Mount Katahdin is the tallest peak in Maine and the northern endpoint of the Appalachian Trail. We attempted to summit Katahdin this past June, working it into a ten-day road trip through Vermont, Canada, and Maine. We camped the night before the hike at Roaring Brook Campground where the rain, black flies, and mosquitos were all relentless. Our Katahdin hike occurred 173 years after Henry David Thoreau’s expedition on the same mountain. Coming from Concord, just one town over from where we grew up in Massachusetts, Thoreau tramped in Maine and attempted to summit what he spelled “Ktaadn” in 1846.
The mountain seemed a vast aggregation of loose rocks, as if some time it had rained rocks, and they lay as they fell on the mountain sides, nowhere fairly at rest, but leaning on each other, all rocking stones, with cavities between, but scarcely any soil or smoother shelf. They were the raw materials of a planet dropped from an unseen quarry, which the vast chemistry of nature would anon work up, or work down, into the smiling and verdant plains and valleys of earth. This was an undone extremity of the globe…
Henry David Thoreau, “Ktaadn,” The Union Magazine (New York), 1848
Katahdin is the second highest topographic prominence in New England, after Mount Washington (Agiocochook). It is made up of a series of peaks, the tallest of which is Baxter peak at 5268 ft. Baxter was our original goal for the hike. We managed to get to Pamola, a subsidiary peak at just over 4000 ft. On that summit, we were faced with an important decision. The next segment of the hike was going to be incredibly dangerous. Called the Knife Edge, the trail has precipitous drop-offs on both sides. The rain was picking up in intensity and we could barely see a few feet in front of ourselves. We decided to turn back and, completely soaked, make the return journey. Like Thoreau, we never made it to the summit.
At length I entered within the skirts of the cloud which seemed forever drifting over the summit, and yet would never be gone, but was generated out of that pure air as fast as it flowed away… I was deep within the hostile ranks of clouds, and all objects were obscured by them… It was, in fact, a cloud-factory,—these were the cloud-works, and the wind turned them off done from the cool, bare rocks.
Henry David Thoreau, “Ktaadn,” The Union Magazine (New York), 1848
In Penobscot tradition, an evil spirit named Pamola lives on Katahdin during the summer. Pamola is feared and has claimed the lives of many who have tried to reach the summit.
Sometimes it’s best to turn back.
