In the entire history of my blog, I have never thought about and rewritten a post so many times. I didn’t want to sound nonchalant about doing some stupid, dangerous things and at the same time, I didn’t want to sound overly dramatic. Here is my attempt at balance, and my cautionary tale.
This past weekend, I hiked Mount Katahdin with my British friend Phil. He had always wanted to go but thought it was too dangerous to attempt alone. I said when he visited Maine again, we’d do it.
He arrived on Thursday from London and Friday morning, we headed into the North Maine woods (Millinocket more specifically) and made camp. The next morning (3:30 am more specifically) we took down camp and headed into Baxter State Park.
The plan was to park at Roaring Brook Campground, hike the Helon Taylor trail, take Knife’s Edge to the summit of Katahdin, hike down Cathedral then Chimney Pond trail back to Roaring Brook. It is a long and difficult hike under normal circumstances. Attempting this in October is not something I plan to do again, mostly because I was really stupid about it.