Katahdin Knife Edge

Katahdin (5,267ft)

Sept 17, 2022

Jake and Eric

I flew out to Boston for a long weekend and the goal was to climb Katahdin and do some mountain biking. I had already climbed katahdin a bunch of times, but this would be Jake’s first time and he was excited to hike the knife edge route.

Katahdin is in Baxter State Park, which has the most regulations of any park I’ve ever been too in the US. The regulations are complicated, difficult to figure out, change every year, and seem aimed at restricting visitor access as much as possible. But as best as I could figure out the current regulations are that you have to reserve a campsite or parking spot for Katahdin trailheads in an online reservation form before entering the park. These spots get reserved months in advance. If you don’t have a parking spot reservation you are not allowed to climb Katahdin.

Even if you have a reservation, there are cutoff times for starting, though it is unclear to me if these are currently enforced or are just strongly recommended. And even if you have a reservation and get there at the correct time, the rangers can decide to close the mountain. This could be if it is a little bit icy, or weather conditions aren’t perfect, or if they just decide to close it. One time I was up at Chimney Pond in October and asked a ranger what he would do if a hiker tried to walk up the trail when the mountain was closed. He said he would take out his gun and fire a warning shot above their head!

If you hike when it is closed and get caught you supposedly get a lifetime ban from the park, a $500 fine, and a court summons. (These were the latest regulations I remember and they may have changed now, but it’s very difficult to figure out what the current regulations are).

Unfortunately for us all campground and trailhead parking spots were already reserved for that weekend. They had probably been reserved months in advance. But in the past I’ve biked in to the park before the gate opened and did a climbing route. Digging through the new regulations I couldn’t find anything prohibiting biking in now, and that would seem to avoid the problem of the parking lot being full. A bike doesn’t take up a parking spot since I’d just lock it in the woods.

It was unclear to me if the cutoff time regulations are still in effect. I found conflicting information online.

We had hoped to climb Sunday, but the weather was only good Saturday, with a lot of rain coming in Sunday and Monday. I was worried they might close the mountain those days, so Saturday was our only option. It would be tight, since I would arrive Saturday morning and it was a 5 hour drive to the park, but we decided to give it a shot.

Our plan would be to park just outside the park boundary and bike in. We’d stash our bikes in the woods at Roaring Brook, about 9 miles up the road, and thus avoid the requirement of getting a parking permit in advance. We’d get there late in the day, but if cutoff times were not being enforced it shouldn’t be a problem. I figured with our timing we could get to the summit by sunset and back down below treeline by the time it started getting too dark.

The park entrance is gated at 10pm but that would not be a problem with a bike if we got back late. And it was unlikely they would close the mountain on a sunny, warm, low-wind day. We would camp outside the park and just do a day trip, so wouldn’t need to reserve a spot at the full campgrounds inside the park.

As far as I could tell, we would not technically be violating any rules. Though, in my experience, rangers at baxter always find a way to say you are violating a rule. One time I had carefully scoured the rules and determined there was no regulation against bringing an inflatable kayak to Chimney pond to paddle around, but a ranger at the trailhead said it was not allowed. I told him there was no rule on the books against it, but he didn’t care.

I landed at 6:30am at Boston and we quickly headed north. It was a long drive, but by 12:30pm we had parked the car at a logging road just outside the park boundary and started biking up. Jake had brought two mountain bikes for the trip.

We reached the entrance gate and told the ranger we were planning to climb katahdin.

“All the Katahdin trailheads are closed,” she said.

“But we don’t have a car, so we won’t be taking up any parking space,” I replied. “We’ll just lock the bikes to a tree.”

“Bikes are vehicles, so you have two vehicles and the parking lot is already full,” she said.

This made no sense at all. But it was not worth arguing. Baxter state park rangers will always find a way to tell you no. The best course of action in my experience is to minimize time interacting with rangers, since they will just tell you not to do what you want to do. I quickly thought of a backup plan.

“Can we bike up and hike to Katahdin Lake?” I asked.

She said we could, then she took down our emergency contact info on a piece of paper and let us go. Surprisingly she didn’t ask for the $14/vehicle fee, which would have been $28 since we supposedly had two vehicles. I didn’t mention this and we instead quickly started biking up the road.

There are two roads leading up from the entrance gate, and Katahdin lake has a trailhead that is along the same road as the Roaring Brook trailhead. So if I told her we were going to Katahin Lake then it would look natural for us to continue biking up in the direction of Roaring Brook.

I didn’t intend to go to Katahdin Lake, though. I intended to stick to the original plan.

The gravel road was in good shape and we soon made it to the Katahdin Lake trailhead. We stopped there to formulate our next plan. If we biked to Roaring Brook, it was likely the ranger there would also get mad at us. I remembered the trail passes directly in front of the ranger cabin, so they see everyone.

But, since we had bikes, we didn’t necessarily have to pass directly by the ranger cabin. We weren’t limited to parking in the parking lot, so we could instead hide the bikes in the woods shortly before the parking lot and bushwhack around the cabin to gain the trail. I figured if we could just avoid any ranger encounters at Roaring Brook then nobody else could tell us no and we could continue with the same plan.

So we continued biking up the road, then darted into the woods just before the parking lot. We went far enough in to not be visible from the road, then locked the bikes up.

From there we bushwhacked through mostly easy terrain straight up until we intersected the Helon-Taylor trail. I then breathed a momentary sigh of relief. In my experience rangers generally stay at the trailheads all day to keep order and enforce rules. I’ve never seen a ranger out hiking the trails.

Also, technically we still hadn’t violated any rules. The ranger hadn’t told us we couldn’t hike Katahdin, just that the parking lot was full. But we didn’t use the parking lot.

We hiked up the trail as many hikers were coming down. I think some of them were kind of surprised we were going up at that hour. But if asked we could always say we were going to see sunset at the edge of treeline. Nobody asked, though.

We soon broke out of the trees and had excellent views of South Turner, Hamlin, and a bunch of other peaks. The trail started getting fun with scrambling sections, and we passed the final few hikers descending. We eventually reached Pamola Peak and got a great view of the Knife Edge and Katahdin in the distance. The sun was getting low and the lighting very pretty. I was excited to be up above treeline at that hour.

We scrambled down to the notch below and were blasted by wind. I’d forgotten how much windier it is in New England than in Washington State. I led the way on fun scrambles up and over Chimney Peak and then across the knife edge. I’d say this is my favorite trail in New England because of all the scrambling and good views.

By 7:15pm, just as the last rays of sun were disappearing, we made it to the summit. The sunset was amazing and I think we timed the ascent perfectly.

We were able to descend quite a ways without using headlamps, but put them on just before descending the saddle trail. This was a much better trail to do at night than going back across the knife edge, and it wouldn’t be so obvious we were up there as if we had our headlamps on traversing the knife edge.

We made good time down to Chimney Pond and passed the ranger cabin without being noticed. We then continued down to roaring brook, and also passed that ranger station unnoticed. By 10pm we made it back to the bikes, and by 11pm we reached the park gate.

It was closed, but not locked. We easily passed under with the bikes and biked back to the car. Shortly after reaching the car we felt the first drops of rain, and I was happy we had timed the almost perfectly to beat the incoming weather. It would rain hard that night and the next day, and I was happy to get the summit saturday without getting in trouble.

 

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