The Last Section: Part 2

This is part 2 of a 188-mile northbound section hike of the Appalachian Trail in Maine in September 2023. I started hiking at the road crossing near the town of Stratton, ME and finished at Mt. Katahdin in Baxter State Park, the northern terminus of the trail!

You can read Part 1 here!

Day 2: Bigelow Col Campsite to Little Bigelow Lean-To

The next morning, I was met with the first downpour of the hike. Had I realized that my feet had just been dry for the last time of pretty much the rest of the trail, I would have given a proper reflection and heartfelt thankful ceremony for the time I was given with them. 

The rest of the day was misty and damp, and the trail occasionally wove along the edges of ponds whose fluttering water matched the color of the gray sky. One of the most victorious feelings an AT hiker can have, in my opinion, is getting to a shelter for the evening right before rain starts, and that I did. 

I thought I was going to be alone that night in my little corner of the shelter, but after my first half hour of failing to drift off to sleep, shining headlamps broke the stillness of the night. Two guys wandered in, Sledge and Soccer Mom. This is one of those encounters where I’ll remember them a lot more than they’ll remember me, because it was only night two of my section hike. They were what I would call the hardcore athletic types, carrying next to nothing, having started their thru-hike in late May and were already less than 200 miles from the end in early September. The AT was not their first crack at a long-distance hike. 

I’m a night owl at home and wasn’t adjusted to hiker midnight yet, and being that they arrived after dark, this was a nice match. I’m pretty sure I bluntly told them that I was f*cked in terms of being able to fall asleep at any decent hour. (Sorry for my language, Dad). 

Despite this being my last section, I once again found myself getting self-conscious as if this were my first time ever doing this and immediately felt the need to explain all of my excessively warm gear choices. When it comes to the AT, I feel like I can say that I know what I’m doing by now. So it’s amazing how I still don’t feel like I do sometimes, or feel the need to defend my choices to people who are clearly more experienced than me who aren’t even asking for my defense. The former is probably a good thing, because we never stop learning. The latter is my own problem, a self-consciousness that nearly completing the AT can’t even cure. 

It turns out that Sledge and Soccer Mom were super friendly, and at the end of the day, we’re all doing the same thing, hiking the same trail with miles per day that we can each push our own personal limits to, albeit different distances. I was thankful for those two that night, a reminder that yes, there would be people on this trail, and yes, they would be nice. 

Days 3-4: Little Bigelow Lean-To to stealth campsite near Harrison’s Pierce Pond Camp

The next two days brought more rain and more wet feet. I stayed the night at West Carry Pond Lean-To which almost entirely resembled the previous rainy night, except this time I curled up on the right side of the shelter while one other hiker slept comfortably on the left side.

The morning after that brought some of the flattest trail I could remember since Pennsylvania. Of course, it would be a lot to ask for the AT to make it simply walkable, so there were plenty of rocks, roots and puddles to keep it interesting. “Interesting” is a word chosen by sitting-in-comfy-bed-writing-this me, not trail me. Trail me had plenty of moments of longing to just be able to walk. 

I loved the solitude of the day though, and that night would be my first encounter with the true social anxiety that always comes with me on the trail. 

I opted to stop for the day at Pierce Pond Lean-To, a shelter a short side-trail away from a place called Harrison’s Pierce Pond Camp. As more hikers showed up, I found myself searching for camp spots away from the shelter area, and that night I wound up sharing a little spot with a hiker named Cloud across the river from Harrison’s Pierce Pond Camp.

Day 5: Stealth campsite near Harrison’s Pierce Pond Camp to The Sterling Inn

Harrison’s camp was sort of like a rustic bed and breakfast. It consisted of simple cabins and a common area in a small old lodge tucked into a hillside enveloped by the thick Maine woods, the back porch overlooking Pierce Pond Stream just below. 

The owner puts on a pancake breakfast for hikers every morning before he serves his guests, and despite my nerves being jostled by the thought of sitting at a table amongst a group of through hikers as an outsider that just started a section hike, I felt like it was one of those Appalachian Trail experiences I didn’t want to miss. $12 gets got us each pancakes, eggs, and sausage, and it was worth the early alarm I set to pack up camp and walk back across the bridge to the main house.

My intimidation with the group of hikers faded as the eight of us talked and tinkered at the piano in the dining room. As always, they were nice. One of the hikers named Firewalker was even about to complete his second thru-hike of the AT. When will I learn to not be shy? 

That day brought another well-known Appalachian Trail experience – crossing the Kennebec River in a canoe.

A lot of the rivers to come would require fording (that means wading across) but not this one, and for a good reason. There is a dam upstream that can cause sudden changes in the current, and although I don’t know the full stories, people have died attempting to cross the wide river on their own. 

A few different organizations come together to run a free ferry service via canoe, and I didn’t really grasp what an amazing resource this is until dealing with some high-water river crossings later with no option but my own two legs to get me to the other side.

Three other hikers reached the crossing right after I did, and the gentleman running the canoe service that day set us up two at a time as if it were a carnival ride he loaded people in and out of all day long. He had his routine down to a science, and the muscles to show for his generosity of paddling hikers back and forth for hours at a time. 

The other side of the river brought us to the town of Caratunk and the coveted milestone of being the first resupply stop of my hike.  

The Sterling Inn in Caratunk, ME

The group of three hikers and I parted ways, as they chased the prospect of beer and a hot tub at one of the establishments, while I opted for the quieter “Sterling Inn”, where I had sent a resupply package. There aren’t many options anyway in the town of Caratunk, Maine. 

The Sterling Inn was a hiker-friendly bed and breakfast in an old building with more private rooms down long hallways than should have seemed to be able to fit upon looking at the place from the outside. I opted to stay in the bunkroom for $10 less than a private room would have cost me. The way I look at it, I was going to be sharing the bathrooms with the rest of the floor either way, and it wasn’t too crowded, so why not save the money? Small decisions like this can add up to a big benefit financially over a 2,200-mile trail. 

With a microwave breakfast sandwich in my stomach and clean clothes on my body, I watched the pouring rain that evening from the big wrap-around porch until the bugs got to me, while I tried to sort out what I was going to do about the approaching hurricane Ian. It was on everyone’s mind, and like everyone else, I needed to weigh my abilities and decide if I could confidently be out of the woods and into the next resupply stop at the town of Monson before the winds would potentially hit. Most of the hikers I was surrounded by had just continuously walked over 2,000 miles to this point, so my trail legs were no match for theirs and I had to tune out whatever they were thinking of doing.

Read part 3 here!