Finally Made It

 ….So Now What? lol

(Image intense entry)

There is absolutely nothing a more satisfying experience than working towards something for a long time, and then achieving it.

Sam and I left for Maine last Sunday. Its about a seven and a half hour drive from Connecticut to Sam’s parent’s house in Maine. (If you’re not making a bajillion stops to pee, that is. We stopped at Charlton Plaza- to pee- in Massachusetts and at Kennebunkport -to eat lunch- on the way up.) Halfway to Maine, my brother sent me a text. As I’m sure I mentioned before, I was counting heavily on Christopher’s presence on our hike of Katahdin. He wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to come up with us, anymore. He had his reasons – they were valid reasons – but I still freaked out, had a massive anxiety attack for the second half of the drive up there. It was pretty terrible. Because what was I going to do now? My rock just up and left on me. (I clearly have dependency issues.) 

Putting that all aside and getting a grip on myself before we got to Winn (the town Sam’s parents live), we had a very enjoyable week leading up to the climb. I got up every morning – Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday – and I did my workouts that Trainer Tim sent me up with. Then we had breakfast, went canoeing/fishing, hung out with Sam’s parents, played cards, had dinner. Played more cards. 

Sam’s parents live right on the Penobscot river. This is a shot I got on Monday from the canoe. 

Sam went fishing. 

The weather cleared up on Tuesday and it was gorgeous!

Wednesday we went to Fort Knox and explored its passageways. That would be the first Fort Knox, built in 1844 in Maine. Not the Fort Knox with all the gold and junk in it in Kentucky. Funny enough, Fort Knox (Maine) never saw any action. The most action it saw was from a company being trained from Hartford, Connecticut!

There’s no gold here, guys. We went to the wrong one.

Thursday was mostly a ‘rest day’ for me from Trainer Tim, so we went to the Maine Iron Works. It was mostly a driving and light walking day. We were originally planning on hiking Katahdin on Saturday, but the weather was looking better on Friday. So resting on Thursday it was!

(This is where the story gets epic. I’m going to try to not leave out any detail.) 

Friday rolled around. Sam and I got up at 3am, ate a light breakfast and headed out around 4.30am to Baxter State Park. Its a little over an hour drive to get there from Winn. We got there just before 6am, which was a good thing, I guess. Because the park opened at 6am. We had to wait about 15 minutes for someone to come and open the gate. 

We reached Katahdin Stream Campgrounds and the hikers’ check-in at 6.40am. We charged up that mountain like nobodies business. We cleared the timberline in record time (for us.) I didn’t wear a watch, and I didn’t ask Sam what time it was because I didn’t want to be playing a game of ‘beat the clock’ in my head. Our goal for summiting was 1pm. So it mostly just felt like we reached the timberline in record time (for us.) We only stopped once for an almond break, so I guess that’s a good thing. 

And then we cleared the timberline. Now. For those of you who have not climbed Katahdin via the Appalachian Trail, I’m going to tell you something. The first part above the timberline is the hardest. After that, its a cake walk. Relatively speaking. The first thing that you have to do (and I’m mad I didn’t get a picture of it, so I grabbed someone else’s) is you have to reach really high above your head, and grab this iron bar. Pull yourself up, and put your foot on the little iron foothold that is… right next to the bar. Its kind of ridiculous. And kind of terrifying. 

Just so you know, I’m almost 6 feet tall, and I had trouble reaching the bar. 

We got up there, I looked up, and I told Sam I was done. I wasn’t doing it. I couldn’t do it. I wanted so badly to call Trainer Tim and have him give me a pep talk just to get me in a better head space. I had cell service (weirdly enough.) But as I tried to dial, my phone died. On the verge of a complete breakdown, this guy comes up behind us, and he talks me down from my anxiety attack. He gave me four peanut M&Ms (two green and two blue) and I asked him to talk to me like he was Trainer Tim. (You got this. Crush it.) Which he did, and it helped that the guy kind of looked a little like Trainer Tim, and that was enough to get me up and over the bar. 

And that was the hardest thing I had to do. I got there, I moved past it, and I was cool as a cucumber the entire way up. Meanwhile, there were two guys with a gaggle of children -ages ranging from 6 to 9- that were loving every second of climbing this mountain for the fourth time in their lives. We had 6 year olds passing us about a dozen times on the trail. They would climb up and get ahead of their dads, then climb back down to stay with them for a little bit. Then they would motor on ahead of us again. It was ridiculous. I wish my dad took us to do stuff like this when I was a kid. Those kids are never going to know what fear is as they grow up. 

 

The trail above the timberline is a lot like this. Lots of boulders, lots of hoisting yourself up. And pretty steep. 

 

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Where the mist is trailing off the mountain? That’s the trail.

 

This is from 2011, our first attempt. The trail goes up that way. 

That’s what it looks like when you get to the top of that rise. I climbed that!

And once you get past the scary boulder climbing portion of the trail (also known as The Gateway, but ‘scary boulder climbing portion’ works, too.), you get to Table Land. Its a wide, smooth, gradual slope up to the top of the mountain. When we got to the sign announcing that we were at Table Land, I was so angry with myself on behalf of last time. Because I was literally right there. I was just below it. But I was so happy when I got there, I accidentally trampled some of the plant life. (I felt terrible.) 

. Oops

I don’t know if you can see it, but my smile is actually barely masked terror. 

When we got to Table Land, we met Dave, Quinn, and Ted. They were camping up at Chimney Pond Campsite, which is on the Saddle of the mountain. They were really awesome and we chatted with them for a while. They’ve all climbed Katahdin previously and congratulated me on making it this far and wished me a happy birthday. We met them again later on at the summit. 

After moving on from Gateway to move through Table Land, a cloud moved in on us. Which was both inconvenient and a godsend. Inconvenient because, while it sounds awesome that I can tell people that I walked through a cloud (fuck yeah!), I need eye wear to see. And that cloud really, really wanted to make a mini-cloud on my glasses. It was really inconvenient for me to not be able to see, with or without my glasses on. It became more inconvenient when that cloud brought 20-25mph wind gusts with it. So every time I wiped the condensation off of my glasses, it pretty much just blew itself right back on again. 

It was a godsend being in a cloud in that we couldn’t see 20 feet out in any direction. True, we missed a lot of the views, but it made it easier for me to get in the right head space to keep moving. I didn’t need to be distracted by the fact that I was thousands of feet above the ground and climbing higher in an effort to feel the way that Frodo felt while he was making his climb up Mount Doom. 

 

Our lovely views from Table Land!

And eventually, from out of the fog, loomed The Sign. The Sign that everyone wants to have their picture taken with in proof that they have climbed to the top of Mount Katahdin. The pictures of which unite us all in some very special spiritual way that only those who have been to the top and back could possibly understand and share. 

We finally made it! 

And after months of training, hard work, determination, sweat and tears: I can finally say that I have climbed a mountain. On my birthday, no less. Best birthday ever? I would like to think so. Sure kicked the snot out of being 23. (Which is the day I failed at climbing Katahdin.) We got there right at about 12-noon, which was excellent time, and we got there a whole hour earlier than planned. We had lunch on the summit, talked to Dave, Quinn, and Ted again, as well as some through-hikers of the AT. It was glorious!

Story ain’t over yet, kids. We still had to go back down. Ten times scarier than going up. And now the wind gusts have picked up to be closer to the 25mph range (Sam thinks. Either way, the wind was blowing like a mo’fo’ and it was terrible!) We’re still in a cloud. And with the wind, I can’t keep my glasses clear enough to see through them for more than a second or two before I have to wipe them off again. So I opted to make the executive decision to do the climb down from the Summit to the Gateway without my glasses on. (Just so you guys see the magnitude of this decision, I can’t see much of anything past a foot in front of my face. I’m going to be looking in to getting contacts, soon.) I could see mist. Shapes of grey, green, and black, which were rocks. And I could see the blurs of the white trail blazes. And little else. And it was a helluva lot more than what I was seeing with my glasses on. 

We figured that once we got to the Gateway, I’d be able to use my glasses again. Because the cloud, when we had gotten past the Gateway into Table Land, was a little ways up into Table Land.  And the cloud probably hadn’t descended all that much since we got to the summit. 

Murphy’s Law kicked in, and guess what? The cloud had descended over the entire Gateway portion of the trail. Guys. I did the hardest part of the trail practically blind.

As we came into the Gateway, we had caught up with a man with his grandkids. I made another executive decision and decided that we were going to follow them down the trail. (I made a lot of executive decisions that day. I was taking point, in our party of me and Sam. So as the front runner, I wanted to make sure we got up there and down again safely.) He had set a really good pace for the condition

s- not too fast, but quick enough to get us back down in a timely manner. I never got his name, but when we stopped for a rest, I asked him how old he was. He was 77 years old, with his three teenaged grandkids with him. He said he had hiked this trail when he was fifty, and it was a piece of cake. But he struggled with it a little, now that he was 77. I want to be this guy when I’m 77. 

But the funniest part of the story with this guy, is that he was in the same boat as me: He couldn’t wear his glasses for the clouds that were on them. So it was literally a case of the blind leading the blind! LOL

Eventually, we made it back under the timberline and the rest of the journey down was a piece of cake. I cried when we got to the car. I called Trainer Tim when I got back to the house and charged my phone. At some point during the morning, he sent me a text wishing me a happy birthday. And he told me that my cake was at the top of the mountain. When I called him, I told him that he lied. (What do you mean I lied?) There was no cake at the top of that mountain. (.…Don’t tell me that means you didn’t make it?) No, I’m saying I hauled my butt up that mountain and back down again and there was no cake at the top or anywhere else to be found or had. You lied. 

After he congratulated me on my success, Sam and I showered and we had home made strawberry rhubarb birthday pie. It definitely held the taste of accomplishment within its crust. 

This is by far my greatest accomplishment in my life. I only have one mountain climbed under my belt. I had several people on the mountain tell me I was crazy for picking Katahdin as my first mountain to climb. But you know what? I just made everything easier on myself for the future: Now, other climbs won’t feel as difficult. Washington next weekend? Gonna be a cake walk. And I can’t wait. 

So not only did I climb a mountain, but I did it in terrible conditions, without the crutch of having my brother with me, with a fearless attitude, with the boy I love, on my birthday. I’m pretty pleased with myself. But now that its over and done with, what do I do now? I’m thinking of training up for a Tough Mudder for next year. That sounds awesome. 

The rest of the weekend we took it easy, did some light walking on some local trails through the Wilderness Park, then we came home on Sunday night. Perfect vacation. And I came home to this message from Trainer Tim:

"I could not possibly be more proud of one of my clients tonight. Drea Wall took me on at the end of spring to help her prepare for the eleven hour hike to the top of Mt Katahdin in Maine. She had tried it last year (actually it was two years ago lol) and turned back. Even though she has to deal with a fear of heights, she was determined to go for it again.

We trained. And trained. Drea has never missed a workout and totally CRUSHED her Whole30 eating challenge in June. In the few months we have been working together she has…

a. done literally hundreds of burpees, squats, pushups, ring rows…you name it
b. been close to tears when she thought she couldn’t do something.
c. been even closer to tears when she found out she could.
d. pulled a jeep across a parking lot
e. run her first 5k
f. run her second 5k

Her grit and determination to accept any challenge I threw at her to get her ready in both body and mind has been nothing short of inspirational to me as a coach. 

And now, tonight, she called to tell me she made it to the top of the mountain. On her birthday, no less.

Congratulations, Drea! 

YOU made it. YOU did the work.

YOU. ROCK."

(For anyone that is looking to get a personal trainer, I cannot recommend enough to look into working with Trainer Tim. He does long-distance stuff if it is necessary – he’s in CT but he has clients in California – he works with you and what you’re capable of, and works with you to make your goals. He has seriously changed my life. http://coreprincipal.wordpress.com/ )

In addition to coming home to seeing that, I also came home to a flood of birthday wishes and encouragements from friends and family telling me that they had faith that I would be able to make it to the top this time. 

Best vacation ever. 

25 is going to be a good age to be. I can feel it. 

 

ALW

PS: I also nailed my hip reels with my poi this week! Super stoked! Three-beat weave, here I come!

 

EDIT:

Also, not to forget this: Any time I had a moment of fear, I thought back to ZeFrank’s ‘Invocation for Beginnings,’ and I kept telling myself that ‘Courage is a wild dog and it won’t just come when I call it, I have to chase it down and hold on as tight as I can.’ And, ‘My cheese monster will never be satisfied by any cheddar, only the cheese of accomplishment.’ 

I thought of ZeFrank. I thought of Trainer Tim. I thought of Meg, telling me that I wasn’t going to fall off the mountain. I thought of all the people I told that I was going to mak

e it. And I sang Imagine Dragons and the Bilge Pumps when I needed something to distract myself.