Our main reason for visiting Baxter State Park was to hike Mt. Katahdin. This is what we imagined:
Not too hard, right? Well, this was much harder that it would seem, and not only because the hike was brutal! You cannot drive vehicles over 9' tall into the park at all, so we had to rent a car in Bangor two hours away and leave our van outside the park gate. Even though we had a campsite in the park for three nights (necessary in order to be able to park at a trailhead to Katahdin before the gates opened), we only stayed a the site one night. It was so cold that we left Baxter and camped elsewhere in our van the other nights. The first night we found this very cool free campsite at Lake Seboisis. It was our favorite campsite the whole trip. Just two campsites on a lake in the middle of nowhere.
The first day it was too rainy to summit, so we took a short hikes in Baxter to "Niagara Falls."
We did camp in Baxter (at Roaring Brook) the night before our hike. There was heavy rain all night and it was about 35 degrees. We were in a lean-to so we were dry but otherwise quite miserable. Here's how it looked before the rain started, though:
It was also a bit of an ordeal getting a correct weather forecast. We didn't really want to hike in the rain or end up at the top of the mountain with no view. There was no internet access in the park, and though we had our Starlink, we were getting very conflicting weather reports for the day we thought would be the best to make our Katahdin attempt. One forecast said rain ALL DAY, one said it would be clear and sunny after 8 am. The park ranger was insistent that the rain forecast was the more reliable one. We should have just chosen to be optimists and gotten on the trail at 6 am. Instead we waited until about 8:00 when the rain stopped and then got on the trail at 9 am. We had to "sign out" that we were departing, and the sign warned that it was advisable to leave before 9 am. Oh well.
Turned out it was an absolutely beautiful day though quite cold - and I'm sure it would have been even colder at the summit! No, we did not make it to the summit! When we got to Chimney Pond on the way up, the ranger there told us we did not have time to make it to the summit and back before dark but that we were welcome to try.
Terry had more energy than I did, but we were both pretty exhausted. The trail was mostly scrambling over rocks - there was never just a path once we left Chimney Pond and only a few times on the way to Chimney Pond. At one point I was in tears, but we stopped and ate some snacks, and I was able to keep going up for another hour and a half. We had promised the ranger we would turn around in two hours, and it was obvious that we weren't going to summit in that time. So Terry went further up for another 30 min, and I just rested and got a head start down. This was the view from the highest point we both reached:
It was hard to give up, and I was so frustrated that we hadn't left earlier - it was just so hard to set out in the rain! And knowing that it was gonna be 40 degrees with 30 mph winds on top was a little hard to deal with as well. We did stop at Chimney Pond on the way down and take some photos.
We got back to Roaring Brook after dusk, but it was not quite dark enough to need a flashlight yet. We were cutting it close.
Terry and I both agreed we have never been on a trail as tough as this one. We'd like to give it another try soon with a few changes: (1) we would fly to Boston and rent a car as that van switching thing was ridiculous, (2) we would plan to hike into Chimney Pond and spend the night before and after summiting there, and (3) we'd hike in the late summer on a warm day.
One thing we probably WOULD do again was celebrate at Knife Edge Brewery in Millinocket when we are done! We had some great wood-fired pizza there, and it was fun to visit there with other hikers.
On our trip we listened to "Lost on a Mountain in Maine" - about a little boy lost on this mountain many years ago. Very inspiring story! And ironically, right after we listened to it, we learned that it had been made into a movie that was getting ready to premier!
