath the summit sign. It seemed appropriate.

Laughter, tears and cheers ensued. K-Bomb, Mocassin, Enoch, Orangedust, Easy Does It and Slow Train all finished their thruhikes. We had finished our section hike. Four years. We were done.

It was really hard. It was a lot of fun. It was terrible. I wouldn’t change any of it. Honestly, I’m grateful. I owe so many people thanks for getting me all the way through to Katahdin. Obviously, D deserves the lion’s share of the thanks. Without her, I wouldn’t have made it out of Georgia, and I certainly never would have had the persistence to finish this section hike. Of course, without me, she would have had to eat cold dinners the whole way, as she never learned to use the stove. We owe thanks to so many people, it would literally be impossible to list them all. From our closest friends and family who supported us every step to the people we never met who left coolers of soda at trailheads, so many people made this journey possible. No one can do it alone. Really, the AT is all about the people. The Trail doesn’t care about you, but by hiking the Trail, you realize that so many people do. And, you find yourself caring about so many other people. I was just as happy to finish my own hike as I was to see the others that summited that day finish theirs—and 2 of them I’d only met 12 hours prior. The goal was to hike from Georgia to Maine, but it ended up being the people we met along the way that made the journey so worthwhile and so amazing.

Oh yeah, I’m never hiking again.