Soon the near-sighted fellow’s blood began to boil, and his desire to possess this enormous creature reached fever pitch. Finally one evening at dusk the other hunters encouraged the poor fellow to go out and try his luck since the moose might not be able to see his approach in the gathering darkness.

What the unsuspecting victim did not know was that one of their number had carefully smuggled into his trip supplies an immense paper elephant such as was often used for big city parades. Also included was a goodly supply of firecrackers. Led by a guide, our nearsighted hunter cautiously paddled along the Debsconeag Deadwater with his senses at full alert. Lingering behind in other canoes were his friends, waiting with much tittering for the unfolding of events. Suddenly the guide stopped paddling and asked for complete silence—not even a whisper—in order not to scare away the great moose. Shortly, as they drifted closer to shore, he motioned for the victim to prepare to shoot.

One of his friends was to later report that “when the canoe stole softly up the shore, the very faint light of the moonless evening showed to his excited vision a monster which looked so enormous that [he might have been able to hit it even if] his gun was pointed the other way.”

All at once, the guide signaled that the moment to take action had arrived, and the man took aim and blazed away with one, two, and even three shots. To his astonishment the creature seemed to simply collapse. He quickly paddled to the shore, jumped from the canoe, and rushed forward to discover the paper elephant in a heap at his feet. At this startling discovery his friends set off the firecrackers from their canoes to celebrate their successful ruse.

Amid much laughter and frivolity, the remnants of the “great gray moose” were taken back to the camp lodge and hung on the wall for posterity. Around the fire that evening the victim took it all with good humor and laughed as heartily as the others over this amazing climax to his week in the great North Woods. As the years went by the tale of the hunt for the monstrous gray moose never failed to entertain the guests as they gathered each evening before the blazing fire to tell their tall tales.

The End of the Trail
The Katahdin region already had an Appalachian Trail when a group of people, primarily from the mid-Atlantic states, proposed in the 1920s to cut a trail along the ridges and mountain tops of the Appalachian mountain chain from Georgia to Mount Washington. An earlier trail by that name in the Wassataquoik Valley was cut in the 1880s from Katahdin Lake to the Great Basin. The use of that trail gradually diminished, and was eventually abandoned altogether as folks began to approach the Great Basin in the 1920s via what we now call the Roaring Brook Road.

The northern terminus of the new Appalachian Trail (AT) was originally to be the summit of Mount Washington. But when Mainer Myron H. Avery was elected chairman of the Appalachian Trail Conference he convinced the trail planners that the northern terminus should be the summit of Katahdin in his native state. When the change was finally approved, Avery and a cadre of friends began to lay out and cut the trail through Maine. They began on an August morning in 1933 at the top of Katahdin and over several seasons completed the work to the New Hampshire border across some 260 miles of mostly wilderness.

For the first five miles or so the AT utilized the famous Hunt Trail along the Hunt Spur to Katahdin Stream Campground. From there it followed old tote roads to Daicey Pond, wound down along Nesowadnehunk Stream, and finally crossed the West Branch of the Penobscot. At first that crossing was over an old dam at Nesowadnehunk Falls. Later, in 1936 the Patten CCC crew built a suspension bridge and hikers could safely cross the churning waters of the river.

Since then, thousands have made their way along the AT to experience one of the great thrills of their lives, climbing Katahdin. Some accomplish that feat in one season; others spend a number of years, even a lifetime, hiking one section at a time; some hike portions with no intention of hiking the whole 2,167 miles.

The hiker begins to see Katahdin from the 100-Mile Wilderness while traversing Gulf Hagas Mountain, the first peak in the White Cap Range, and then notices it dramatically at the Rainbow Ledges. After crossing the Penobscot West Branch at Abol Bridge, the mountain looms dramatically as one reaches Baxter State Park. One of the most memorable views is from the Daicey Pond Campground where the Appalachian Trail Conference held its popular biennial meeting in 1939. After a breathtaking view from the old lumber camp field at Katahdin Stream Campground the final 5.2-mile climb to the summit begins. Earl Shaffer was the first to hike the entire length of the trail from Georgia to Maine in one season in 1948. He turned around 50 years later and did it again in 1998 at the age of 79. Earl wrote this poem about Katahdin the night before his final climb:

You love it and you fear it
It is big and harsh and high
A mass of ancient granite
Towering into the sky
From the Indians who revered it
To the climber of today
A symbol of a spirit
That can never pass away

- Exclusive excerpt from a new book by John W. Neff

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