That night, I slept like shit; too much anticipation, nervousness, excitement. I had weird, fragmented dreams, and woke up every hour.
By 6:30am, we were all packed up and ready to go. We were meeting everyone who was hiking Katahdin with us—Lucky and Sparrow, Ben’s dad, Steve, Cara and Chris—at the ranger station at 7am to head up the mountain.
“I’m nervous,” I told Erin.
“Dude, I know,” she said, “but it’s just a fucking mountain, right? I mean, we can hike another fucking mountain.”
Katahdin isn’t just another mountain, though. It’s the most technical mountain on the trail. It rises out of the relatively low elevations of the 100-Mile Wilderness and climbs up 4,000 feet to the 5,268 foot summit, making it the tallest mountain in Maine. There are large boulders to climb over, and places where you have to scramble hand over foot. Even though I was in the best shape of my life, I was worried about Katahdin.
We gathered our crew and started up the trail. Erin hiked with Cara and Chris while I stuck with Ben and his dad. The first mile of the trail lulls you into a false sense of security. We followed a stream, and gained only slight elevation until we got to Katahdin stream falls.
“Wow, you’re really fast,” Tim, Ben’s dad, remarked during that first mile.
I laughed and told him to just wait for the climbs.
After the falls, the elevation climbed and soon we were above tree-line, giving us amazing views of all of Baxter State Park. The reward of the views was bought with boulder fields, and I found myself climbing the boulders, only to have to drop down the other side. On some portions were handholds to help with the climb. For roughly three miles we scrambled up the edge of the mountain, stopping for breaks, or to give each other a hand up.
It took over two hours to reach Thoreau Springs, a mile from the summit. We rested for a minute.
“You ready to head up?” Ben asked, holding out his hand to me. I let him pull me up and hugged him tightly.
“You guys go ahead,” I told them.
I sat back down on the rock and waited for Erin. I needed to finish this with her.
I looked out on the endless trees and lakes and felt an immense wave of gratitude. I thought about the phone call when Erin had told me she was going to hike the trail. I’d only joined in out of a sense of not wanting to be left out, of wanting to go on a trip with my best friend, of wanting to do something new and different with my life. I’d had no idea what I was signing up for, but yet here I was, alone on a mountain in Maine, almost finished with the hardest thing I’d ever done and I still felt strong. I felt strong and happy and fucking grateful to these mountains and the community that it brought me.
When Erin emerged from the boulder fields, she looked anguished, but triumphant. We sat together, not saying anything for a long time. She leaned her head on my shoulder. I leaned my head on hers. Grateful, together.
Eventually, Cara and Chris caught up and the four of us hiked the last mile to the top. It was 10:00am on July 15th, and we’d completed our thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail.