Day 85, June 27, up and down Katahdin with Kim

Hiked today 5.2 AT miles, but over 10 total miles

Today I’m hiking with Kim. We started the trail at 7:20 after getting a quick orientation from the Ranger and signing up as a through Hiker. We slept last night at the Appalachian Trail hostel and drove ourselves in this morning.

Last night we had dinner at the Scootic In. While we were there, we talked to a fellow Trek blogger, Charles Gutierrez. My wife had been following his blog from the start and we had a great conversation with that war veteran.  In my book, he is a true hero. You can read his blog on this site.

I took two pictures at Katahdin Falls, one of the lower Falls and one of the upper Falls they combine for about 100 foot drop.

Today is not an ideal day to hike up Mount Katahdin, the cloud floor is about halfway up the mountain.  We are planning to take the Hunt trail of the mountain, and the Abol trail down the mountain.

Although most of the hike was in the cloud, we did get one brief view on the way up.

The climb was much harder than we remembered from when we did it 12 years ago!  It took us 6 hours to reach the summit at 1:30.  I was worried about getting down before dark!

It started pouring rain shortly after we reached the summit. Kim started talking about trying to take an easier route down the other side of the mountain and calling for as shuttle.  I wasn’t sure this was even possible.  We ended up hiking down Abol and it was, in our opinion, much easier to get down than the Hunt trail.  As we broke out of the clouds we got a beautiful view down the mountain.

We were down and walking the two miles of road from Abol Campground to Katahdin Stream in a little over 4 hours.  Considering how tired we were coming down, this was really quick.  We got a ride for the last mile from a really nice couple who were going to camp at Katahdin Stream and were back at the hostel a little after 7.

Are another dinner at the Scootic In, we went to bed exhausted.