Noah's First Katahdin Hike- 2014

On Monday we took Noah for his first hike up Katahdin.  He was a real trooper and did way better than I thought he would.  We had low expectations going in and Noah really rose to the occasion and completed the hike. We parked at roaring brook and hiked to chimney pond.  We then climbed to the summit via the cathedral trail.  It was at this point we decided we could never go up cathedral with two or more children until they had longer legs because there are some pretty difficult parts when your legs aren't long enough to climb up the boulders.  At the same time, being smaller had its advantages in many places where Gabe and I were too big to squeeze through and had to take the long way around.  

We were pretty thrilled to reach the summit in just 5 hours!  Noah was doing so well in fact, that Gabe and I managed to convince ourselves to go down the Helon Taylor trail via knifes edge as it was 1 mile shorter and Noah could make it... It is safe to say that we obviously didn't think through what knifes edge looks like if you are 7 and your legs can't easily make it over the "easy" section of trail.  There were definitely times as we were all scaling the rocks where only inches of error were allowed, when Gabe and I would look at each other and think, "maybe this was a mistake".  Not from Noah's perspective because he had no clue of the challenge or danger of the trail and was having a grand time making explosion sounds every time we would get to a difficult part in the trail:) From our perspective however, we knew exactly what could happen and could see the newspaper headlines should something happen. 

Thirteen hours after we began, we reached the ranger station back at roaring brook, exhausted, but feeling very accomplished and thankful that everyone completed the climb safely.  Noah's favorite part of the day was getting to put his feet in the mountain stream at the end of the trail.  The great part is that Noah wasn't traumatized from the hike and is already asking when we will be able to hike it again.  He does add the stipulation though that the hike we did was too long and we have agreed not to make him do knifes edge again until he was a teenager and asked to do it;)  All in all it was a lovely day, perfect weather for hiking and some special time with Noah.