At last - we have completed the journey!

Yesterday we climbed Katahdin, the climax of the whole AT experience. A towering mountain with huge plateaus above the treeline and a rock boulder climbing approach which is daunting. It was a fitting end - day 176 on the trail.

It took us 3 and 3/4 hours to get to the top at 5268 ft, and 3 and a 1/4 hours to get down. The day was sunny with wind speeds 5-10 mph. It was glorious to be up on the summit, with 15 other thru-hikers who were also completing their hike, with a view stretching for miles over the 100 miles wilderness that we had walked through the last 7 days.

How do I feel? Initially it was relief that I had made it, and that it was over. Now 24 hours later, it is disbelief that we actually achieved it, that we actually did walk the whole way - 2179 miles. This is a major achievement - and by tomorrow it may be exhilaration and pride. But at the moment I still can't believe that we have actually done it.

We have 4 days booked in Boston in a small apartment in Beacon Hill, the historical downtown area, until we fly home on the 29th - Boston - Los Angeles - Melbourne - Cairns, arriving on the 1st October.

Southern Maine is hard work!

We breathed a sigh of relief to leave New Hampshire. At last we are in Maine, and hopefully on the home straight. Then we discover that the mountains in Maine are even worse than the Whites in NH. Over the last 4 days we have only been able to manage 10 miles a day.

Yesterday we did the Mahoosic Notch - a very deep valley which is filled with huge boulders - I mean really huge - and we have to wend our way through them, sometimes crawling through small crevasses, and having to take our backpacks off and push them through ahead of us. It took an hour and a half to travel the one mile through the notch. I emerged covered in scratches on my knees and elbows from the granite.