Hiking partners were:

Eric, living in LA. Some backpacking and climbing experience, no long hikes or mountaineering experience.

Andrew, living in Seattle. Member of an alpining club with some mountaineering and more backpacking experience.

Megan, living in coastal Florida. Had been backpacking once in her life before this.

Yours truly, living in Tucson, multiple long hikes but little experience in off-trail travel and not a climber.

None of us had been in the Winds before and all of us are reasonably fit people but nonetheless were arriving “off the couch” without any specific training or acclimatization.

Loop 2, Day 1

Loop 2 started at the hot, dry, dusty, buggy Big Sandy Trailhead. It was completely slammed in the afternoon on a Monday, and was frankly an ugly place to start a trip that promised such intense natural wonder. I drove in separately from the other three and we all managed to hit the trail at about 2:00pm. Just before setting out, the bugs at the trailhead spurred me to switch from hiking shorts, my de facto choice, to long trousers, and this turned out to be the correct decision in the long run. The trail to Dads and Marms Lake was never steep, easy to follow, generally forested, and the crowds thinned out as we progressed northwestward later in the day. Marms Lake, where we set up camp, was an achingly scenic location at sunset, the beautiful prelude to the sublime Wind River Range high country which we would encounter the next day but hadn’t even glimpsed yet at this point.

Day 2

Day 2 began with more of the same: comfortable trail walking as we wrapped around the foothills that had been flanking us the first day, and moved up into the valley formed by Washakie Creek. Reaching Shadow Lake, the official trail ended but the social trail through the trees around the lake was very easy to find and follow, and this eventually spat us out at treeline at the outlet of Billy Lake / Lake 10600, staring at the formidably steep face of New York Pass. At a distance it seemed too barren and steep for humans to get up, much less down, but per Skurka’s notes we chose the gully with the most vegetation and began picking our way up the slope of scree, talus and grass, eventually making it to the top around noon. At the top of the pass, the terrain falls away sharply in both directions, behind to the Washakie Creek and Shadow Lake valley, and ahead to the intensely dramatic Cirque of Towers. It was sunny and quite frankly hot after so much exertion reaching the top, but clouds started to gather before we left. Complicating our decision-making was that, to our uninitiated eyes, the direct route down into the Cirque from the pass seemed wildly steep, and we had just gammed with two opposite-direction hikers who had come up a “steady ramp” in their words, to the skier’s left, and didn’t have any complaints. We elected to descend this ramp, which turned out to be a horrible idea: it’s very loose talus much of the way, and even if it had better footing it would still take much longer to get down than just taking the plunge directly off the pass. At one point Eric dislodged a cantaloupe-sized rock from 50 or 75 feet above me, blind over a ledge, and as I ducked and covered at the last second it glanced off my shoulder, leaving a bruise and an abrasion … this would have had problematic consequences if it had hit me straight on.

Rain started to fall steadily as we continued picking our way down the slope, finally reaching a use trail at treeline that, while not always followable, eventually dumped us out at the littoral of Lonesome Lake, where wilderness users were flagrantly ignoring the multiple posted signs saying to camp more than a quarter mile from the shore. At this point the plan for the loop dictated that we turn east and cruise through some easy on-trail miles along the north fork of the Popo Agie river. We covered about five miles of this before setting up a forested camp in the evening next to a ford of said stream. The vast majority of the miles this day were comfortable and on-trail, but the only thing any of us will likely remember is the NY Pass speed bump in the middle of the day, the poor choice of descent routing, and Eric trying to kill his tripmates as the rain picked up and thunder rolled over our completely exposed position.

Day 3

On the third day, the goal was to summit Wind River Peak and thenceforth make a descent to camp, but we never made it up the mountain. A slow start and some sluggish legs (speaking for myself … I think the others may have been doing okay at this point, but I was gassed) meant that we didn’t poke our heads above treeline at the tarn facing the peak until after lunchtime, at which point ominous clouds were forming over the Divide yet again. Not wanting a repeat of the previous afternoon’s debacle, we called it a half-day and camped in the krummholz forest surrounding the pond, planning to start at dawn the next morning. We were joined in this campsite choice by at least a dozen other groups, some waiting to head up and some on the way down from Wind River Peak. The afternoon off by the 10,800-foot tarn would have been absolutely delightful if it hadn’t been for mosquitos: this was the buggiest place we encountered on either hike by some distance.

Day 4

The four of us were walking by first light at 5:30am for the ascent up the broad, gradual face of Wind River Peak on the fourth day. We were passed by two separate solo hikers on the way up, but otherwise had the mountain and ultimately the 13,192-foot summit to ourselves, which we reached after three hours. People who are trying to complete the entire Wind River High Route in one go reach this point on their first or second day, with something like 10 days of food remaining on their backs; we felt hashtag blessed to be carrying rather light loads by comparison, because even though the climb wasn’t technical in any way, it was a slow, high-elevation, boulder-hopping grind, and neither option for descending seemed like a stroll in the park either. One such option was the peak’s West Gully, which most people and guidebooks seem to find disconcertingly steep and slippery. The other option, which we had long since been planning on, involved a long, gradual off-trail descent down the south face of the mountain, which proved to be a dry and exposed boulder-hop for at least the first hour, and a grassy talus-tundra stumble for awhile after that. After finally reaching Tayo Lake and its ice-cold outlet stream at about 11:30, we unconfidently picked up a mapped trail and followed this for a few hot miles to Coon Lake, where we went off-trail again probing for a relatively low transition over the Divide and down to the Little Sandy Trail, our ticket out of the wilderness. Unfortunately this proved to be the one point on either loop where we could not make heads or tails of what any of our resources were saying: Skurka guidebook, annotated topos, CalTopo tracks, Strava tracks, random cairns, etc. After crossing the Divide, we were supposed to be able to find a “straightforward descent” on a social trail by a mapped creek, but that never happened, and instead we proceeded haltingly and nigh on aimlessly through the forest, stranded hopelessly high above the valley and trail we wanted to be joining. Eventually Andrew’s InReach showed us on the 10400-foot “bench” that Skurka’s guidebook assured us we could follow north in parallel with the trail, so we did this until we spotted some opportunities to descend further to the bottom of the valley, which we successfully managed by about 3pm.

We had been thinking, before the day started, that in the best-case scenario we could actually finish our loop and be in a hotel by the end of it, but by this point that was clearly out of the question. This ended up being a blessing in disguise, however, because it removed any time pressure and we were able to lollygag and fully soak in the impossible scene of the last big feature of the route, Temple Pass. We had no advance notice of its grandeur from any guidebook, but coming over this pass, in the late afternoon light, in and out of cloud cover, with the lake down below on the other side, the marmot who had a full two-minute staring match with me at said lakeshore, and the view straight down the valley all the way to the Cirque of Towers, was in retrospect the highlight of the whole loop. We strolled along some easy, albeit intermittent, trail after Temple Pass and Lake, and at around 7:30pm with any weather threat having clearly dissipated, set up camp in a grassy expanse for the night. This put us in position to be back at our cars after about eight on-trail, steadily downhill miles the following day. Day 4: long with excellent start and finish and a so-so middle.

Day 5 and the start of Loop 6

On the fifth day we sailed down the Little Sandy, then Big Sandy trails for about eight miles in the morning hours, since we all knew we could be in Lander by lunchtime if we hustled, and at any rate everyone was mostly out of food. Our cars were in the same place and condition we’d left them at the trailhead, which by now had taken on the character of a mall parking lot on Black Friday, and we made our way to burgers in Lander in short order. Megan decided to drop out from the expedition and return to Florida early because her feet were in too much pain, which apparently hadn’t prevented her from breezily keeping up with everyone on all types of terrain despite having barely backpacked before and coming literally from sea level. We stayed the night in Riverton to help her travel logistics, then Andrew, Eric and I packed up and got ready for round 2, which is actually Loop 6. Good? Good.

After about a 90-minute drive to the Trail Lakes trailhead, we headed up and in on the Glacier Trail starting around 2:30pm. Much of the first ten miles of this trail is very exposed, but fortunately as we got above treeline onto what Eric kept calling the “abyssal plain” there was a blanket of clouds and a chilly breeze to keep things manageable. We ate up the miles on this first day, powered as we were by 24 hours of rest and town food, and helped immensely by the quality of the modern trail construction on the “new” Glacier Trail. Much like on the first night of the first loop, we found an absolute sockdolager of a lake to make camp by—Double Lake, in this case, about 11 miles in from the trailhead in what the maps term the Dinwoody Lakes basin.

Loop 6, Day 2

The plan on day 2 was always to push farther back into the mountains to the end of the Glacier Trail, stopping just short of the point at which one jumps up into the alpine and commits to staying there for awhile while working their way back to the start of the loop. We achieved this; while it was not a bad day by any means, it also didn’t have many standout scenes until the end, and was more of a continuation of the staging process for the leap into the extra-high country. After fudging up and down and around in the mud near a couple of smaller lakes and getting lost in a bog near Downs Meadows (hint if you’re planning to hike this: just stay right), the trail picked up Dinwoody Creek—coming down from the Dinwoody Glacier which remained out of sight until late in the day—and worked its way upstream, with the views getting increasingly better. Gannett Peak, the very distinctive state high point for Wyoming and the goal of all the other trail users we interacted with this day, came into view in the last five miles, and the last two or so miles along the creek above treeline were especially scenic. Even though our legs and lungs were working fine by this point, it still took a full 10 hours to make it to the end of the Glacier Trail, where we set up camp around 6pm. There are three rock-ringed tentsites there, at trail’s end, that aren’t mentioned in Skurka’s maps, and several more (at least six if memory serves) farther up off-trail at the base of West Sentinel Pass. Andrew’s device recorded a mileage of 17.1 for the day, which was about 25% more than we’d been planning on—a consistent theme, it turns out, over the course of our time in the Winds.

Day 3

The beginning of day 3 meant saying goodbye to any semblance of trail, or any semblance of natural shelter/vegetation/life as we know it for at least the next two days. We rock-hopped for about an hour to the base of West Sentinel Pass, then made our way up it in fits and starts over the next hour, a mixture of boulders, talus, scree, and two small snowfields. I had specifically purchased Kahtoola Microspikes for this trip and had been lugging them around this whole time, even on the first section-hike where we never touched snow, and so was pleased to have the opportunity to deploy them—and even more pleased to find out that they’re extremely helpful on firm morning snow. A family of bighorn sheep, complete with an adorable lamb, watched us flail to the crest of the pass and step up onto the Gannett Glacier. With the help of the microspikes the glacier ended up being the most comfortable travel of the day: there was a gently sloped line across it, the only crevasses were about a foot across and very easy to spot with no snow cover, and the temperature while traversing it was around 40°F, just right for keeping the surface firm but not slick. Once across, there was an intimidating “gully” leading up to an unnamed pass overhung with a nasty-looking cornice, which we negotiated easily enough by staying on snow for the first third, transitioning to gravel/moraine/talus for the rest, and passing by the climber’s-left side of the cornice at the top; the descent on the north side was steep but generally soft enough sand to plunge feet into. This brought us, around noon, to an annotated spot we’d been eyeing on the maps for some time—“possible camps if snow-free.” We weren’t quite sure what to expect in terms of “how desperate would one have to be to camp here” but there were two good tentsites (there might have been more, I didn’t explore) and this was good enough for me in my solo tent and Andrew and Eric in their two-person. Even though the day was only halfway over, we understood that it was the one with the most marginal weather forecast and that there was probably not anywhere to camp for several more steep, slow, exposed miles, so we decided to set up shop. We spent the afternoon lazing around, alone, in our cold gray rocky aerie, recharging for a sustained push at even higher altitudes the next day.

Day 4

Day 4 started with an initially steep, eventually gradual talus-hop up Bastion Peak Pass. As with countless other climbs and descents on this trip, it was hard, slow, steep, uncertain-of-foot—and that’s pretty much all one can say about it. “We got it done … eventually … somehow.” Coming down the north side of the pass was friendlier, and we were soon at the shore of the blue-green terminal lake for the massive Grasshopper Glacier. The best course of action for getting up the glacier and onto the Continental Divide was not clear, since some of the glacial slope was at a steep and snow-covered (i.e. crevasse-concealing) angle, but after probing around we eventually settled on traversing part-way to a rocky nunatak—which was fortuitous, because no sooner had we gained the flattish top of that rocky part than the weather turned dramatically, and a storm was on top of us. We got our tents pitched on flat but very exposed ground with, quite literally, not a second to spare, and rode out a classic Continental Divide mid-afternoon thunder-and-hailstorm, except it was only 11:30am.

Blue skies (the clear kind) returned within an hour, so we packed up and pressed on, up and over the remaining, highest reaches of the glacier and onto the Divide itself, where we were greeted by a flock of a dozen bighorn sheep. At this point, the guidebook said, we were above 12,000 feet and with only one brief exception would not be descending below that altitude until the coda of the hike, coming down Downs Mountain five straight-line miles away. We also had only seen one other human, a southbounder in the vicinity of the glacial lake that morning, and would only see one more before we were back in civilization a day and a half later. The sheep and the occasional salt-crazed pika (one had eaten Eric’s trekking pole wrist straps overnight) were the only other vertebrates around, as far as we could tell. I, personally, had never spent more than a few hours at a time in such an environment before this trip. I was pleased to be able to experience it and even more pleased to be, all things considered, quite comfortable—between a healthy, stronger body and appropriate lightweight gear and food, I had the satisfying feeling that even with the surprise storms and the slow, steep navigation I was Handling It All Pretty Well. The Wind River Range has a reputation for doling out Type 2 fun (not fun at the time, fun to talk about later though), but I have to say I was mostly experiencing it as Type 1. Travel was considerably faster after getting onto the Divide, with the only slowdown coming at the steep descent into the stunning Iceberg Lake Pass. We climbed out in the late afternoon and made camp at the saddle south of South Downs Mountain, before being summarily pounded by the second 100% exposed hailstorm of the day at sunset. Yayy.

Day 5

We blasted out of camp early on the fifth day, up and around the peak of South Downs (except for Andrew, who scurried up to tag it) and onto the “broad, lunar flat” that precedes Actual Downs. The climb to the Downs summit was only a few hundred more vertical feet beyond, nothing we hadn’t seen before at this point, and the vibes were good as we relaxed in the bluebird sun at the top, knowing that it was all downhill from here to the cars, the hotels, the Fireball shots, the amorous, easily impressed townies, etc., etc.

But wait! Downhill in the Winds isn’t always a good thing, and sometimes when you think it’s going to be downhill, it’s actually going to be straight up. We were slapped repeatedly in the face with these facts—we really should have known better at this point—on the long, pokey descent down the east face of Downs, the climb back up from No Man’s Pass, and worst of all, the absolutely mind-numbing and interminable boulder-hopping on Goat Flat as it gently sloped down over several miles toward the intersection with the Glacier Trail. The Glacier Trail was our promised land—we’d walked in on it four days prior, and knew it to be extremely easy going, especially in the downhill direction, because of its excellent construction. Unfortunately, around 4:30pm on the windward of an unnamed “craggy spur – no good side” (note from the topo map) still above treeline on Goat Flat, we were once again overtaken by bad weather and had to make an emergency camp to ride it out. In my solo tent, I had assumed this was where we would be ending our day, but as the rain let up around 6:30 Andrew walked over to announce that, regardless of darkness, he and Eric were planning on making it to the trailhead that night. My instinct was that this was not the right move, but I went along anyway and it worked out fine: with the weather past we were on the comfortable, already-visited trail by the time it got dark and only had to use headlamps for about two hours before reaching our cars. It was a hasty end to a trip that had been marked by enforced patience at pretty much all other times. I have no further parting thoughts, at least so close to the event. Speaking for myself, I loved the Winds, was completely blown away by their scale and intensity, and intend on coming back for more at some point in the future.

Andrew overlaid our actual track on the CalTopo tracks for each loop, and those can be found here.

With the trail still fresh in the memory, I thought a rapid-fire review of some gear and planning decisions might be of use if you’re thinking about the SHT or another long hike in the near future. So here goes:

5-star gear

• Tarptent Aeon Li. Could not imagine a better shelter for the weight—bombproof and so many clever design decisions (magnets??) at only a pound. For an in-depth review, check out what Cam Honan has to say.

• Superior Wilderness Designs DCF Long Haul 40 pack. Likewise, beyond reproach or suggestions for improvement.

• Montbell Rain Trekker jacket. A few ounces heavier than the lightest rain shells, but feels very stout and has big pockets and pit zips for versatility. Mags has a nice review.

• Superior Fleece hoodie, aka the Minnesota Melly. Comfy, durable, odor-resistant, chic. Purchased from Great Lakes Gear Exchange in Duluth (go there!).

• Trail Designs 700mL caldera-cone-style cook system. Perfect for one person cooking once a day, and super light even with fuel weight thrown in (I counted on 25 mL yellow HEET per boil and it was more than enough). Stored the fuel in Listerine travel-size bottles.

• Ursack Minor food bag. Kept the squirrels and chipmunks out, as it has for 5,000+ miles now. Just don’t do something stupid like hang it in a tree, and the bears won’t get into it either.

4-star gear

• Western Mountaineering Flylite sleeping bag. Zipper is finicky, thin 10d fabric doesn’t resist moisture well. Would fare better in an arid climate, but northern MN ain’t that. Still ridiculously light and compact for the (claimed) 34F temp rating.

• Altra Timp shoes. Comfortable, surprisingly durable, but resulted in identical blisters on top of my big toes, which many other reviewers have noted. Clear design flaw.

• Black Diamond Distance Carbon FLZ trekking pole. Perfect except for the foam handle, which isn’t as kind to the skin as cork would be. As those Mainers back in 2011 told me, “You can’t beat the feel of the real coahhk. It just don’t feel right with the rubbah.”

• Gossamer Gear waterproof pack liners. One picked up a quarter-sized hole somehow, one stayed fully intact. Still quite durable and waterproof through some awful rain.

2-star gear

• Sawyer Squeeze with Platypus SoftBottle as a dirty water bag. It takes an extremely deft touch, or just blind luck, to get the threads to seal flush when screwing a filter onto a Platypus; most of the time it leaks. A better dirty water bag would’ve been a CNOC Vecto but I forgot to bring mine. I refuse to use the Sawyer-provided dirty water bags because they’re so flimsy and hard to fill in a shallow stream.

My full gear list for this hike is here if you’re really really curious what else I was carrying.

Planning

For planning and navigation I saw no reason to use anything beyond the SHTA Databook and an offline Google Map of northeastern MN on my iPhone, and that was more than enough. The databook was only seriously remiss on mileage once, at the Gooseberry-Gitchi Gami State Trail roadwalk, but that’s a situation that is in flux so I can’t be too critical about that. The SHTA’s website has all the resupply planning info you need. I sent a box to Cove Point Lodge in Beaver Bay and one to Sawtooth Outfitters in Tofte; both had only kind and helpful folks working there!

I understand why hiking southbound is easier logistically, but northbound sure has a more rewarding conclusion. Everything between the Encampment River and Martin Road toward the southern end of the trail is very uninspiring, and that’s the most charitable way I can phrase it. If considering a thru-hike of the SHT, I’d research shuttle options (look up Harriet Quarles on the Facebook page) to see if a nobo hike is feasible to you.

Cell reception was hit and miss, mostly miss in the last several days up north. I have Verizon.

If you stumble on this and have any further questions, ask away in the comments!

Awoke to sunshine instead of the expected clouds, and instead of scrambling out of camp as fast as possible like usual, decided to sit around the campsite benches having a lazy breakfast with my new frens. Some of the other people at the site, whose names I never caught, had broken camp at first light, but in their haste (“Do not be hasty!” - Treebeard) they left their hammock straps dangling on the trees! That’s going to be a fun realization later, especially since they plan to be out for three weeks on a sobo thru-hike ...

On the move by 8am, there was a spring in my step and for the first twelve miles I stopped only once, at a spot my guidebook inexplicably listed as “Hellacious overlook” (gems from elsewhere in the databook include “Spur trail to mediocre view” and “Too many stairs”). There were several friendly chit-chats with the southbounders I kept running into, some of whom had just started thru-hike attempts and looked entirely too clean and happy. I wanted to wag a gnarled finger at them and say, “You kids! The mud, roots, swamps, overgrowth, rain and lack of views will grind you down soon enough!” but I really resent it when people are negative on the trails (“you are allowed to complain out loud once per trail” is a rule I try to abide by) so I held back. And at any rate, on the balance of things I’ve had a pleasant time out here, with the only struggles coming from decisions I made to be alone and to push miles alone and take no breaks—if you don’t do dumb shit like that, and you have/make friends, and you don’t get rained on TOO often, you’ll probably have a great time on the Superior Hiking Trail.

Anyhow. With six miles to go, I passed the highest point on the SHT, at a whopping 1829 feet MSL, in the middle of a forest. With three miles to go, the trail was inundated with shin-deep mud and standing water for 50 yards or so—no way to avoid it, no bog bridges, no nothing. It was a fitting parting gift from a trail that was never far from mud (also a nice welcome for the sobos). With one mile to go, I passed the trailhead parking lot with Dana’s car in it, my ticket out of the woods, and with zero miles to go I reached the trail’s northern terminus at the 270-Degree Overlook, just a whisker away from the Canadian border. It’s about as good of a panoramic as you’ll get in northern MN, and I commend whoever decided to end the trail at that spot. I was lucky enough to avoid the forecasted rain all day, although it did sprinkle as I signed the register with my usual Tennyson thing, making the ink all splotchy. After that there wasn’t much to do but schlep back to the car, hope it started (it did!), and bring it back to Duluth. On the way I picked up Dana and Barley in Lutsen, where we stopped for dinner and I consumed a big slutty double cheeseburger with cheese curds as my celebration meal. Tomorrow I clean up, tie up loose ends and figure out what the hell is next!

Indulgently slept in and did not start hiking until 8am, at which point the sun was shining bright and the air felt almost ... warm? What a funny concept. The trail rolled cheerfully through the woods and passed a plethora of creeks and rivers and adjacent campsites in the first five miles or so. After six miles, it arrived at the heralded 1.4-mile-long “lake walk” along the shore of Lake Superior, which no fewer than three sobos had told me, animatedly, to skip because of how frustrating it is to walk in loose pebbly sand for any distance, let alone a mile and a half. Once I got to the lake, I sat for a break in the sunshine and to purify my feet in the waters, but even in the 20-yard stroll across the beach down to the water I could see exactly what those people had meant about it being tough sledding. With my break complete, I elected to return to the road paralleling the shore, MN 61, and walk along that instead. Not the greatest alternative, especially not with holiday weekend traffic, but I felt at peace with my decision to skip the lake walk, however appealing its symbolism is.

Once back in the woods, I could barely think and I felt my physical fitness lagging—I ultimately chalked it up to an especially intense midday lull but other explanations did cross my mind, like: I have covid and this is its first salvo. I have giardia again and ditto. I lactosed myself somewhere in the past 12 hours (what did I eat?? Was it the Grape Nuts?). The sun and brightness on the beach made my body think it was nighttime once I was back in the forest. I shouldn’t actually be walking 24 miles on back to back days. All nonsense of course, except maybe that last one. The point is that I walked most of the afternoon in a mental and physical fog at odds with the sunshine around me, and barely remember a thing about it. I do recall an absolute shock to the system when I got to the parking lot of C.R. Magney State Park, after hours alone in the woods, and suddenly there were about 10,000 people around. I donned my mask and endured hordes of oblivious disease vectors on a trail I’d never heard of til today, the half-mile or so to Devil’s Kettle Falls on the Brule River.

Once that crowd thinned out and I could release my breath, the last nine miles or so were made manageable by there being three miles of unpaved roadwalks interspersed among them (roadwalks always being faster than trail walks, especially on the SHT, and dirt roads being easier on the feet than paved). Arriving at this campsite at the golden hour, it initially seemed like it might be too crowded, but I found a space for my tent wedged in near some hammocks, and after getting to conversing it turned out that everyone around was great company. There were ... a lot of names that I didn’t catch, but they might be reading this blog. Drew! I remember Drew. Sorry about the rest though. At any rate, it was nice to have my last full day on the trail be a sunny warm one, and my last night to be spent in good society. Tomorrow it’s only 17.1 miles to the terminus, but there’s plenty of rain and storms in the forecast ...

• Is better organized
• Boasts an even higher concentration of dumb jokes and references
• Has more information on the information pages
• Does not have as much blogging on the blogging pages ... yet.

Though a major long hike does not appear to be in the offing for me, personally, in 2015, there are other things going on in the world that I might want to write about at some point. Stay tuned for sick burns and hot takes on the Wild movie, the Buddy Backpacker™ freak show, Uber, a winter road trip to a cabin in remote northeastern Minnesota, and more. And if I decide against all better sense, and the wishes of everyone who cares about me, to pull up stakes and hit the Continental Divide Trail in 2015, I will definitely keep a journal here. Pip pip.

Finished the AT today at Katahdin (AT mi 2181.0*), walked 10.4 miles today

Woke up in the dark at 4:30 and by 5 had gotten all packed up and made my way down the street to the cafe. The early-bird crowd was me, some old Mainer guys who I got the sense were regulars at that hour, and a family of four who looked like they might be hiking. After discerning that they were indeed hiking, and that they were going up Katahdin via the Hunt Trail/AT, same as me, they were kind enough to offer me a ride into the park. They were Tyler and Nicki and their two kids, Jensen and (ahh I forget the boy's name, sorry dude, I know you're probably reading this), they were from downeast Maine, and they were total rockstars. We got to the trailhead around 6:45, along with a few dozen other people--7 a.m. is the cutoff for the parking lot so it creates a herd of day-hikers leaving at the same time--at which point the car thermometer only read 44 degrees. 

Left them and got going by 7:00 for the climb, 5.2 miles and 4150 feet of elevation gain, most of which is squeezed into the middle 3 miles. Passed most people in the first hour, though I was passed three times myself by thru-hikers going absurdly fast, each with focus etched into their faces and a disinclination to make conversation. The middle three miles, the ones with all the action, were a ton of fun, especially once the trail got above treeline. All of a sudden it got Arctically cold and dry-windy--I was freezing my ass off despite exerting myself uphill and in my rain jacket, hood cinched up so I could barely see, and tights--and the hike stopped becoming a hike and turned into a full-body boulder scramble for about an hour. The weather could not have been clearer and sharper, or the vistas greener and bluer, and I was alone for most of this time. Eventually I reached the false summit, called the Gateway, which I was wise to already from the maps, then enjoyed a calm final mile and a half over the flatter rocky alpine zone called the Tableland. Made the real summit just before 10 and there were only six people there: a thru-hiker, a dude named Richard from Utah, and four yuppie types. Only one of the latter responded to my request for assistance in taking a summit photo; she took just one, then silently handed my phone back to me and went back to smoking pot with her friends. Luckily, Richard was more alert to the personal significance of the moment and helped me get many more pictures. He and I talked for a few minutes, more people started trickling in, including Dortmund Joe and Eastwood, and by that point I was cold and it was time to get down, as I had nothing more to do or say to anyone up there. 

I really felt immense happiness when I first got to the summit and the sign and I just plopped down leaning against it, as I'd always imagined I'd do; I don't remember nearly the same intensity of feeling getting to the monument at the end of the PCT. But the PCT happened more quickly, cleanly and confidently for me than the AT, which was stretched over three years during which I couldn't say to myself or anyone else that I'd hiked the whole thing, only part of it. I'd spent a lot more time visualizing the final moment when I'd get to the Katahdin sign than I had with the PCT monument, and a lot more time wondering how long I'd have to wait for it to happen. So to get up there on a perfect day, after a really enjoyable time in the 100 Mile Wilderness, with all aspects of planning pragmatically executed (and I get perhaps inordinately self-satisfied with the last one), left me quite chuffed. I stuck around on the summit as long as the warm glow lasted, but as soon as that was gone I knew there was no need to drag out my time and I had a practical concern to attend to, namely figuring out how to get 240 miles south by the evening.

Enter Eric and Laura, a couple I had overheard on the summit saying they were driving back to Boston today; I passed them on the descent and asked if I couldn't accompany them as far as Portland. Much like with the family I asked this morning, they agreed with no hesitation, and later refused gas money. Ended up getting back to the trailhead about ten minutes before them--descending through the rock scrambles was just as fun as coming up, although my knees were starting to hurt. They/I took off for the south lands right away, stopping only so I could get a bite to eat at the WacArnold's on the way out of Millinocket. Three hours later I was being dropped off at a Starbucks in Falmouth, near Portland, and a pumpkin-spiced hour after that A-GAME and her man Steve completed the handoff by picking me up there in their car and taking me to their place on the east side of Portland. After a fine home-cooked veggie pasta meal and a lot of conversation, we were all pretty well whupped--they'd had a ridiculously busy weekend and I'd been up since before dawn--so that was that and I repaired to my futon, where I will sleep like a fat lion tonight. Hiking is now over for the time being and the journal will stop being regular, but I plan to significantly update the rest of the webpage and keep the blog more alive than dead over the winter months. Especially if I give in to Carrot, Spark &co. and make moves toward the CDT next year. Ttfn. 

*All my mileage figures have been from the 2011 AT Guide by AWOL. I think the official total mileage of the trail in 2015 is 2185 or something like that. Regardless of the big numbers, I'm confident I got the small numbers, i.e. how far I walked each day between points, right the whole time.

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Both days slept at the AT Lodge in Millinocket, ME (left AT at mi 2175.8 at Katahdin Stream CG), walked 11.6 miles Friday and 0 Saturday

Woke up on Friday, at first around 5:45, to a decent enough sunrise in the vicinity of Katahdin, though I never got a good photo of it. Snoozed until seven and got walking at 7:30, hiking downhill for a few miles to Hurd Brook; on the way, I met a fellow named Mouse who had just finished his Triple Crown with a CDT NOBO and is now topping off with a "victory lap," an AT SOBO in the same year. Told him I'd put him in touch with Carrot, who wants to do the same CDT-AT meal deal next year. After Hurd Brook the trail rolled a few miles through the forest until popping out at Abol Bridge and the end of the "Wilderness." This turned out to be an arrestingly ugly place, with log trucks and men in very large pickup trucks being the main users of the dusty roadway. There was a store there and an adjacent restaurant, but the restaurant failed to open at 11am as promised because the one cook had apparently cleaned out his trailer and left overnight without telling anyone, and the other employees were just piecing together the facts now. Decided not to bother them by demanding service, as they had quite a pickle on their hands, and ended up hiking on at about 11:30. Also in the Abol Bridge store we (the Swiss and Siesta and I) saw our first weather forecast in five days, and it had become significantly more pessimistic for Saturday--rain, storms, hail, wind, destruction, weeping, gnashing of teeth and what have you.

Partly because of this forecast and partly because I was tired of encountering other people and having the same freaking conversation over and over again ("Yes I'm about to finish the trail. No I did not come all the way from Georgia this year. My injury in 2011 was a stress fracture. I'm from Oregon but not Portland but I grew up in Virginia and went to school in Minnesota. Yep, I guess you could say I'm from all over!" Etc.), I decided to take a shorter, less-used route to the Katahdin Stream Campground via the Blueberry Ledges trail, which turned out to be very shitty and claustrophobic and unrewarding, and a huge error in judgment on my part in general. The AT would've taken me about two hours longer, but I thought it might be best to get to KSC early to confirm the forecast and make a decision about whether to attempt a summit the next day and give myself time to get to town. That all turned out to be unnecessary; I did get there by 1:30 and decide to put off the Katahdin climb by a day--a decision I'm fine with, no point in climbing up there and having my picture made in horrendous weather--but I could have just as easily made that call at 3:30pm. 

Regardless, I got a ride into Millinocket, about 20 miles away, with the AT Lodge hostel shuttle around 4 and chose to settle in here for the next two nights. It's quite a thorough and tidy place, and almost no hikers were around on Friday, meaning I had the communal bunkroom utterly to myself; one of the few hikers that were here was Guthook, he of the trail-app fame. He and I and a few others went out to dinner at the AT Cafe (you may spot a theme in the names of businesses in Millinocket), where I put on an absolute clinic, inhaling a Baxter Peak-sized portion of chicken Parmesan and mozzarella sticks and eliciting comment from some of the seasoned hikers around me by the sheer voracity of my efforts. After that it was off to bed, and Saturday, today, was a fairly nondescript zero day. I ate twice more at the Cafe, lunching with a Brit named Overhaul who used to sell very expensive jewelry on cruise ships and next wants to open a restaurant chain that serves crickets and call it Stumps (the domain name stumpys.com apparently already belongs to a fetish site for amputee porn, otherwise that would be his business name), and later supping with the Swiss couple and Siesta. They successfully summited Katahdin this morning, but it was in heavy fog and then they were chased off the mountain by storms which they just barely avoided before they caught a ride into town. They and I and another successful thru-hiker, Toasted Toad, hit up the bahhhs--or, more accurately, the one bahhh in Millinocket, the Blue Ox Saloon--after dinner, which was at like 6:00. I didn't want to make a spectacle out of it, because I do have to get up at 4:30 tomorrow morning and make a very steep climb of a very important mountain, but it was great to hang out with them. I found out that Swiss Miss spent a year as a high school exchange student in Yakima, Washington, of all places, going to the "ghetto school" there, which certainly sounded like a character-building experience. There was a hint of post-trail blues setting in already, but for the most part everyone was happy, and the owner was kind enough to take care of a few drinks for all the finishers. I left early and came back to the hostel, making a little more conversation with Overhaul and a different hiker who was a former trucker (I've long noticed that there is absolutely a thru-hiker/trucker crossover or common bond, maybe I'll flesh that idea out more later). Then bed. Tomorrow morning: hitch out extremely early, climb Katahdin, get down from Katahdin, start hitching again and with any luck end up in the evening in Portland, Maine with A-GAME. Should be a rare old day.

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