New England’s most isolated peak is daunting to most hikers, as the 5,269-foot tall mountain marks the end of the Appalachian Trail and the tallest point in the state of Maine. It’s a daunting and beautiful feat, hiked by a few thousand climbers each year. This year, I just so happened to be one of them. My boyfriend’s birthday was approaching, and he wanted nothing more for his birthday than to hike the tallest mountain in his home state with his family and me. I (of course) wanted to be ~outdoorsy~ and do a (predicted) eight-hour hike despite my lack of exercise in the past six months. So, with a positive mindset, we hopped in the car and drove a couple of hours to camp and hike in the beloved Baxter State Park.
The first couple of days were perfect: setting up camp, making food over the fire, playing cards, and doing short 1-2 hour hikes. On the third day, it was finally time to put on my hiking boots and venture into the wilderness. What I did not expect was that that would happen at four o’clock in the morning, as we woke up before the light of day and got in the car. My hair was a mess, I was shivering despite my layers of hiking clothes, and I did not speak a single word. The car was surrounded by a morning mist and a hint of anticipation as we all realized what the day had in store. In my mind, we were doing an eight-hour “hike,” meaning walking through the woods.
We arrived at the base of the mountain at an early 4:30 and prepared ourselves for the hike to come. People were handing me stuff left and right but my eyes were still half shut and my body was barely moving. We started hiking and it was exactly what I expected, hiking on a trail near a stream. We were all smiles as I tried to keep up with my boyfriend and his brother, stopping at ponds and streams throughout the way. We hiked for about three hours before we got to a massive lake surrounded by mountains that reflected in the water. We stopped to eat our snacks and as I looked up, I realized we hadn’t even started climbing the mountain yet.
Now, this is when I started to get worried because my muscles were already a bit tired and I was ready to turn around. Everyone looked a bit weary given how far we’d already come, but we were reassured by my boyfriend’s mom saying “it’s a loop we won’t have to do that three-hour hike again.” With some food in our systems, we started the ascent up the mountain which turned out to be bouldering. I am a huge fan of rock climbing, but pulling myself up from one boulder to the next for a couple of hours was probably the most I’ll ever do in my life. There were some points where my boyfriend needed to put his hands out as a step for me to jump up, and my arms and back got the workout of a lifetime. As we reached the top, it was just rocks upon rocks and we just had to follow the trail markers about which ones we could stand on.
At about hour six or seven we reached the top of the mountain and stood on the sign that so many hikers use to end their three to four-month journey. We had a 360° view of all of Maine around us and could see down to the little lake that we had sat at a few hours earlier. It was that elevated feeling of being on top of the world but also absolute exhaustion weighing me down. We sat and talked with other hikers for some time and I kept thinking to myself, I thought this was supposed to be eight hours. How are we going to get back down?
As I was looking around for possible routes down, my boyfriend’s mom leaned over to me and said “you see that; that’s where we’re going.” I turned my head and there was the entire ridge of the mountain, called knife’s edge. Now, it’s called knife’s edge because the trail along the ridge is only about a couple of rocks wide, and then there’s certain death on either side. As we were walking, my legs were shaking from pure exhaustion but also terror as I looked 5,000 feet down on either side of my body. I kept thinking as we were walking, this cannot get any worse and I could not be any more terrified right now.
It did get worse. There were moments when I was hugging onto the cliff with my hands and balancing on my toes inching along tiny platforms and there were times that I almost lost my balance and toppled over into the abyss. I was compensating by telling everyone “this is great it will be fine” and they were all laughing because the fear that was in my eyes was reflected in their own. We went up and down the different peaks of the ridge until we reached that final peak before our descent.
The funny thing was, the trail markers went straight up the wall of rock that was in front of us. My muscles were all worn to the extreme and there was no way I could pull myself up. We all looked at each other in disbelief before going around the rock wall up other rocks. The rocks we climbed up were shaky and loose so we had to test each one out before stepping on it, in fear of falling back down the mountain.
At the top of the last peak, I felt no relief, only despair as I approached the trail we had to travel down. We bouldered down step after step and then walked over rock after rock. Trees started appearing every so often but I didn’t process how far we’d gone. It was hour twelve and I was only thinking to myself “just one more step” but those steps lasted another two hours. We could no longer take breaks for fear of not getting down before sunset and saw no other people on the trail. My hips were in pain and I believed my feet were bleeding, but my boyfriend stayed right in front of me the entire time in case I fell. When we finally reached the end of the trail, I walked right to the car and we all collapsed asleep.
Hiking that mountain was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever accomplished because for the last few hours I did not think I was going to make it down. I contemplated faking an injury or just sitting down, but there was no other way to get me down that mountain. I went past the point I thought I could, and did more than I thought I could do even at that moment. It’s given me a moment to look back on when I’m facing a conflict in my life, and allows me to say “but is this harder than hiking Mount Katahdin?”