The reason I picked climbing Mount Katahdin was because it was a life changing experience that I will keep with me for the rest of my life.

Every year, my brothers, my dad and I go up to Baxter State Park, and every year we kept putting off the mountain; but this year, we did it.

We woke up extremely early and headed up the road.

We started climbing the mountain around 7 a.m. We started climbing the intensely sloped mountain, still many hours from the summit. About an hour after we started, we got to Abol Falls. The ice cold water became rapids tumbling over huge stones and poured into huge pools of ice cold water spraying mist far into the cool mountain air. The mist rose up and over the bridge and settled in my thick, luscious, curly hair, like a swallow nesting in a giant fir tree.

The falls gradually fell behind us, but the steep slopes of rock met us head on. The giant fir and pine trees were replaced with shrubs and wild blueberry bushes. We hit flatland about an hour later. These trails were dug deep into the tough terrain and wound around cliffs thousands of feet deep into a valley cut from a roaring brook. The trail and its climbers were soon stopped by huge gray boulders with weathered sides and “Merlin’s beard moss” (as my cousin would say) clung to it like leeches on a piece of flesh. This made it almost impossible to climb. My brothers and I nearly killed ourselves by wedging hands and feet into deep crevices, while our dad took the easy and non adventur’s way around the huge gray giant. But either way, we made it to the top of the one out of 10 boulders blocking the trail. After about two more hours, we made it to the tree line (the place where no trees grow because of harsh conditions). I don’t think I have ever seen so many rocks the size of pick-up trucks in one area. The scere was not the only thing overwhelming. The fact that we had to climb over each of those pick-up size rocks was also pretty bad, but we kept on chugging like a steam locomotive. It took us about one and a half to two hours to reach plateau land. When we reached this part of the mountain, it was easy going. Trees still didn’t grow, but it looked like the flat lands were painted bright reds and yellows from all the different mosses and decaying organic matter.

During this part of the hike, almost everyone asked how old our youngest brother was (he was eight at the time) and he answered quite gaily, (for reasons Luke and I do not know) that he was eight. Later on, our dad explained to us “that it’s not every day you see an eight year old climb Mount Katahdin.

After a short while we came upon Thoreau Spring. It was named by Henry David Thoreau a famous poet who wrote poems about the spring. We filled our water bottles and moved on towerd the summit which towered over us like a giant waiting to cruch us. But we kept on pushing I ran ahead of my group wanting to be the first Thoombs of my generation to reach the tallest point in the entire state of Maine. I finally reached the summit. My heart was overwhelmed with joy and happiness, but most of all, pride that I endured six hours of hiking and loved every second of it.

If someone came up to me in 2009 and asked if I would climb Katahdin again, the answer would be hands down, absolutely positively, yes with all my heart.

I should probably state that at the beginning of our little excursion, my boots were brand new. After it looked like my boots had gone through a war!

I would say how I went down the mountain, but, trust me, that is a totally different story!