[at-l] "Summit Stories".... Fwd: September 11, 1979

[sloetoe at yahoo.com (Sloetoe)]

So here's my 'summit story' -- it was 9/11/79, weather was 30*
on top, wind was... as described below. Still an intimidating
day..... 

--- Sloetoe <sloetoe@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2000 18:35:27 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Sloetoe <sloetoe@yahoo.com>
> Subject: September 11, 1979
> To: at-l@backcountry.net
> 
> 17:30 EST. At this time 21 years ago, I was returning to the
> Katahdin Stream campground from summiting Katahdin.
> 
> I was so much warmer than I had been all day -- I felt a glow
from the sunshine peeking through the pines even as the sun
itself hurriedly sank. There was a slight breeze, but nothing
like the hell-powered furies that had battered me for most of
the day.
> 
> And battered I was. What I know now as a rush of endorphines
was powering through my exhausted frame, pretty much keeping me
upright. (And "frame" is indeed the right word: I was all of 136
pounds on 6'1", counting hair.) Every muscle in my body was
sacked, whipped, beat up; and quite a few of them were just
plain painful. But I was a throughhiker!!!
> 
> What I'd gone through included a 1/4 inch of ice on
everything, steady winds of 50-70 mph, and gusts of twice that
which would pick me up without warning, backpack and all, and
toss me 10-15 feet, for me to land on my face, my hands often
landing on the last rocks before the sheer edge of Katahdin's
western face, my head peeking over, my eyes looking down into
nothing but cloud, my mind knowing the unavoidable, unappealable
death waiting down through the cloud if should I slip over the
edge....
> 
> The details are getting kind of fuzzy now (much like the top
of my head). When I arrived at Katahdin Stream on September
10th, I had but one day, "tommorow", to hit Baxter Peak, and if
I didn't do it then, I would get no other chance in 1979. No
"throughhike". No "2000 miler" patch. All that rain, muck,
grief, sweat and heartache for *nuthin'*. So come what may, I
climb "tomorrow."
> 
> In my photo album is a series of Katahdin from the area around
Abol Bridge, and you can see (as the afternoon of the 10th wore
on) how Baxter Peak was going from whispy to clouds to serious
gray and black cloud reaching down well below treeline..... All
I could do was heave my shoulders and sigh... And the next
morning, lighten my pack at the Ranger Station and head out. 
> 
> I don't know if they still do, but the rangers used to post
the summit weather/expected conditions at the foot of the Hunt
Spur Trail by 7:00am every morning. I recall leaving *around*
7:00am, and the weather conditions not looking too bad.
Apparently, just as I left, they posted the NEW expected
conditions, and closed the peak for the day. TRULY, I didn't
know. I *can* tell you that I was nervous enough, having heard
horror stories all the way north. 
> 
> Alright, so, there I am, tooling nervously up the Hunt Spur,
past the Katahdin Stream crossing, observing the rapid loss of
deciduous trees, and then "poof!" around the next corner, the
trees shortened to nothing and my head is above treeline. It was
that(!) sudden. And Brrrrrr! It was cold! It was the wind! Big
wind (I thought at the time) sucking the calories right out of
me. 
> 
> The bravest thing I ever did was to keep going at that point.
A summer's worth of stories of windy horror swirling in my head,
Gray/black granite freezing cold to the touch, no gloves, an
exposed ascent line, and roiling clouds directly above. It was
like climbing UP INTO Hell.
> 
> But I thought, maybe I'll just give it a little try, and if
it's *really* that bad, I'll just quit. Bag it. Turn a 180 and
head for the trees. I'll just give it a little shot.
> 
> I paused there and put on my fiberpile and a wool watchcap
that I'd found in a leanto a few days before (and grabbed "just
in case"). I climbed up the first few van-sized boulders and
felt the ferocity of the wind: it was ripping at my jacket
pockets and hood opening. Holy Crapinskis. I'm not even "up"
yet! I battened down the hatches and went up a few more
van-sized boulders. I noticed my freezing hands would have to
play a MAJOR role in getting me up AND down; what if I concluded
that it was time to go down, and I didn't have the "hands" to do
it?
> 
> And the wind... When I was a wee youth, a couple of hurricanes
hit Connecticut hard. My father took us all down to the shore
(*against* the flow of traffic?!), and piled us out of the car
to stand arm in arm in the sand against the howling wind. And
later in life, I would ride an unfaired motorcycle at speeds up
to 125 miles per hour. And even on my throughhike, I'd gone
through BUNCHES of nasty weather and wild winds....... Nothing
like what met me on top of Katahdin....
> 
> I remember too, going up the Hunt Spur, the times when a gust
of wind, powerful but not yet to the coming speeds of the
Tableland, would hit me and blow me off of my grips on the
rocks. As there was ice now (on everything), all I could do was
ride the fall down to the previous rock, looking down between my
legs, hoping I would stay upright, trying to catch the next
ledge
down "on the fly." This happened ...a "few" times. Maybe a
bunch. But each time I recovered, and I asked myself "Was that
the one?" which would make me turn back -- and the answer was,
each time, "No, not just yet...."
> 
> So I got up on the Tableland -- and even with the 20-30 feet
of visibility, I could see why it was so named -- and I headed
in the direction of Baxter Peak. My hood's drawstrings were so
tight that they drooped far down my cheek -- except the wind
picked them up and wiped them *across* my face, to "whap!" me
right in the *other* eye! And of course, the big gusts would
hit. Would pick me right up, pack and all, and throw me. DIDN'T
EVEN FEEL LIKE WIND. More like the earth just moved. Then SMASH!
down on the ground again.
> 
> What was scariest on the Tableland was not the wind, actually,
but the falling away from the trail. There were a couple of
times when I'd get up, turn in the direction of what I *thought*
was the trail, and see NOTHING of it in the deep, deep cloud. No
blazes. No furrow of long established treadway. Just blowing and
roaring and gray, gray rock. Holy Crapatosis! At that time, I
felt TRULY exposed and afraid. How WOULD I survive? 
> 
> Why didn't I turn back? Well, once I hit the Tableland, I
figured I'd gotten the nasty part of the climb in back of me,
and whether I hit the summit or not, I had to make the descent
either way, so what's the diff? Somehow, the fright of the
Tableland winds didn't register as part of the danger, but
something else.... I could think about this a while and not come
up with the answer.
> 
> So I hit the summit, took some pictures, ABANDONED the thought
of the Knife Edge and Pamola (easy, since the 20 feet I could
see of the Knife Edge was less wide than what I'd been thrown
coming across the Tableland from the Gateway), and in 30 hurried
minutes, when my hands started to loose function, I jumped up
and started down.
> 
> Met one other poor fool near Thoreau Spring, and after a half
dozen attempts in the high winds, he managed to take my picture
-- the only one of ME on the mountain. And then, POOF!!!, the
clouds lifted, then BANG! they fell back down, then POOF!!!,
they lifted to clear a view for miles. Halfway back from Baxter
Peak, I'm standing in the middle of the Tableland with the wind
howling a million and a half miles an hour, and I can see
perfectly for miles off of the mountain, and I can reach up and
touch the clouds. Outraaaaageous.
> 
> The way down was nuts. It was not danger-free, and I was NOT
yet tempted to crack open the pint of Naragansett beer I'd
purchased at the Abol Bridge store in lieu of summit champagne.
But the way down was DRY!!!, and I warmed up in not having to
fight the wind-driven moisture. And the all-encompassing ice was
sublimed away, and I was left sliding down by bootsoles only. At
one point, I dropped my bamboo walking stick down a crack
between two boulders, and the funneled wind was powerful enough
to have the stick "float" gently down. I laughed and laughed. 
> 
> And burned up 2-3 rolls of film. Saw the truth of Thoreau's
comment on the view of the landscape from the summit of
Katahdin: he wrote something like "...a mirror broken into a
thousand pieces." Gave my boots -- which had gone 850 + 2100
miles looking just fine, thank you -- such a beating that no
amount of SnoSeal ever got it out. And from gripping the
ice-covered rock, I lost my fingerprints for weeks afterwards.
Brrrr.
> 
> And I got down to the bottom at 5:30, burned out, talking
silly, fried. Had the remainder of my throughhiking food: some
Minute Rice and a piece of bullion (urp). Same again for
breakfast the next morning.
> 
> I started the hitchhike to Connecticut with all of $2.00 in my
pocket. Made it home in a day and a half, was home for a day and
a half, then hopped on a bus for northern Wisconsin (College,
AYCE, girls, girls, girls), for a day and a half. And exactly a
week after DaBigUgly, I was a registered freshman in college.
Holy Crapatolito!
> 
> Yeahhhh, and then I ate a scoop of ice cream for each week I
was off the trail. Gained a pound a day through October; a
half-pound a day through November. Life was very, very, good.
And around about Christmas, I got used to having a roof over my
head; I didn't sit upright when I heard rain at night, wondering
what needed battening; and received Christmas cards from the
servers in the college cafeteria -- they knew *me* by name....
> 
> Hope you all eat well tonight, are secure at bedtime, and wake
refreshed and ready to peel off another 20 miler. Me? I'm going
to order Chinese tonight. I just know there's some worthy
throughhiker bedded down right now who'd give their left [insert
favorite body part] for a good bowl of Hot&Sour right now, and
I'm going to eat it in their honor.
> 
> Have just a really appreciative day, OK?
> Sloetoe
> 
> =====
> Ask for what you want;
>   Create what you need;
>  Go with what you have.


=====
Spatior! Nitor! Nitor! Tempero!
   Pro Pondera Et Meliora.

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