Day 1, Feb 27th – Abol Bridge to Kidney Pond
On Sunday morning, Boghollow, BillB, Fiddlehead and his fiancee, gracepoints, and I met up at the Appalachian Trail Café in Millinocket for breakfast. After our meal, we drove to Abol Bridge and began packing our sleds. gracepoints and I would ski while everyone else hiked. When we were loaded up I quickly realized that our sled was too heavy for me to pull on skis, so I changed into my hiking boots for the hike in. We didn’t have any mountain views on the way in, but the trail was packed down from people hiking out that day.
Crossing
Foss and Knowlton Pond
When we crossed Foss and Knowlton Pond, we followed tracks to the northwest corner, while the more used trail is on the north shore of the pond. There was a trail for us to follow, but it was narrow and went steeply uphill. After a short distance, we came to a junction and picked up the more packed trail again. The rest of the hike to Daicey Pond was problem free. Once we were past the cabins at Daicey, we found that Nesowadnehunk Stream was not completely frozen, meaning that we had to continue on the park roads to Kidney, adding almost two miles to the hike.
Once we made it to Kidney, we began settling into our cabins – getting fires going in the stoves, figuring out water sources, etc. A few hours later a ranger stopped by for a quick chat and to give us the last weather forecast we would get.
We had three days in the park, and we had hoped to hike Katahdin one day, have a rest day, and then hike North Brother the third day. The forecast didn’t match that plan. Based on the forecast, it would make the most sense for us to hike North Brother on Monday and Katahdin on Tuesday.