So the last time I left off, I had been diagnosed with what the doctors thought was Giardia. Well, the day following my initial doctor’s visit, I received a call from their office saying that my stool sample came back positive for something called shigatoxin, which is often present in e. coli cases. The woman on the phone said that, due to the potential seriousness of the illness, the Maine CDC was now going to step in and handle my case. I also needed to come back in for blood and urine samples for a full set of tests that were going to be run by the CDC. The following day I went back and submitted my samples and was told I’d need to wait 2 days to hear anything further. The weekend was approaching and I had to make a decision regarding my hiking plans. I needed to be in Monson, Maine, quite a bit up the trail, on Sunday so I could hike the 60 miles from there through the 100-mile wilderness to meet my sister on Friday. My illness wasn’t getting any better, so the options were either hiking with swampass and hoping I get better, or getting a ride to Bangor to hole up in a hotel, recuperate and wait for my sister to arrive. I was deliberating while sitting in the park adjacent to Rangeley lake when a freak thing occurred. I somehow managed to slam my sockless heel against the sharp edge of some wooden decking, cutting a 1.5 inch gash in the skin above my achilles. It seemed like someone was trying to tell me something. A hotel in Bangor it would be.
Bob, the friendly owner of Goose Pond Lodge in Rangeley gave me a ride to Bangor for the sum of $180. It was a 3 hour ride to Bangor and it was going to chew up a good chunk of his day, so that didn’t seem all that unreasonable. Not knowing anything about Bangor’s geography, I chose one of the cheaper hotels I could find since I’d be staying there all week. I quickly regretted this decision when Bob dropped me off at the Super8, which is located on the far outskirts of Bangor, near the airport. It clearly wasn’t an area where you could walk to much. After I arrived, I called around to a few of the bike shops to see if anyone rented bikes in the town. The town was only six miles across and would be easily navigable on a bike. After several calls, no dice. I then looked into the option of moving hotels to somewhere near the commerce area, better known as the mall. At least I could walk to Chili’s, Applebee’s, or TGI Chotschky’s. Sadly, most places were $90 or better, so I opted to just stick around Desolation Ave. out by the airport.
I decided to take a walk up the road I was on to see just what was there. Aside from a healthy dose of other hotels, all I found was a gas station with a Subway, a cheap movie theater and a pool hall. The next few days would find me eating a healthy dose of subs, seeing the Simpsons movie a third time as well as catching a couple other flicks. The third day I was there I walked the 3.5mi. to downtown Bangor to hit the library Internet up and catch a non-sub meal at a restaurant. Bangor had a cute little downtown and I managed to satisfy my recent chowder addiction by catching an amazing bowl of seafood chowder at an English pub called the Whig and Courier. I also found a nice wine and beer store so I could get my Belgian Ale fix. That day, I received a phone call from the CDC and they said the results came back negative for e. coli. They didn’t know exactly what my illness was, so they were going to send the samples back to the hospital for further testing. If they found out what it was, they’d call me. Not surprisingly, that call never came, so it’s still a bit of a mystery as to what I had. This is the second time I’ve had a serious illness that went unexplained by the medical world. My first was a 10 day sickness after returning from Vietnam. In that episode, I had chills, a 104 degree fever, headaches, sore throat, vomiting, etc. In doing some Internet sleuthing, it seemed all of my symptoms might have been due to the Plague. Yes, the Plague. I was surprised to learn that 50 people a year still get that. As it turns out, they never figured it out and I was left guessing, using WebMD to try to figure it out. That incident as well as the recent Maine illness hasn’t done much to inspire confidence in America’s health care system.
Aside from a few excursions out of the hotel, the rest of the time was spent cold chillin’. I spent most of the days reading, napping and watching TV. I think it might’ve been the most boring week in my life. I COULD NOT wait for my sister to arrive so we could get back on the trail.
She arrived on Friday and we were getting a shutle from Bangor to the 100-mile Wilderness the next morning. At 8AM, we were picked up by a guy from Monson named Buddy Ward. He was a native of the Monson area and had lived there most of his life. For nearly the entire three hour ride from Bangor, Buddy talked almost exclusively about bear hunting. One of his many jobs is at a bear hunting camp and the previous day had been particularly eventful for him, as the camp’s dogs had chased a bear around a huge moutain in the matter of a few hours. It was about 10 miles as the crow flies, but took the hunters nearly a day to bushwhack and locate the dogs via their radio collars.
Now, some of you are probably unfamiliar with bear hunting, as I certainly was prior to Buddy’s 3 hour talk. It goes something like this: It starts out by putting together a series of bait buckets for the bears. This was the particularly disgusting part, as the hunters put primarily donuts and a few other things in a 50-gallon barrel, seal it and let them ferment for one year. That’s right, one year. The next year, they transfer the contents to smaller barrels and place them at various points in the woods that are accessible by ATV. Every morning, they make rounds to see if the bait has been taken, which tells the hunters that the bear is in the area. If it’s determined that a bear is close, they release a series of dogs wearing radio collars to chase after the bear. Bears are pretty much scared of almost anything including wily dogs, so they run until they feel they can run no longer, at which point they head straight up a tree. It’s now the dog’s job to hoot and holler at the base of the tree, keeping the bear “tree’d” until the hunter arrives. Once the hunter locates the dogs and the bear, one person leashes the dogs and slowly starts to pull the dogs back, giving the bear the impression that the threat is subsiding. As soon as the bear starts his descent from the tree, the “hunter” with the gun pops a few rounds into the bear, killing it. Real sporting, eh?
All of this as well as many other gory details were covered in Buddy’s hunting lesson that he was providing us at no additional charge. I think he made reference to shooting nearly ever native animal of Maine over the course of our three hour ride. My sister, a vegetarian and no fan of animal cruelty or hunting, spent most of the ride squirming in the back seat while I politely entertained Buddy’s stories from the front. On our way into the 100-mile Wilderness, we saw two coyotes and Buddy was cursing himself for not having his pistol with him, because coyote pelts are apparently worth a lot. Robin and I, both anticipating the pelts were valued at $500-1000, were scratching our heads a little when Buddy said, “those are like $75 dollar pelts.” $75 bucks? Hardly seems worth it to me, but I suppose it’s just a matter of perspective.
After winding through the wilderness on a series of logging roads for nearly an hour, we came across the spot where the A.T. crossed one of them. Buddy dropped us off, gave us hugs and sent us into the woods. The final 40 miles of the trail were now in front of us. I was pretty excited. In four days, I’d be sitting on top of Mt. Katahdin. The last portion of the 100-mile prior to entering Katahdin’s home, Baxter State park were surprisingly easy, but not all that scenic. On the third day, we finally entered Baxter and were met with some nice sections of trail. We did about 10 miles to Katahdin stream campground, where we would set out for the 5.2 mile summit bid the next day. Upon signing in with the ranger, I learned that I was hiker number 338 to summit this year. Not bad, considering there was somewhere between 1200-1500 folks who started.
The next morning, we woke up in the dark to get an early start on the trail, since it was gonna be an ass-kicker. Nearly hitting our 7AM goal, we were on the trail by 7:20AM. The weather forecast was looking good, which is often not the case in early October when snows have been known to hit any time. On August 18th, we were all dismayed to learn that it was 20 degrees and snowing on Katahdin. What was it going to be like in October when I finally arrived? Surely it’d be hell. The A.T. is also known in the park as the Hunt trail, and is the route used by thru-hikers to ascend Katahdin. We had been warned that it was pretty tough and that the 5.2 miles would take us 4-5 hours. The first mile was a breeze, letting us cover the distance in a mere 20 minutes. From there things got interesting. The next mile and a half, wasn’t all that bad, just steep. We hit treeline at 3300 feet and still had another 2000 feet of elevation gain to go. Once above treeline, both Robin and I had occasions where we utttered, “Wait, we have to go over that?” The trail went straight up over large boulders and crevasses, sometimes requiring you to use the rebar that had been driven into the rock to use as hand and footholds. We were definitely in the toughest section of the climb, but it was fun, and the views were incredible. We climbed for another 1.5 miles and eventually hit “The Gateway,” which is the spot on the trail where it plateaus out into what they called “The Table Lands.” From here, we had another 1.25 miles up to the summit, which was recognizable for that entire distance, due to the congregation of hikers at the peak. The last stretch was rocky as could be, but it wasn’t all that steep. We summitted at 12:30PM, five hours after starting out. The mountain itself was just incredible. It’s the tallest mountain in Maine, and there really isn’t anything that’s nearly as high in the surrounding areas, so the views were just completely amazing.
After hanging out on top for about 30minutes, we decided to head back down. Not wanting to descend the Hunt Trail and all of it’s crazy rock ledges, we opted for another trail, the Saddle Trail, which I heard was the “easy” trail up the mountain. It was fairly easy for the first half mile until we hit the point where we had to descend from the ridge to the valley below. In the image above, we went from the mountain on the left down the side of the ridge and hit a trail that passed the pond that’s visible in the lower middle of the picture. Descending the ridge involved following a “trail” that was nothing more than a 1500 vertical foot rockslide over a half mile. Very steep. We eventually hit the bottom and had 4 miles to go to the parking lot where our folks were picking us up. The hike had been tough just getting to the top of Katahdin, so we were pretty beat by the time we set off down the rockslide. The last 4 miles saw the trail completely covered in large-ish rock that required you to step from one to the next. There wasn’t any smooth walking surface to speak of. It took us another 2.5hrs to do the 4 miles. As we were walking the last stretch, we saw our father waiting on the trail for us. We were almost there! When we got to the parking lot, our Mom, my Aunt, and my Uncle were waiting for us with snacks and beer. Woo Hoo! My mom completely burst out into tears of joy as my sister and I emerged from the woods. Her kids were back in one piece! My parents had seen me go into the woods six and a half months ago, and God knows what was going through their head. I can’t even imagine it. Now I was finally returning safely.
From there we had a long, uncomfortable ride back to Bar Harbor, ME, where we were to spend the next 5 days. My folks had rented a house and we were just going to eat, drink, sight-see and do some hiking in Acadia National Park. The week was great, weather was incredible, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was capped off by catching a sunrise from the Precipice trail on the eastern side of Acadia, overlooking the ocean.
So now I’m back in Florida, planning my next moves. I’ll be moving to Los Angeles in January and I’m trying to figure out the whole “work” thing. A harsh reality indeed. In the ultimate “screw you” to the trail and the freedom of the woods, I bought a laptop in New Hampshire three hours before getting on a plane to go home. How quickly we can slip into our old ways!
Thanks again to the crazy amount of support I’ve received. I honestly thought people would maybe take a look at this blog for the first couple weeks of the trail, then interest would totally wane. To my surprise, I was getting 50 views a day from people all the way through the hike. I hadn’t anticipated that at all.
As you’ve seen, I have my pictures up on Flickr, but I haven’t gone through and titled all of them. That’ll be coming in the next few days or so, as well as a few videos on my Youtube page.
The next section we hit was Mount Washington and the Presidential Range. We had the misfortune of hitting this part in bad weather, causing us to have to bail off the moutain and bypass 12 miles of trail. Mt. Washington is known for some of the most fickle weather in the world, and currently holds the record for the fastest windspeed record on the surface of the earth, a respectable 231mph. We arrived in Maine a couple days ago, and had to go through a mile-long boulder field called Mahoosuc Notch. This section was unlike any other on the trail, as it required you to crawl under giant boulders, hoist yourself up near-vertical granite faces using roots as handholds, and just generally exert yourself beyond anything you’ve done before. We managed to move through it fairly quickly, covering the mile in 2 hours, including a 30 minute halfway break.
