09/07/06 Hiking Pine Mountain Trail:
More rain at Acadia National Park so I drove up here yesterday. Went up US 1A from Ellsworth to Bangor and then US 2 from Bangor on into Gorham, NH. Got a haircut, dawdled and it took most of the day.
Rained a little bit here yesterday but not much. Sure looked bad though. Misty and gray and foggy and 60's this morning. Got a new White Mountain hiking guide yesterday and had trouble finding a hike I thought I could do. The mountains are only 4000-5000 feet but many of the day hikes are 3000-4000 feet and only a few miles long. That's a lot of up in a short distance.
Chose the Pine Mountain Trail because it was only 1600 feet in 2.7 miles. This is mostly a hike through the woods. Pines the first half and hardwoods the second half. Lots of moss and ferns along the way. When you find moss and ferns and frogs on the trail, you know it's wet. Steady uphill for the first hour and then a 10 minute descent followed by the remainder of the ups.
There's some sort of religious retreat at the north summit but I stayed away from there. Pine Mountain summit has the foundation of an old fire tower. A sign pointed to the Ledges Trail which I thought was a loop trail. It took me out onto some large ledges with great views, even with the fogishnish. Clouds swirled among the tops of a dozen peaks, all taller than Pine Mountain. I think two were Mt Adams and Mt Madison.
Forests below showed some red of maples starting to turn, some yellow and a bunch of what I thought were naked birches. I followed the Ledges trail until I ran out of ledges. It then turned into a bunch of tumbled boulders. I followed them for a while but they didn't seem to be going anywhere I wanted to go so I climbed back up and went back down the way I came.
It took me 2 hrs 20 min, 10 minutes more than the guide said. Got back down in about 1 hr 45 min.
09/08/06 Hiking the Dome Rock Trail:
The Randolph Mountain Club maintains a number of trails on the north (I think) slope of Mount Adams. A whole slew of them branch off from the main trailhead in Appalachia.
The Dome Rock Trail is really a series of interconnecting trails. You kinda decide which ones you want to use to get where ever you're going. I meant to go one way but went another so did the suggested route in reverse. I went out west on the Sylvan Way instead of east. I followed it to Cold Brook Falls and backtracked to pick up Valley Way. Sylvan was pretty flat and Valley started going upwards at an easy pace.
I saw what I thought was an electrical cable strung through the trees on Sylvan Way. Then I saw more, then I saw blue ones as well as black and then clear ones. When I looked closer I saw they weren't nailed into the trees but plugged into them with a tube running from the tree to the cable. Looking up I saw these were all maple trees. I guess they don't use buckets any more to collect sap for making maple syrup. Instead they use gravity to run it downhill through those tubes. One more blow to Americana and another victory for the uglification of America.
I had a little trouble finding the Inlook Trail because several trailheads came together within 50 feet and Inlook was on the other side of a brook with its sign hidden. I found it after exhausting all other possibilities (and by looking at the map). Dome Rock is about 1500 feet above the trailhead and all 1500 of them are located on the Inlook Trail... I kid you not.
After a half a mile that seemed more like 10, you burst out onto a ledge with a nice view of surrounding ridges. They're too close for me to call them anything more than OK. Dome Rock is a little farther on and the views are pretty disappointing. I was sitting there having lunch after my 2 hr 25 min hike when a 5 or 6 old little girl and her grandmother showed up. They came up the same trail I did. Jeeze! Did I feel like a feeble old geezer.
I followed the Kelton Trail back down and it was every bit as steep as the Inlook. It finally hooked back into the Sylvan Way and I followed it back to the parking lot.
09/09/06 Hiking Great Gulf Trail:
Sunny & low 70's. The goal today is The Bluffs, 2.7 miles and 900 feet away. Actually I hope to go past that for as far as I want.
Trail leads down to a suspension bridge across Peabody Creek. After that it's a pretty easy walk along the creek for 1.5 miles or so. Lots of small falls and cascades along the way. A ski trail loops away and then back to the trail. Several wooden bridges help you across tiny brooks. Some soggy, muddy sections of the trail.
Sign for Great Gulf Wilderness Area followed by the Osgood Trailhead as the trail swings away from the creek. It reappears in .5 miles flowing between some huge boulders. Took a break a little farther on and watched clouds moving down off Mount Madison.
Got to the Osgood Trail Cutoff in 2 hours. That was also The Bluffs with an OK view of nearby mountains. The Great Gulf Trail takes a short, sharp dive to the left and then across a small brook and back up again. Here's a junction to Madison Gulf Trail. Another suspension bridge across Peabody Creek and another short climb to another junction to Madison Gulf Trail.
I followed the Great Gulf Trail along Peabody Creek for another 30 minutes or so. The sun was playing peekaboo so I had lunch and turned back.
09/10/06 Hiking the Kings Ravine Trail:
It didn't rain on me on the trail yesterday but a serious thunderstorm moved in during the evening. It rained so hard on the van I didn't even hear the thunder for a while.
Sunny this morning but it turned to gray during the hike. Temperatures in the 50's and it didn't get much warmer.
The Kings Ravine Trail sounded a little difficult to me but I figured I'd go as far as I could. I was right about it being difficult but for the wrong reason.
The morning got off to a bad start as I neared the Randolph Mountain Club trailhead in Appalachia. Several cars were pulled to the side of US 2 and a young bull moose with a decent rack was lying in the road with both legs under him looking at the people. As I neared I saw debris from an accident in the road. Apparently a pickup truck hit the moose, pushed it a ways and then backed up and away from the moose. It didn't look hurt at all. Maybe the truck was able to slow down in time to prevent serious damage. I hope so. Presumably forest rangers got called in to make a decision on what to do with the moose.
Took the Air Line Trail to Short Trail and after 2 hr and 20 min got to Mossy Falls on Coldbrook Creek, the junction with the Kings Ravine Trail. Right away you come to a big sign saying this is the Alpine Zone and this area has the worst weather in America and that many people have died up there from exposure. Also a warning to turn back now if it looks like bad weather. Of course I looked up in the sky and saw nothing but gray.
This section was supposed to rise 500 feet in .3 miles and I was worried about it. That's more than 1800 feet per mile, much, much more than I had ever attempted and I had no idea what to expect. Actually the gradient wasn't too bad. Mossy Falls was created when huge boulders came crashing down from somewhere... and they also crashed on the trail.
I only went about halfway up this pitch. As I climbed over boulders they became bigger with larger faces to climb. I would climb a few feet, rest a few seconds and wait for my heart to catch up with my body and then go on. I stopped on top of one boulder and lost my balance and jumped to the next one. I had planned on going there anyway but not by jumping and I didn't quite make it and slid down the boulder to the ground. No big deal but a lot of times that's not ground down there but a hole between boulders that goes down 10 to 15 feet.
I got past the halfway point and turned around for a great view of the valley and mountain ridges beyond. I wanted to go on for a better view of the huge 1100 foot headwall that I'd have to climb to finish the trail but decided it was getting to dangerous for an old guy by himself. This was getting to be too much like rock climbing. If I slipped and slid down into one of those holes I'd never to be able to climb back out again even if I didn't break an arm or a leg or head on the way in.
Going back down wasn't a piece of cake either. There were several places on the way up I wondered how I was going to get back down again. I went very slowly, planned each move and used all the resources available to me including extensive use of the walking stick and my butt. I did get down without mishap.
When I was almost back to Mossy Falls a group of 10 teenagers, including 3 girls, and one man came flying up past me. That really made me feel old until I got back to the falls and saw they had stopped there for a break and were just getting started again.
09/11/06 Hiking the Howker Ridge Trail:
Another bad start today. Went into Gorham for gas and on the way to the trailhead my engine light came on again. I thought about it and continued on to the Randolph East Trailhead.
The trail started with an easy grade past Stair Falls, Devil's Kitchen and on up to Hitchcock Falls. Here the trail crossed Bumphus Brook and that was the end of the easy stuff as the trail alternated between steep and moderate all the way to the first Howk. The Howkers were a family that farmed in this area some time in the past. A Howk is the local name for a peak and there are 4 of them.
It took me almost 3 hours to go the 2.2 miles to the first Howk where I found only limited views through the trees. As I had lunch I found I was at 3400 feet, a climb of 2100 feet from 1300 feet, most of it in the last 1.5 miles. I think that comes out to 1700 feet a mile or something close to it. At my best, I considered myself about a 750 feet per mile hiker so that was quite a shock. I wanted to do a trail called the Imp trail while in the White Mountains and that is just about the same elevation/distance so that now became a little closer to a reality.
The second Howk was .7 miles away and only 3700 feet but there was a sharp drop of probably 200 feet first and I didn't think I could do that today. Besides I had that engine light to consider.
On the way down I caught my heal on something on a steep rocky section. My feet were out in front of me which was a good thing because it meant I wasn't going into those rocks head first. It was a bad thing though because as I was trying to regain my balance, my feet were running down the hill and picking up speed. If I fell then it would be worse than before. Fortunately I was able to grab a sapling on the way by and stopped myself before anything more serious happened.
On the way up I had passed a spur trail for the Bear Pit. It was described in the guide book as a 15 foot pit made by surrounding boulders. I didn't feel the need to see that on the way up nor on the way back down. However, I ended up on this steep little side trail where I slipped on some pine needles, fell and slid 3 or 4 feet. Still thinking I'm on the main trial I got up and continued. 3 steps later I found myself on the edge of the Bear Pit. Steep walls and no visible way out. I came that close.
At the end of the hike I went off to the Berlin Dodge dealer a few miles away. They were able to squeeze me in and came back with - they wanted the van for a week while they tore down the transmission, decided with Chrysler whether to repair or replace it (under warranty), order parts and rebuild it. I live in the van and couldn't give it up for a week so I'm now at a friend's house in southern NH waiting to hear the verdict from a local Dodge dealer.