Backbone Mountain

Kellisa's 17th State Highpoint

Backbone Mountain, MD

3,360ft.

Round trip Hiking Distance: 2 Miles

Elevation Gain: 700ft.


July 2010

Heading up the old logging road towards the summit:

To date, this is the hardest highpoint with Kellisa. Most would think it's because the trail gained 700ft. in only one mile. They would be half correct. The other part of the answer would be leaving the guidebook in the car. This error caused us to miss the correct turn 2/3 of the way to the summit.

Before we knew it, we were completely off the trail and surrounded by featureless forest:

After a few minutes, we followed Kellisa's wheel prints back to the trail. We quickly found the correct turn in the trail and headed back up in the right direction. The trail was steep and rocky from the start. At this point, the trail got even steeper, rockier, twistier and to add insult to the situation- narrower. With the summit no where in sight, it got to the point where I could not get the stroller up another foot.

I left Kellisa for a minute as I scouted the trail up ahead. It did not get any easier and I still did not see the summit. I returned to Kellisa defeated. I knew we had to head down without the summit. I turned the stroller around, but knew we had to be very close to the summit.

Since this would be our only chance, I decided to leave everything except Kellisa right there. I picked Kellisa up, flung her over my shoulder and asked her to help with her 70+ pounds as much as possible. We headed up the trail. I was frustrated, tired and it was hot as we ascended. I fell to my knees several times as I had to set Kellisa down a few times to catch my breath. It seemed like forever, but after about 15 minutes of torture, we reached to top of Maryland.

There were two couples relaxing on the summit and one of the men offer to take our picture:

Limited view from the summit: