Spend much of my spare time in the last two weeks tilling the garden and planting vegetable seedlings and seeds. There is not much to show so far, but in a couple of weeks, things should be bustin’ out. Here is a photo that shows some onion, leeks and lettuce in the foreground and cole crops, such as brussels sprouts, cabbages, and broccoli at the far end.
Uncle Tom's garden
Tonight the dehydrator is humming, with beans and spaghetti sauce slimmin’ down.
I have a trip going out in three days, when my friend and former co-worker, Mike, picks me up at 5 AM on Wednesday morning and we drive 4 hours north to pack his canoe full of food and gear for a 7 to 10 day canoeing excursion on the Allagash Wilderness Waterway. We will be putting in above Mt. Katahdin, looking at from the North. We will cover just about 100 miles through inihabited wilderness, but with our zig zag style, could be a bit more than that.
There are some clear differences from backpacking in the prep for this trip. For one, you can’t dial in the days like you can walking on land. For instance, the first few days are on some big interconnected lakes, where the wind, when it picks up , can cause whitecaps and waves high enough to swamp your canoe. So we will likely have at least one day when we can’t move across a lake, and have to wait out the wind. The last time I was up there it was a harrowing experience, where we had to come in from the waves, and then spend an unexpected night and wake up first after morning light to make the 1 mile crossing of the lake, and even then, the wind really picked up 3/4 of the way across. Here is a good shot of my friend Hank, improvising a sail that got us up to 9 mph as we whipped across Chesuncook Lake. I was really hoping that Hank and my friend Dave would accompany us in a second cedar and canvas canoe that Dave rebuilt, but it didn’t work out.
Hank creating a sail
The other big difference is that, although there are some space limitations, and consideration aboutnot packing too much gear to portage around bad rapids or dams, you can take a crapload of things. Like a cooler, that we are packing with eggs, and frozen steaks, hams, bacon, chicken, cheese, and of course Whoopie Pies.
rating: 5 of 5 stars
I have just re-read this book, in anticipation of a 100 mile journey on the Allagash Wilderness Waterway coming up in a month or so. I don’t remember a finer, more enjoyable read. This book is slim, but perfect. It has history, unique characters, and an honesty about the conflicts and follies of group travel that is wincing in its honesty. Part of the story occurrs where we will go, and that is so tantalizing right now, as winter is fades and spring is harrowing in its brutal carnage around here this year. This is an other reminder of the pleasures, a few of the real challenges and in many ways the stunning power of simplicity.
Wednesday
We can’t see outside our picture window here at the Indian Hill Motel, which is conveniently situated just across the street from the Indian Hill Trading Post. There is a defunct, boarded-up, failed McDonald’s just down the hill from the Trading Post, a testament to the bleak economy in this last northern bastion of trade. The snowdrift outside is too high. If we could look through it, we’d see the vast expanse of Moosehead Lake below us, stretching out to the north.
Set at an elevation of 1,023 feet, Moosehead Lake is approximately 40 by 10 miles, with an area of 120 mile² and over 400 miles of shoreline. It is one of the largest natural freshwater lakes in the United States.
The image above gives a rough idea of the size and shape of the Lake. The map itself details the Plum Creek proposal for developing the area on the shores and surrounding the lake with over 1,000 house lots and two huge resorts. It has been approved by LURC and our trip there was seen as one of the last chances we’d get to view the area before it was developed. Out route went straight up the Lake from the lower end in Greenville, then up overland to enter and walk the length of Seboomook lake, running east to west at the very top of the map.
We’ll start walking the behemoth tomorrow, leaving from downtown Greenville. My compatriots on the winter walk are two men who I came to know while hiking the Appalachian Trail in 2007; Bad Influence ( Mark Shaw) and Rangoon (Clint Sochulak ). This trio completed the Fundy Footpath in October of 2008 together, a four-day hike I chronicled on this blog.
Right now we are done for the day, after spending too many hours driving up here from Midcoast Maine. It wasn’t enough for us to reach this last northern outpost in this part of the Great North Woods. We also had to spot a car up to historic Pittston Farms this afternoon, where we’d take out in a week if our luck and food holds out. The round trip ride up to Pittston Farms took us another two and-a-half hours. It is a mildly treacherous ride over narrow, snow drifted roads. Sure, you can power a decent 60 mph from Greenville up the west side of the lake to Rockwood, but then you cross over the Moose River and you are on a thirty-mile ice road, drifted over in spots, and just hilly enough to make me nervous churning the front wheels of my Chrysler Voyager as I crested blind hills and hoped for the best on the backside descents.
Outside our motel door tonight is the whine and throb of snowmobiles running around the parking lot of this 15 unit motel. We’re not going anywhere tonight, safely sipping Guinness, and soon to devour a variety of potato salads, dismember our hot rotisserie chicken, and enjoy each other’s company as we absorb the winter hum of the North Woods.
Tomorrow we start our walk right up the center of the Lake.
Thursday
Today we hauled a tough 7.3 miles. The snow cover is making for some tough pulling, especially for me with my waxed bottom, wooden toboggan. I also have the 17 pound, 9 x 12 Egyptian cotton tent, the box stove, 5 lengths of stovepipe, and the tent fly. Include three boxes of food, a couple of sleeping bags, a sleeping pad, pots, pans, a griddle, candles, a variety of iPods, and the list goes on.
By mid-day we had a most impressive view of a completely pure white, snow-covered Katahdin rising up behind the ridgeline some 70 miles to the east.
It was very useful to have my GPS here. I was toggling back and forth, taking readings from our take-off point in downtown Greenville and finding our eventual distance to the next major milepost of Kineo Mountain, the halfway point.
Leaving downtown Greenville
The walking was fairly easy day 1. We did use snowshoes as there were drifts and loosely packed snow that was tiring to sink in.
BI enjoying the day
We ended up camping our first night on this lake in the exact same place Roger Lee and I did on our 2002 trip here, traversing the same course. We are literally set up on the ice at the edge of the lake.
Southern end of Deer Island
The climb up to solid ground is much too steep to move all our gear up there. Our tent is tied off to trees. We get our drinking water from a hole that Bad influence chiseled through the ice. We don’t treat the clear cold water. In places, two feet of snow topped the lake.
Bad Influence cooked us a supper of ravioli and homemade tomato sauce. He served hummus and pita chips as an appetizer. We were too full for ice cream and berries.
Friday
It is 8:30 am and we are in our down sleeping bags and will stay that way. I have one bag inside another, due to the cold. I had awakened at 3 AM last night when I looked up through the white cotton in the dim moonlight and realized that the entire roof of the tent was covered in snow. I stood up and pushed the snow off the tent and then went out to pee. The snow was coming down at a good rate. While I was out I transferred all our split firewood to the inside of the tent. I also found BI’s jacket and mittens on top of his duffel and brought that in, too. Nothing more to do than settle back down into the depths of the thick sleeping bags and sleep until dawn.
At 6:30 AM it was still snowing. I decided I was now up for good, and easily started a fire in the stove. We are warm in the tent when the fire is glowing inside the 20“ length stove, but we tend to let the fire die out in the night, both for safety purposes and for the sake of conserving firewood. I was relieved that the was just a thin layer of ice on the pots of water that were left on the stove last night. I did not want to head over to the lake and clear out the snow and ice from the hole BI had çhiseled out.
I assembled a pot of coffee, Dark Star from Rock City Roasters in Rockland. It was soon perking away. I threw on a package of turkey sausage and made up four giant buckwheat pancakes, which we smothered in clarified butter (ghee) and maple syrup. Two more perked pots of Dark Star followed and we decided that it might be best to wait out the weather, rather than walk in a blowing snowstorm. We can hear the low rushing sounds of the wind, despite our super-sheltered site here.
I have walked in the driving snow here in 2002 with Roger when we decided to part ways with Garrett and Alexandra Conover, who themselves decided to wait out similar conditions. That trip was written up by the Boston Globe, where I was interviewed for the article. This time, this group would play it smart. Even if it stopped snowing, the walking would be difficult. The fierce wind will still be present, and the fluffy fresh snow will be swirling and would obstruct our vision. Every inch of our faces would need to be covered, and it is a level of grinding out miles that I’d prefer avoiding.
Our woodpile is dwindling rapidly. We split and cut enough to get us out of here after breakfast, but we’ll have to muster ourselves out of the tent sooner or later, as dry spruce does not hold a burn for very long.
At least all our clothes and boots will be dry, hanging on a line that we set up high in the peak of the tent, where the temperatures can reach 90 degrees.
Clothes drying on the line up in the peak of the tent
So, we were hanging out and listening to the snow hitting the tent when we heard the whine of approaching snowmobiles. Then the engines were shut off and we heard a female voice say, “I see smoke coming out from the stovepipe.”
Two neon-encased, helmeted folks lumbered up to the tent, so I invited them in.
“Where are we?” a male voice asked.
“Moosehead Lake!” we replied.
“No, where on the Lake are we?”
I told them I had a map of the Lake and I could show them where we were, which I proceeded to do. They were really surprised when I pointed out our site at the southern end of Deer Island.
I asked them where they had thought they were and they pointed to Beaver Cove some five miles east. The couple told us they were from Pennsylvania and were up for the weekend. We offered them fresh coffee but they were on their way to find ITS (Interconnected Trail System) 86 and we even gave them turn by turn directions on how to get there.
The snow finally let up by 11 AM, but the wind persisted, so we made a decision to hunker down here for the rest of the day.
We were also close to being out of wood, so we stretched and grunted up the godforsaken 45-degree slope to where we could find wood. The best stove fuel in these parts is standing dead spruce, and we had to range a good ways out into the forest to track down the four dead trunks hat we eventually dragged back to the site.
We spent the early afternoon sawing the pole down to 16″ lengths,
which Rangoon and I split with my ax. BI’s back was acting up, so he was absolved of the splitting detail. He told us his back wasn’t the same since he fell 70 feet off a cliff in a rock-climbing accident at age 16.
The afternoon was spent dozing, reading, and eating in the warmth of the tent.
Hanging out
I had decent cell service so I called one of my work sites and told them I was running into some weather that might hold us up. I was unsuccessful in reaching a few folks for the purposes of getting a weather report and finally hit pay dirt when my friend David read me the Rockwood, ME NWS forecast from his computer screen.
At 11:30 PM I awoke to the sound of rain hitting the roof of the canvas tent and the three of us launched into emergency tarp application mode. We were dreading packing a big, wet, snowy tent and I was doing a double dread at having to pull the weight of the thing all day. The plot thickens.
Saturday
At 8:45 we were up and out on the ice. It was good to move again.
It was tough walking today. We decided to swing out to the eastern side of Deer Island, in an attempt to avoid the wind, which was strong, persistent, and battered us all day long. Snowshoes in the morning gave way to just slogging through the slush on our rubber boots in the afternoon. I can’t say enough about my new pair of really waterproof Muck Boots, which I bought after BI’s recommendation.
Our initial 2-mile leg saw us battered by 25 mph winds.
“Whatever happened to the 40-degree temps?”, asked BI.
“Nothing, it is still 40 degrees out,” I replied. “The wind is making it feel much colder.”
Taken at midday
As we were rounding the bend, we were approached by a Fish and Game officer who was checking us out to see if we were legally fishing. We chatted a bit, and he told us that so far Greenville had received 115 inches of snow this winter. He told us it was to snow again tomorrow. He was very pleased that he was headed out to San Diego, CA in a couple of days.
Next, we turned the corner then slogged through a 4.5-mile walk straight into the wind. Two parties of snowmobilers asked us where they were, and if what lay off in the distance to the north was Mount Kineo. They had no clue.
We had to veer off to the western shore to try and avoid the battering of the west winds. We eventually found a stellar sheltered land-based campsite at Sand Bar Point, the main peninsula jutting out just south of Rockwood. It was a beautiful spot out of the wind.
Every single step for me today was work. I didn’t even take one normal step all day, thighs working overtime. Rangoon took on some leadership, breaking trail for us. He was also carrying three 16-18 foot tent poles, in our effort to save time and work when we set up the tent each evening.
Each night, as Rangoon and I set up the tent, BI chipped through 2- 2 and 1/2 feet of ice to get water. Rangoon’s power continued to shine and he cooked us a stellar chicken stew. The seven miles we walked today felt more like double that distance.
Sunday
Slush. Warm temperatures. Today was one of the less enjoyable outdoor times I’ve had over the years. We were all wearing waterproof boots, but by the end of the day, our feet were soaked, primarily from perspiration.
Initially, we had a long, four-and-a-half-mile walk grazing West Moody Island, eventually passing just to the right of Mt. Kineo, our halfway point up the Lake.
The wind was constant from the west, roaring in our ears all morning. Here is a brief video of a 360-degree view of the lake, with Kindo rising some 4 and 1/2 miles in the distance to the north. You hear the wind obscuring my voice, and if I sound tired, it is because I was. We are aiming for the cut just east of Kineo.
During that stretch, we saw blue skies, black rain clouds, rain, sleet, and then a bit of hail. The wind was up to 25 mph, on top of slush.
Eventually, we took off our snowshoes and trudged through the slush. Here is BI working his way up the lake, and at the end of the video you see my feet splashing along. That is water on top of the lake.
We found a relatively wind-free site for lunch and then passed Kineo. We decided to take the Ranger’s suggestion and head for a site on the eastern side of Farm Island. We were almost to shoe when a pair of snowmobiles approached from the North.
“Do you know where Tomhegan is? “, one rider asked me.
“No, I don’t”.
“Where do you think you are?” I asked.
“I know we are on the western side of Farm Island, heading down to the Narrows”, he replied.
I told him, “No, you are not. You are on the eastern side.”
He snapped back, “Listen, buddy, I know where we are. I have a map and a GPS mounted right here.”
At that point, I threw up my hands and told him he must know what he is doing. But I warned him that he was literally headed toward thin ice.
“I don’t think you guys should go down that way, ” I told him. “The ice is thin where you plan to go. We were just told by a Fish and Game officer to avoid the southern part of Farm Island”.
“We can skim over any open water”, the snowmobiler scoffed.
In a last-ditch effort to get him back to reality, I turned around and pointed to Kineo.
“What do you think that is? ” I asked.
“I’m not sure”, he said.
“It’s the backside of Kineo. So look down at your own map and tell me what body of land is the next point north.” At that point, he mumbled something about taking a wrong turn but they reversed about and went back around the northern point of the island, doing the right thing.
Once we reached our site, we quickly set up the tent, got out of our wet clothes, and warmed ourselves with the heat of the stove. Things get better when you are out of the wind, warm, and start eating.
Monday
The return of ice. We had a Rangoon breakfast of oatmeal with dried fruit, sausage, and perked coffee. As soon as we started walking, we started smiling. The Stablicers made the sweet crunching sound, and the sleds were gliding over the still-frozen ice surface.
We left Farm Island at 10 AM. Our first leg was to walk past a 2.5-mile deep cove. We made short work of places like Socatean Bay, The Moose Brook Islands, where we were resting at the mouth of Northwest Cove, at the northern end of Moosehead.
We saw the light and silhouette of a snowmobile approaching from the North. The rider asked us if we needed any help.
BI replied, ” Hell yeah. We could use a ride!”
Kevin said, “Sure, I can take all you guys to Seboomook”.
“How would you do it?” I asked.
“I would tow one sled and rider at a time, won’t take long, it’s only a couple of miles each way.”
Done deal. Five minutes later, I was sitting on the back of our new friend Kevin’s maroon Arctic Cat with my toboggan in tow, whipping down the Lake to the tip-top of Moosehead toward a settlement known as Seboomook.
According to Kevin (Dunham, St. Albans, ME, 938-4577, Indian Lake Market), the place is deserted in the winter. He comes up from his convenience store in St. Albans and stays in his trailer whenever he can. So me, Rangoon, and Bad Influence each had a snowmobile ride today. The Trail Magic continued.
Kevin dropped us off right on the shore, at an old campground, where we had the pick of any site. Nobody, here, nobody at all to care.
Kevin proceeded to bring us two big bundles of split hardwood, two buckets of water, and even volunteered to get back on his snowmobile and motor over to Northwest Carry some 7 miles away to make a courtesy cell phone call to Katie, BI’s wife, so she would know he was fine.
Kevin acted offended when we thrust $30 in cash at him for his gas bill.
He was immovable in his refusal to take any money for helping us.
After we set up camp we met are two drunk guys from Pennsylvania who were out planning to do some fishing and then to shoot coyotes in the dark. They invited themselves over to drink in our tent after supper and we hoped they would forget. They did ( forget).
And then Kevin also stopped by and gave us two freshly caught and cleaned lake trout, that Rangoon fried up in butter for our supper.
Kevin and lake trout
The fish were superb.
Lake Trout, cast iron fry pan
The night was clear and cold, and even though we were out exposed to all the elements, there was not a trace of wind in the night. I had a huge night of vivid, violent dreams. Maybe they had something to do with the history of Seboomook, which was a World War II German prisoner internment camp.
Tuesday
I awoke again first, in the half-light at 6:15 AM. Although this had been the first night that we were not safely sheltered out of the wind, it was both still and very cold.
Morning in Seboomook
evening, dipping into single digits in the moon-filled expansive panorama. We had been told by Kevin that 40+ temperatures were coming along with rain on Wednesday. I thanked Rangoon for his leadership when he said, “ I am walking to Pittston Farms today, I do not want to walk in the rain, warm, and slush.”
We packed up and headed out after getting directions to get to Seboomook Lake, and had relatively easy pulling for a mile and a half along a snowmobile trail that had three reasonable hills on it. On my last trip on this route, we followed a stream that fed into Moosehead that required Roger and me to hack away vegetation and wrestle our toboggans, while we on snowshoes, through 1/4 mile of alder swamp, sometimes even cutting away our path through brush and trees, which was not something I wanted to do again.
Today, we eventually made it to Seboomook, where we saw that the dam-controlled lake’s level was down close to 25 feet. This resulted in a waterway that was at times a meandering path, and this day’s walk was made doubly difficult by the fact that we’d occasionally have to haul up and over long humps that were actually exposed ledges that were covered in feet deep snow. I call Seboomook the ” slot canyon of Maine’s lakes”. After we rode our toboggans down from the shore,
I started immediately walking toward some exposed ice and promptly broke through the crust of snow and immersed my right leg in the slushy ice water, all the way up to my knee. I immediately retreated and began packing snow against the outsides of my boots and wool pants, which sponges up the wet. I did not have to change clothes, thankfully.
So, plan B- Locate a dismally dim old snowmobile path that headed over the lake and hope that the packed refrozen snow underneath was strong enough to hold our weight. Today ended up most kindly described as brutal. We must have taken off and put on snowshoes over a dozen times.
Seboomook tanning booth
We ran out of water, with all that fresh cold liquid trapped under the ice and snow below us. The day brought cloudless blue skies, calm, and the additional effect of the March sun reflecting off the surface of the snow was to make the snow walk into a desert walk. I ended up stripping down to just my pants and a t-shirt, with my fly wedged open for breathing. I was mopping the sweat out of my eyes continually. Breaking through the crust was not uncommon. Several times in the afternoon I was reduced to just counting my strides to 100 without glancing up until I reached my questionable century stride counter, then the head falls back down to rack up another 100. I call this survival stepping.
We saw but one snowmobile at the very end of the day far off to the edge of the lake. Seboomook is normally a 9 mile straight run west to Pittston Farms and our car to go home. Today, my wood bottom toboggan sounded as if it was sliding over sand, but the other guys had the polyethelyne rigs and they were easier to pull. As darkness was approaching, BI told us he was on the border of being delirious.
Almost there
By the time we reached the vehicle, it was almost dark, past 7 PM and my GPS registered 15 miles of hard pulling.
We spotted a ribbon of flowing water at the edge of the Lake as it swung on the final turn into Pittston Farm, and dipped our water bottles into the clear life-giving water and drank deeply. We decided to haul the toboggans up onto the final stretch of the snowmobile path rather than walk in on the river, and helped each other up the steep embankment. As I brought up the rear, my right snowshoes broke through the crust and I was in the water up to my knee again. This time I stayed wet.
We were desperate to get the gear into the car and walk into the main hall and eat. We had been talking about the evening buffet for miles now, but when we saw the empty parking lot, and the sign in the kitchen that indicated that it had closed at 7 PM we were crushed. We had even considered staying the night and renting a room and just collapsing for the evening, but there was no one around at this time of the evening, so we left for the ice/road and home.
We decided to postpone our supper until we reached Greenville, which was close to an hour away, but first, we had to do 25 miles on a very rutted, icy, slushy, and pathetic excuse for a road. The Voyager was slammed repeatedly going over the rough ruts.
Finally, limping into Greenville we spotted two restaurants that had lights on, but they were both closed for cooking. The only market in town was also closed. We went over to the police station and retrieved BI’s car keys and then brought him over to the Municipal lot to retrieve his Subaru. The Indian Hill Trading Post was closed, so we cranked up the speed on the Caravan and hoped that the usually chock full of food convenience store leading out of Monson was still open.
The lights were on, cars in the lot, but the deli was closed, so no pizzas were on the heating rack, but they did have some decent chicken salad sandwiches in the cooler, some Doritos, and a quart of chocolate milk and a big slab of Steve’s lemon cake did it for me.
Just to keep things interesting, the red temperature warning light came on my van. The engine was overheating, so I bought some antifreeze and refilled the reservoir, but it did no good. That had never happened before. I read somewhere that turning on the heater and the fan brings down the engine temp, so Rangoon and I rolled down the windows to sweat our way down to his apartment in Milford.
We dropped the ‘Goon off and BI followed me for an hour and a half all the way to my house, now at midnight, where we threw ourselves across the threshold of my place and collapsed into our respective beds.
The trail this week over Moosehead Lake was tough on us, but we are now able to look forward to summer travel with the very pleasing thought of just strapping our little backpacks on. Walking over solid ground, we’ll be giddy how easy it will be out there, and the tall tales of our week on the ice will grow to epic status.
While I was walking the slush this week I had the opportunity to carry and complete Rosemary Mahoney’s “Down the Nile”, a story of one woman’s adventures on another waterway, that in the end may have found her exceeding our challenges. I felt she wrote the last paragraph of the book for me.
“”Travel does not make one cheerful,’ Flaubert wrote during one of his depressions on the Nile. But it makes one thoughtful. It washes one’s eyes and clears away the dust.”
With somewhere in the neighborhood of three million visitors a year, who’d believe that you can just walk in and have your pick of any campsite at Acadia National Park’s Blackwoods campground?
It might take a visit on a February weekend with a foot and a half of snow on the ground, but free oceanside camping is fine with me. Four of us made the weekend outing: the three Mainers, which included myself and the Speedy Sisters, known individually as V8 and Auntie Mame, and Birdlegs, hailing from New Hampshire. The Mainers were veteran winter walkers, and for Birdlegs, it was her first taste of “warm” winter camping. We also had the pleasure of being accompanied by veteran winter walker, Jody dog, our five pound Pomeranian.
We went in mid-day Saturday, and came out Monday morning. It doesn’t take much to camp in Acadia during the winter. About all you need to do is register with a ranger on duty at park Headquarters. After he gave us our map, a page full of rules, and a warm good-bye, we drove down Route 3 to Blackwoods Campground, an the southern end of Mount Desert Island. The 1 mile road into the campground itself is unplowed. That’s where my home-made toboggans come in.
Toboggans Ready to Go
After we wedged the Caravan into the plowed out parking area on the side of Route 3, we loaded all our gear onto three sleds and grunted our way up the snowy track to our destination. V8 was chugging the point, with Birdlegs soon hauling on her harness right behind. Camp rules forbid the cutting of any standing deadwood, so I brought my own tent poles, 7 of them, ranging from 14 to the 18 foot ridge pole. They stacked on the top of my 10 foot toboggan, along with my 9 x 12 wall tent and my stove, plus some firewood. When it was my turn to grunt up, I couldn’t even budge the sled and depended on Auntie Mame to periodically push and even align the toboggan in the track. We all needed snowshoes to keep from sinking in.
It didn’t take long to reach the camping loops. The terrain was essentially dealing with one long but gradual uphill then a fairly gentle curving slope down. We eventually located a site that was within a brief walk to a port-a potty. The wash houses were winterized and locked up, but soon Birdlegs was successful in operating an ancient frost free metal hand pump, and secured a few gallons of drinking water in our red plastic pail.
After we stomped down a suitable site and dug out a stove pit, we spent the early afternoon unpacking the sleds, putting up the tent and rain fly, and setting up our temporary home, dividing up the tent into a rear sleeping area and a front kitchen work space.
Auntie Mame Chillin' Out
Stove? Right, complete with stovepipe and thimble. One of the most intelligent purchases I ever made was buying a lifetime, titanium box stove from Four Dog Stoves .
Camp Kitchen- Note Coals Glowing in the Stove
The price of the unit in the ten years since I purchased it has more than doubled. I rigged a stout cord up high inside the ridge that would serve as a station for any wet foot gear and clothing that we’d have to dry out. When the stove is cranking it can get over 90 degrees up there. With the stove and dry wood, we were able to heat the tent up to the point where I was down to my undershirt.
Eventually we settled in, and enjoyed the heat and ambiance of the filtered light through the white Egyptian cotton tent fabric.
Birdlegs Sandwiched between Speedy Sisters
I have a sweet deal here. Mame and V8 volunteered to cook breakfast and dinners, and provide the fixin’s for us to pack our own lunches. As the darkness came on, we lit two candles and stuck them in the snow near the entrance and the tent was softly, but adequately illuminated by out 2 candlepower system.
Mame started the gustatory frenzy off with carrots and celery with hummus, and smoked salted almonds. I made up a couple of the infamous Snake Bites (Yukon Jack, lime juice, and snow) for myself and V8. Soon a thick hamburger was coming my way, on a puffy roll, slathered with mayonnaise and catchup. Chocolate pudding cups did the dessert session justice.
We continued to stoke the stove with the split dry oak that we had trucked in here on the toboggans. When it was time to sleep, someone blew out the candles, damped down the stove and withdrew into the depths of their winter sleeping bags. I know it wasn’t me.
Today’s Bangor Daily News featured an article about a 5 mile hike that Brad Viles had taken on New Year’s Day up to the top of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park.
Brad Viles (left) and Scott Fisher huddle against the wind and cold temperatures before sunrise on Cadillac Mountain on New Year's Day. The wind chill was 20 below zero.
My own New Year’s hike up to Bald Rock Mountain was in the same category as Brad’s; bitter cold and unbelievable wind combining to create wind chills conditions that were at least 20 below zero.
But all of this whining about the cold conditions pales in comparison to the new blog entry on Tim Smith’s Jack Mountain Bushcraft Blog a Winter Survival Article By David Cronenwett. It is a sobering read about an event that occurred just one mile from the author’s car in typical intense winter conditions in Montana. I include it because it can happen to anyone, especially those of us who include travel over supposedly frozen waterways in our trips up here in the North.
I’ll sign off today evoking the immortal words of “Hill Street Blues” (1981) Sergeant Phil Esterhaus, ” Hey, let’s be careful out there”.
Returning Home
Day 5 = Baddeck, NS, CAN to Cobscook Bay State Park, USA
We’re heading home.
It was back onto the TransCanada, with our first stop at Truro to gas up. The day was humid and overcast with gray skies. We planned to get back into the US of A today, so wasted no time in getting back on the road. It felt as if it was going to rain. We all agreed that our next stop would be for a late breakfast at the very same restaurant we enjoyed on the way over to Nova Scotia.
It did rain. There’s a section of the TCH between Amherst, Nova Scotia and Sackville, New Brunswick that is always cold and windy. Here, the TCH passes over a huge marsh that sits between Chignecto Bay and Northumberland Strait. Not only did the rain increase in force, but the combined effects of the horizontal wind, gusting up over 40 MPH, and the thick fog, made steering the motorcycle downright frightening. At one point I was struggling with muscling my bike back to upright as the power of the elements combined to push against the left side of the motorcycle. Hard. The surface of the road was awash with water. I was relieved that I had mounted a new set of tires on the bike just before the trip, the narrow patch of rubber holding steady. It was very hard to even see, but the head and taillight in front and back of me helped guide me toward the center of the travel lane. At this point it was every man for himself; deep survival mode. I managed to view Pat’s bright headlight in my rearview mirrors, but couldn’t make out where Steve was.
Eventually we moved past the flat marsh onto a gentle uphill where I found the exit for the restaurant. Pat and I pulled in about the same time, and 5 minutes later Steve came in, after taking the wrong exit and finding his way here. I was relieved that we made it without an incident.
The rest of the ride was uneventful, banging off the mileposts of Moncton, Sussex, and St. John before we finally reached the border crossing at St. Stephen/Calais. We also gained an hour, as we moved from Atlantic to the Eastern time zone. There was hardly a wait at the border, and again, tourist numbers seemed way down on both sides of Customs. We were quickly waved through.
In Calais, we took a left turn on Route 1 and eventually arrived at our destination for the afternoon, Cobscook Bay State Park.
It is always easy to find a site at this excellent state park, sited right on Whiting Bay. The price was half of what we paid to camp in Canada, as well, just $14.95 for the three of us. Due to the slack numbers of campers, we had our pick of the best sites. We chose one large site right on a cove off of the bay.
A water spigot was at the end of our driveway, and although it was a bit of a walk back toward the entrance where the single wash house was located, he hot showers were clean and free, although the only swimming pool available here was way too big, way too cold , and was called Whiting Bay.
The evening was mostly pleasant, although we were forced into our tents while it was still twilight due to the unrelenting onslaught of both mosquitoes and no-see-ums. I hadn’t felt like cooking, was still full from lunch, so I made out just fine by placing a can of Campbell’s Italian Wedding Soup soup up against the exhaust headers exiting the BMW’s engine block. Enough residual heat remained to heat the soup to “almost piping hot”, it was eminently palatable, and eating out of the can meant I didn’t have to wash any dishes.
I put major trust in tightness of my tent, and opening up the storm flaps all the way so that I received unrestricted views of the night sky. I awakened in the night and focused my vision upward. The North Star and the Big Dipper were the first objects I saw when I opened my eyes in the dark. It was just the sort of scene that will define this trip for me, as I drift back to it in the months to come.
Day 6
Cobscook Bay State park to Lincolnville, ME
We were up early again today, with the morning sun golden as it framed our activities in dismantling the campsite and heading back home. The energy shift that happens when you turn the handlebars and head for home has now completely taken over.
It is easy to get up early when you go to bed as it is just getting dark.
In the morning, we caffeined up, and I recorded a exit summary video from Steve, with background from Pat.
We eventually fired up the bikes and headed back down Route 1 to our last destination before home, Helen’s Restaurant in Machias , where the pie is so good you eat it for breakfast.
Canada worked its magic again. The Maritimes delivered the good stuff.
Day 3
Baddeck campround–>circumnavigate via Cabot Trail—>Baddeck campground
190 miles
Today was easy. Ride the Cabot Trail, a 280 mile long highway in Northern Cape Breton, a world class ride of spectacular natural beauty.
We left at 8:15, after brewing up some Rock City coffee .
I had a bottle of yogurt drink that I ate before we left.
It was the right decision to turn up the left side of the big island. We didn’t see many cars at all for the first 55 miles, taking us all the way up to the French culture town of Cheticamp. The lack of cars on the way made it especially easy to extend the capabilities of my motorcycle, as I cracked the throttle up the steep hills, and let the bike lean way over in the sweeping turns.
In Cheticamp we checked into the Tim Horton’s coffee/donut shop. I was in a very good place. I had a coffee and toasted bagel with cream cheese. The air was refreshing, probable due to the constant wind, cooled as it passed over the offshore waters.
Cape Breton is an island located in the north of the Province of Nova Scotia, Canada. The Trail winds around the northern shore of Cape Breton passing very close to the shoreline. The ride also includes traveling across through the magnificent highlands of Cape Breton National Park.
On the way back around after passing over the top of the Cape, we stopped at a sort of convenience store somewhere near Ingonish. It was time to grab some food that we would eat later. They didn’t have too much to choose from, and I ended up opening up a cooler and found something that was described as a ground rib sandwich. They had no means for making up sandwiches. I also grabbed a Gatoraid, as it was really getting hot out and I needed to rapidly realign my electrolytes. The sandwich was pretty poor, sort of gritty, cold , and the sauce was probably thinly coated catsup.
Pat collapsed on the grass in the shade outside of the store.
I’ve ridden the Cabot Trail three times before. Those rides had been completed counterclockwise. Most people who ride motorcycles or bicycles prefer that direction because counterclockwise places the rider in the outside travel lane, where you get closer views and allows safer egress for viewing. Or stopping to brew up coffee, which we did at a picnic area on top of Old Smokey ( mountain).
At our brew up, we witnessed a bit of parking lot drama from our picnic table under a open sided shelter. An RV rolled into the lot, and oriented itself closely to the last available picnic table. Just as the elderly couple was taking their time before exiting the RV another small vehicle pulled beside them and a man jumped out of the driver’s side, carrying a cooler, which he plunked down on the table, seating himself assertively. The woman from the RV stopped walking in mid track when she looked up and saw Interlopers! She threw her hands up in the air, frowned, and stomped back to her RV. Then the white RV drove back and forth for a while, blocking everyone’s view, and eventually rumbled off.
Even in the wilderness, where people are obviously on vacation, the “ jerk world” may encroach on your space. My definition of survival extends to these types of scenes, events where you might need to quickly adapt to some sort of situation.
We packed up and rode back toward Baddeck, enjoying the very brief Englishtown Ridge ferry ride on Rt. 312.
Our second event of the day was to visit the Alexander Graham Bell Museum in Baddeck.
(From Wikipedia) Alexander Graham Bell (3 March 1847 – 2 August 1922) was an eminent scientist, inventor and innovator who is widely credited with the invention of the telephone. His father, grandfather and brother had all been associated with work on elocution and speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf, profoundly influencing Bell’s life’s work. His research on hearing and speech further led him to experiment with hearing devices that eventually culminated in Bell being awarded the first U.S. patent for the invention of the telephone in 1876.
Many other inventions marked Bell’s later life including groundbreaking work in hydrofoils and aeronautics. In 1888, Alexander Graham Bell became one of the founding members of the National Geographic Society.
In reflection, Bell considered his most famous invention an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.
After we toured the museum, it was on to the local supermarket, where we each gathered up supper and tomorrow’s breakfast items.
We headed back to the campsite, where all we had to do was get into our swim suits and hit the uncrowded pool again.
We started a fire later on, with ample deadwood all around the site. We roasted up hot dogs, and made up a batch of chili-cheese dogs, spooning out chili from a can and topping them with sliced cheese.
Motorcycle trip Day 2.
Fundy National Park , New Brunswick, CA to Baddeck , Nova Scotia, CA
346 miles
Our second day on the road started out just the way I like it: cold, a bit cloudy and with no mosquitos to speak of. I was up first at 5:30 AM. We took our time packing up. I heated up water for my coffee and ate a “petite dejeuner” of some leftovers from my MRE from yesterday: crackers, peanut butter and raisins.
Our first adventure of the day was to head up to Moncton, where Steve had learned there was a BMW motorcycle dealer who might be able to assist him in solving his lack of front brake problem. Steve had directions from the woman who checked us in at the gate of the campground.
It took about an hour to get there. We rambled around town a bit, after getting some really bad directions from a wrecker driver at a stoplight. Two electrical workers at a stoplight put us right and we eventually reached the Atlantic Motoplex, founded under the name Atlantic Yamaha some 15 years ago with a transition to the name Atlantic Cycle for a few years, then back to Atlantic Yamaha for 6 years. With the addition of BMW Motorcycles, and Ducati motorcycles (exclusive for Atlantic Canada), the final name change has been to Atlantic Motoplex.
It was the biggest motorcycle shop I had ever seen, inside a brand new cavernous room the size of a city block. There were hundreds of motorcycles on display along with an acreage of clothing and accessories.
In the corner was a BMW sign, and I knew it was not good when Steve was still standing there, waiting, some 10 minutes after I wandered through the shop and checked in with him. A really young guy was manning the desk, alone, and he talked to Steve briefly, very briefly. We were soon walking out. Done .
“ They don’t have any slots to take me in. Next opening is in two weeks. No parts.”
The only hopeful news was that , while they wouldn’t even send out a mechanic or let us talk to one, we were told that what Steve had jury rigged is just fine, and that he could function on a single caliper up front. Steve was given a rubber wedge ( free) to jam in between the nonfunctional brake pads. Bye! Thanks, guys.
Yet another example where bigger is not better.
We still had not eaten any real breakfast, and were unable to locate a diner on the two mile access road back to the TransCanada Highway , Rt. 2. That had to wait until 11 AM . We were practically in Nova Scotia where we found an excellent restaurant just before heading into Amherst.
Today morphed into another hot humid one, and once into Nova Scotia, we picked up Route 6 out of Amherst, a secondary coastal route that follows the north shore until it dumped us back into the TransCanada Wighway in Pictou.
I struggled with keeping up a decent attitude with the now 90 degree , record-breaking heat. We gassed up , I drank a big bottle of Gatoraide, bought a bunch of gum and we were again on our way. Gas in Canada is sold by the litre, here for $1. 50 , or approximately $6 a gallon.
No sooner than we hit the open road, we ran into trouble. There was a massive road construction detail smack dab ahead. They sure do things differently in Canada. We had to sit on the broiling hot tarmac for a full half hour before we are allowed to proceed up the way. Of course we didn’t initially know that, so we found ourselves sitting on the bikes, at the ready if the long line ahead of us started to move. I eventually took off my gloves, helmet, and unzipped my protective jacket. I was still miserable in the heat and humidity.
Eventually we rolled on, but for just 1 mile when we were detoured off the TransCanada for more adventures in misery. I asked the flagman what was going on this time. He told me that there was “ a safety emergency” ahead. A tanker truck that was carrying propane had rolled off the TranCanada, but he assured me that we were going to be back on in “ a couple of miles” . The couple turned into 8 miles, and the huge amount of normal traffic, including a large percentage of tractor trailers, was now forced to slowly wind its way over a very narrow road with no shoulders. There was no way the trailers could fit on the asphalt, so they were occasionally churning up the gravel on the sides of the road, throwing up god-awful clouds of dust, grit, and sometimes small stones. As motorcyclists , we were forced to take one of two despicable alternatives; either to close the helmet face shields and squint through the dusty plastic and ride in the oppressive heat, or leave the shields up and cough up dust.
It was at this point in the trip that I seriously began to question my whole relationship with this motorcycle touring thing. What made it worse is when I glanced over at the side of the road and saw a pristine stream moving through the woods, bubbling over some rocks. I began fantasizing about walking in the wilderness, and a whole negative cascade of thoughts started flowing.
“Why am I doing this? I could have taken this week and gone backpacking. If I was hot, I could just go for a swim! “
“Why are the three of us each riding a separate vehicle, each paying $25 every time we fill up? Maybe we should have taken a van, towed one motorcycle and taken turns riding it!!??”
“ I just want to be hiking, and sleeping in the shade under a tree!”
Eventually were routed back onto the the TransCanada, and my attitude was re-adjusted. The afternoon moved along, and temperatures cooled as we rolled over the Canso Causeway onto Cape Breton as we approached our final destination of Baddeck.
We pulled into the Adventures East Campground off Route 105. It was primarily an RV facility, but we did have our choice of any of the 10 unserviced tent sites. They also had modern heated washrooms, picnic tables with fire rings on all sites, free (hot) showers, and best of a swimming pool! It was hot again, and our first priority after snagging a shaded tent site was to lay in the pool and get our body temperatures down.
We saw a luna moth on the door of the wash house.
The place was a bit expensive as campgrounds go ($26.00 plus 13% tax), but we ended up staying there for three nights anyways, as the location was perfect for our purposes, and they did have that pool.
The place was empty. Aside from one other night where there was a couple tenting, we were alone in the tent loop. The RV section was nearly empty as well.
After the pool soak, I showered, and we went back to the site to cook up supper. Another MRE for me, but I did fire up the wood stove to boil water. After the water was hot, I added enough damp material that the fire produced a good smolder, which helped us in deal with the mosquitoes.
Motorcycle trip day 1
July 6, 2008
Lincolnville, ME to Alma, New Brunswick
Pat, Steve, and I rolled out of Lincolnville, Maine, each on our big twin cylinder BMW motorcycles, on 7 AM on a clear Sunday July morning. The bikes were amply packed for camping and adventure. A year ago, the three of us talked about taking a whole month month to head out to Montana, but that sure isn’t happening. Six days of freedom is what we’ve got. We’re going to Canada.
Gas is now an all time high of close to $5 a gallon, and the first inkling of the economic effects of that big cha-ching were the near-empty motel parking lots that we passed through Belfast, ME. It didn’t get much busier in Canada, where the norm was nearly empty campgrounds and sweatless border crossings.
Steve, Pat and I have done many motorcycle trips together over the years. We knew what to do.
It should have been easy for me to gather up the necessary gear and just go, but it wasn’t. I found that I needed a whole day to pack my stuff. Maybe it was the anticipation, but my packing seemed never ending. I was out of practice for rounding up this specific set of gear. Some of my stuff was out in the garage, some of it was in my “gear room” upstairs, some of it was on another motorcycle, and some of it, I had no clue. I looked in a lot of places for things. I was up and down a lot of stairs. It was exhausting just getting both myself and the motorcycle to the place where I could just go.
We took Route 1 all the way up the coast, skirting Ellsworth briefly and that magnetic turn down to the enchanting Acadia National Park. This time we’re running Down East, and crossing into Canada from Lubec into New Brunswick. After stopping for coffee and a Canadian bacon egg muffin at the Riverfront Cafe, we pulled down onto the beach in “downtown” Lubec few hours later just in time to roll across the sand onto the diminutive ferry, powered by a big lobster boat lashed to the side of a small barge .
The tides here in Fundy Bay are among the highest in the world and for our $5 we were treated to a virtually empty passage, skirting the edge of the Old Sow, normally a sucking vortex of whirlpool, but today a relatively mild drain.
After leaving the baby ferry, we rolled onto Canada where we rode across Deer Island for few short miles where we waited on the north side a bit to ride on a real vehicle ferry, free this time. We were in no rush, and enjoyed the sea air, gull sounds, and distinctive smell of the salt water shore, threading our way around tiny coastal islands and half-submerged rocks where we eventually reached the coastal town of St. George. A short while later , we were back on Rt 1 in Canada heading to the city of St. John. As we approached the rest area just before the city limits, the fog grew thick, temperature dropped like a sinker, and we were relieved to get off the bikes again and take a pit stop to discharge and take on liquids. I ate an energy bar.
It felt great to be on the road. Canada rocks, with excellent high speed roads, frequent passing lanes, and cleanliness.
I hate stopping for tolls when I am on my motorcycle. After years of rushing, fumbling, dropping gloves or coins as I often struggle to deal with cold hands, I now refuse to get frantic. I roll beside the toll booth, shut off the engine, take a big breath, remove my gloves, find the cash, put the gloves back on, start ‘er up and go. Works for me.
After the $.50 toll we cracked the throttles up the big hill out of town and we started working our way through the increasing heat and humidity as we winged toward Sussex.
This is rolling farm country, with a big valley out stage left that extends or miles up toward Sussex, New Brunswick. We were passing everything in sight with Steve pulling strong in front when out in the middle of nowhere I noticed his R80 RT slowing down and then pulling over as we were cresting one of the big hills. Not good. Now we were all on the shoulder. I smelled brake linings. Uphill?
“What’s up?” I asked him.
“Something’s not right. I might have a transmission problem or something. I can’t roll the bike in neutral even now,“ said Steve.
We collectively scratched our heads for a while until we put his bike up on the centerstand and attempted to spin the front wheel. Stuck. No amount of strength grunting on the wheel moved it even a micrometer. The bike has twin disc brakes on the front, and letting things cool down for a while released the calipers enough for us to see that his right caliper was screwed up.
Without excessively bashing him, Steve does have a remarkably long history of experiencing these sort of episodes on our motorcycle camping adventures. I think this was the seventh or eighth time.
All have been related to wheel or tire issues! Now our collective trip was taking that all too familiar shift from the free-and-easy-life-on-the-open-road place to the “ Shit Happens” place and all the tribulation that world brings to our plates.
Steve is a smart guy, and an excellent problem solver. No matter, he’s always managed to work these things out creatively or otherwise. This time we freed up the wheel, pulled it off, and Steve remounted the nonfunctional caliper, temporarily skirting the problem by installing it backwards, so that the unit was not gripping the right rotor at all. He now had a single disk brake front end. It worked enough to get us down the turn to Funday National Park, our destination for the day.
We wanted to camp close to a place where there some supplies to cook up for supper. I was all set, but Steve and Pat ended going to the tiny burg of Alma, where they found a small convenience store that had some canned goods and some Ramen noodles.
The closest campground to the ocean was practically empty, with only a quarter of the Headquarters campground even occupied. We chose a nice spot near a covered cooking eating kiosk where Steve and Pat set up their tent and I mine.
After I changed out of my riding clothes and boots into my camp wear, I became increasingly relaxed. I was now back in my element, camping.
Tent, up. Big Agnes Air Core mattress filled. Sleeping bag shaken out and into the tent. Petzl headlamp around my neck, at the ready. This is it, the old routine.
I’m usually the last to eat, as my little home made Bushbuddy wood burning stove takes care and tending. For that, I always have time. Gathering dry wood is what I do, breaking thin sticks down, stockpiling a little pile near the stove that I feed to get the water boiling.
Only this time I didn’t need to stove to heat up my supper. I have had a few MRE’s around the house that I don’t take back packing because they are just too heavy. The individual meals weigh over a pound and a half, which is usually what I take for one whole day’s food when I am on the trail. I threw a couple of them in my saddlebag this trip. Tonight was fairly decent Penne with Sauce, but the real surprise was the heating packet. When I added just a quarter cup of water in a plastic bag holding another white envelope, the whole thing got so immediately hot that it was burning flesh on my hand. I dropped it on the picnic table. I removed my bandana, used it as a pot holder, placed the heating unit against the meal packet, inserted both into the cardboard packing material, waited 10 minutes, and the meal was piping hot. There was also all kinds of extra goodies in the MRE, like a squeeze packet of peanut butter, raisins, two big crackers, hot drink mix ( apple cider) , electrolyte powder mix, toilet paper, and even chewing gum. Unfreakingbelievable.
Motorcycle camping is backpacking on wheels. But, there are never any problems with having to cut down on gear. I needed some sunblock for the trip. It gets really hot and blistery riding into the rising or setting sun, which burns my face. All I could find in the house was a big aerosol can of liquid sunblock. Pitch it in the tank bag, no problem.
We went to bed early, and I wrote and read a bit in the tent. I opened half of the tent up to the open evening, and as the trip went on, I eventually ditched the fly altogether, possible thunderstorms be dammed. I had this strong need to be closer to the trees, sky, and stars. Any rain that we did have never came at night.
In the past year, I’ve walked in tears, I’ve walked in awe, I’ve walked in sweat, I’ve walked over ice, but this weekend, I walked in glory.
Initially, it seemed that the idea of this hike was vaporizing me, hanging on my horizon, never really real. General Tso, Rangoon, and I set up this weekend adventure a couple of months ago. We wanted to hike together, something we had missed doing after the three of us spent our last day together on the AT as a trio on May 10 during our thru-hike in 2007. But now it was time. We were fortunate enough to squeeze the best of 3 days out the the neighboring 10 on the Memorial Day weekend.
The car aimed north, up to Bethel, in the western Maine mountains last night, after the three of us rendezvoused at Bikeman, Tso’s work place, in Woolwich, ME. Our digs for the night was the Bethel Village motel, located through Wingfoot’s Thru-Hikers Handbook. Cheap, walking distance to a supermarket, and hiker friendly.
The evening quickly slithered its way along in typical AT town fashion, where we hit the grocery store about 8 PM and bought all kinds of food and drinks that we proceeded to attack in our motel room in downtown Bethel: junk food, including REAL Whoopie Pies, kettle chips, and beer. The TV sat silent. We were fine with catching up on old time, places, and horizons.
On Saturday, I was ready go go at 6:30 AM, but there was no apparent rush from Tso and Rangoon, who were content to zzz away the hours as the morning inched on. We eventually collected our gear, found a breakfast diner off Route 2, and then rumbled north up Route 26 for 12 miles to the lower parking lot for the Grafton Loop Trail ( GLT), where we shouldered out backpacks and launched into the great outdoors at 10:15 AM. Well, almost the great outdoors. The trail head for the western half of the GLT is a 0.6 mile road walk south back down Rt. 26, where a prominent sign beckoned us into the newly cut trail. By the way, the map is wrong, in placing the parking lot on the western side of 26, heading north. It’s actually on the eastern side of the road.
We weren’t sure exactly how many miles we had to do. The new trail connects to 8 miles of the AT at two points on either side of Grafton Notch to create a giant loop, 43 miles in length. The design is intended to connect a series of scenic peaks, woods and streams with a trail that will provide a 3- to 5-day, semi-wilderness experience for backpackers, while also providing an alternative route to AT hikers, drawing people away from the heavily used AT. We did it in a little over two days. It was not an easy backpack. Nope, anything that has 8 miles of the AT from this section of Maine is going to be tough. I have hiked all 2,175 miles of the AT. The 48 mile slice from the Maine border to Rt. 17 outside of Oquossoc is the toughest section of all, and we were doing 8 of those miles.
The GLT is a historical mini- event in the Northern New England backpacking world. For the AMC, the Grafton Loop Trail west leg was the first major trail constructed by the club since the building of the Centennial Trail in the Mahoosucs in 1976.
The eastern half was completed by the Maine Appalachian Trail Club. The trail is beautifully laid out, and rock stairs are occasionally evident. We are even provided the relatively rare experience of holding on for deal life through grasping metal rungs on particularly dicey mini-cliffs.
“This is probably the longest stretch of loop trail in the State of Maine,” noted Steve Spencer, designer and recreation specialist for the Bureau of Parks and Lands in the Maine Department of Conservation. Steve also did the design work on the Wright Trail to Goose Eye Mountain, which quickly became a popular and heavily used trail. According to literature published by the Maine ATC, the estimate of the cost of this trail was initially $7,000 per mile, with reduction in that cost to be provided by the volunteer force that turned out to construct the actual trail.
“We put in over 15,000 hours of professional trail crew time and over 10,000 hours of volunteer trail crew time to get this done,” said Andrew Norkin, AMC’s director of trails and recreation management. “Our biggest challenge was the terrain of the Mahoosucs. We spent a lot of time making sure our work done on Sunday River Whitecap was of a high standard, because it is an alpine peak. At the time, there wasn’t any trail up it, except bootleg trails,” he said. Those volunteers deserve a huge shout out.
My watch’s altimeter register 720’ at the trailhead. The first mile of walking was nice. We’d never see this elevation until we reached the car again. It was still cool out. Ample water was evident throughout the loop, present at all of the campsites. There are two on this western loop, at Sargent Brook and Slide Mountain, but we passed them on our quest for some decent mileage on this first truncated day. I never carried more than a quart of water all weekend.
I started out riding caboose, following Tso and the Goon.
After leaving Rt. 26, the path crosses the Bear River on an out of season snowmobile path, complete with suspension bridge. Then it crosses two fields and enters the woods, following an old road south. Out first high point was Bald Mountain, some 3.2 miles from the start. The trail was graded nicely, considering the fact that we were still headed toward the top of 2730’ Stowe Mountain. Eventually we got there, with rewarding views from open ledges skirting the summit.
We remarked on the excellent foot path. The trail is so new that it still retains that cushiony feel each time we stepped over the ground. Someday the footpath will be packed and hard, like any heavily used trail, but right now our feet and knees were loving it. The trail then shot toward a traverse of Sunday River Whitecap.
We had no goals for the day, other than putting on some good miles. Doing the math, the whole loop is 40+ miles long, and we were putting in at 10 AM on Saturday, coming out two days later on Monday, so we needed to average 13+ a day, which should not have been too bad. Except, today offered big elevation gains on the uphills, a tough pull any day of the week for a seasoned hiker, let alone ones who were out of form.
Wait, now I know why the first day was tough. It would actually demand that we ascend close to a mile in direct elevation gain, coming up over three major mountains.
After Sunday River Whitecap, the trail skirts the slide on Slide Mountain, descends into the upper Bull Branch (of the Sunday River) valley, and finally climbs the southern flank of Old Speck to reconnect with the AT.
We surprised even ourselves by reaching the Spec Pond Campsite by 6 PM or so. There were a half dozen people hanging around the lean-to when we arrived. One couple with a tent was set up in the lean-to. When the group realized that at least two of us were considering sleeping in the shelter, most retreated to tent platforms, except for one woman who slept in the lean to with her dog by her side.
“ Hey, I don’t even remember whether I stayed at this shelter. I am drawing a blank,” I said.
Tso offered, “Here is the register.”
I didn’t think it would be reflect last hiking season, as the shelter registers I had read in Virginia a week ago were all from 2008. But, there was my brief entry, on August 23, 2007, written at 9:30 in the morning as I was was just passing through. Later I remembered that MEGATEX spent the night before I reached here last year at a campsite “au sauvage” at some flat spaces at the north end of Mahoosuc notch, well out of range of the stench from a decomposing moose carcass smack dab in the middle of the trail at the entrance of the Notch.
I decided to sleep in the shelter, as did Rangoon. Tso was in his hammock. We slept really well. I downed four ibuprofen before bed, as I felt my body needed some cushion from the day we just completed . More oscilloscope profile hiking ahead of us tomorrow.
The image above gives a rough idea of the size and shape of the Lake. The map itself details the Plum Creek proposal for developing the area on the shores and surrounding the lake with over 1,000 house lots and two huge resorts. It has been approved by LURC and our trip there was seen as one of the last chances we’d get to view the area before it was developed. Out route went straight up the Lake from the lower end in Greenville, then up overland to enter and walk the length of Seboomook lake, running east to west at the very top of the map.
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