When I arrive for my shift, early on a Saturday morning, there's a long line of cars that snakes down toward Togue Pond Beach. A traffic jam at the south gate. People are milling around their vehicles with their doors open, and it looks like some sort of wilderness tailgate party. I drive past everyone on the lefthand side of the road and receive about twenty-five dirty looks - one from each driver. Many of these people have been queued up like this since the wee hours - it's now 6 a.m. - and some have slept in their vehicles. Nobody likes a budger, but when they see my uniform most of them nod. One guy purposefully stands in front of my car and blocks my way, glaring in through the windshield. I smile and point to my badge, and he steps aside.

This sort of scenario greets us at Togue Pond Gate on every fair-weather weekend during the summer and fall. All these people are here to do the same thing, all worried that if they don't arrive early enough they won't be able to do it. They'll miss out and have to come back on another nice day and wait in line again. So they get here extremely early.

They're all here, of course, to climb Katahdin, Greatest Mountain, The Mountain of the People of Maine. They know that we regulate numbers on the trails by using the parking lots as gauges - when the Day Use spots at Roaring Brook and Abol and Katahdin Stream are all taken, the mountain is closed to further climbing. On some Saturdays this can take place by 6:30 a.m. Other campers can get in to the park, of course, and use all of the other trails, but we don't allow people to climb Katahdin after all of the lots fill.
Katahdin's massif has a magnetic pull on hikers and has since prehistoric times. The Penobscots who ran through these woods and gave the peak its name wanted to climb it but were afraid of the god Pamola, who protected its summit. The Europeans said pooh to that, and climbed it anyway. Some even made it. Since the late nineteenth century the mountain has seen an unending stream of people in all seasons. Summer accounts for the largest crowds, but winter is busy here, too.

And a lot of people will do just about anything to do get themselves on the mountain's side. Appalachian Trail through hikers will slink in through the trees. Boston lawyers will remove barricades and drive around them. Sneaks will park at lots far from the trailheads and log the extra five or six or eight miles. Scofflaws will illegally stick their cars any old where. Tired trekkers will sleep in toilets. (The ranger who cleaned the latrine at the Visitor Center on one particular day that a fellow was found sleeping in it, thought that the fact that someone was willing to sprawl out next to the riser that he'd scrubbed proved he was the staff person with the cleanest outhouses.)

None of the late arrivers are happy with the gatekeepers and rangers who have tell them, "Sorry, not today." We've had women at the gatehouse bullied and verbally abused. I've had people call me every foul bit of slang invented, stuff not appropriate to repeat, and watched people squeal off in a cloud of dust. All so they can walk up a trail.

Nobody is here this early to make sure they can scale Sentinel. No one wakes up at 1 a.m. to get a spot for the Traveler Loop. People don't deprive themselves of sleep to visit Howe Brook Trail. Or Green Falls. Or the Brothers. Or DoubleTop.

But they probably should. They don't need to speed up I-95 or sleep in the car, I mean, but they'd be foolish not to avail themselves of some of these other sights. Baxter Park has more than 200 miles of trails, scores of mountains, and dozens of lakes. It's a truly magnificent landscape, top to bottom. And people would like it if they tried it.

Anyone who would enjoy climbing Katahdin, which is to say, who likes eight to ten hour hikes up rugged rock edifices, would appreciate a trek up the volcanic-looking cone that is Doubletop. Anyone who likes the physical challenge of Katahdin would find themselves enamored of the Traveler Loop, which also takes hikers ten or more miles across a spectacular peak and requires a full day to summit. People who climb the state's highest mountain to see the views on top would be amazed at the panorama that sits atop Sentinel, one of the best spectacles in the park simply because it looks at Katadhin.

All of these combined see a fraction of the hikers that climb Mt. K, though. Everyone wants to do the biggest and the baddest (even if they aren't quite physically ready for it). Many who climb have the mentality of conquerors and miss out on a lot of the quiet beauties that they pass along the way. Many will check "climb Katahdin" off on their life lists and never come back to Baxter Park.

But it's their loss. And their lines.

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