Accessible Peaks in Western Maine during the Wintertime

[pomola2024]

Hello all. I am new to the area and looking for peaks 3k+ in Western Maine (and perhaps Moosehead Lake region too) with reliable and easy trailhead access in the wintertime. I saw a thread identifying Burnt Hill near Sugarloaf and Cranberry Mountain on the W. side of the Bigelow range as possibilities. Both seem plausible. I have a pretty kickass 4runner, but would not like to get in too hairy of a situation, nor would like to do miles of approach hiking/snowshoeing. Let me know about others!

 

[NH2112]

Coburn Mountain (3717’) on US 201 between West Forks and Jackman has a pretty short drive down a logging road (Enchanted Mountain Rd) to the trailhead, maybe 2.5 miles. The Enchanted Mountain ski area from the early 70s was on Coburn. A problem could be the hiking trail is also a snowmobile trail for 3/4 of the way up, though there is a foot path (more like an animal trail) that may or may not be marked. The last time I did it in winter it wasn’t, but I’ve heard a lot of maintenance was done. Views are pretty good, the summit has a radio repeater shed and a small platform that lets you see over the short trees.

Boundary Bald Mountain (3639’) is also on a logging road (Bald Mountain Rd), maybe 8-10 miles north of Jackman. The trailhead is about 4.5 miles down Bald Mtn Rd, there are signs along the way. In winter parking can be a problem, you can’t make it to the 3-season parking area because the road up isn’t plowed. You can park at the intersection of Bald Mtn Rd and Notch Rd and walk from there, it’ll be about a mile to the 3-season parking area and then another mile to the actual trailhead. 2.3 miles or so to the summit on a very primitive trail, I’ve never done it in winter since I prefer bushwhacking up on snowshoes so I can’t tell you anything about the hike once you hit the trailhead. The views, however, are absolutely incredible. All of western Maine and eastern Québec are laid out before you.

A couple under 3K are Mosquito Mountain in West Forks - right on Lake Moxie Rd if coming from the south, follow it all the way then right on Troutdale Rd, trailhead is on the right, and Williams Mountain in Jackman - right on Route 6/15 for about 14 miles until you reach Demo Rd (left) and Williams Mtn Rd (right.) Both are logging roads and may or may not be plowed. About 3.6 miles down Williams Mtn Rd you’ll come to a small trail on the right, there will be a sign. Park here and walk maybe 1/2 mile to the trailhead. The views aren’t good at all except for a couple overlooks with decent views, but just before the summit there’s something really cool.

 

[JToll]

Caribou Mt west of Bethel

 

[JoshandBaron]

The entire Bigelow Range is pretty accessible. Article in yesterday's Bangor Daily detailing a Little Bigelow trip.

Grafton Notch has a few options. Speck, Puzzle, the Baldpates, and, my favorite, Whitecap.

Evans Notch is closed from about the Basin to Rt 2 but Speckled and Blueberry are accessible with a negligible road walk to Brickett Place. If you're in Evans Notch, you may as well put the NH peaks on the west side on the list. Baldfaces, Eastman, Eagle Crag, Meader, Royces all accessible from the same place Speckled is.

 

[Mac]

Burnt Hill (Mountain) is accessible from the Sugarloaf parking lot (about 500 yard walk to the left). Summit elevation is 2,884 (Peakery), so slightly under 3K. I hiked it this past summer, but never in winter.

 

[TEO]

@NH2112, do you know if Gold Brook/Beaudry Rd. passable in winter? E.g. access to Kibby Mountain and other peaks in the Beaudry? If so, does it go to through to 201 in the winter? Is there any word on washouts from the late-fall storms?

 

[injektilo]

Bald Mountain in Weld is a great winter hike with a parking area on the side of RT 156. It's short, steep, and very open/exposed on top. Great views of Tumbledown, Mount Blue and the entire Webb Lake basin.

 

[NH2112]

@NH2112, do you know if Gold Brook/Beaudry Rd. passable in winter? E.g. access to Kibby Mountain and other peaks in the Beaudry? If so, does it go to through to 201 in the winter? Is there any word on washouts from the late-fall storms?

That’s a good question. It probably depends on whether anyone is cutting or hauling timber out of there. From Rte 27 in Eustis all the way up Gold Brook Rd & Holeb Rd to 201 is a long way, I’ve never been the whole way but I’d guess it’s 30 miles easily and probably more like 40. Signage isn’t very good and cell service is nonexistent in much of that area. I wouldn’t trust GPS to be accurate, either. I wouldn’t make my first trip along it in winter, not without at least one other vehicle either to recover you if you go into a ditch or to drive back to civilization. You could easily go all weekend without seeing a vehicle that far out. Snowmobiles only, most likely.

I’ll ask someone I work with who’ll probably know, he has a camp in that general area.

 

[TomK]

I wouldn’t trust GPS to be accurate, either.

I am curious as to why you would not trust the GPS to be accurate. If you are getting signals from satellites, remoteness and/or availability of cell signals shouldn't matter.

Of course, I always check to make sure what the GPS is telling me is consistent with "old school" navigation, regardless of where I am.

TomK

 

[JoshandBaron]

I am curious as to why you would not trust the GPS to be accurate. If you are getting signals from satellites, remoteness and/or availability of cell signals shouldn't matter.

Of course, I always check to make sure what the GPS is telling me is consistent with "old school" navigation, regardless of where I am.

TomK

You can probably count on it to tell you where you are, but I wouldn't trust it to lead me anywhere. I can't count the times it's tried to send me a route up there that ends up not being viable for one reason or another.

 

[NH2112]

You can probably count on it to tell you where you are, but I wouldn't trust it to lead me anywhere. I can't count the times it's tried to send me a route up there that ends up not being viable for one reason or another.

The problem in the area is you can be driving along a logging road and your GPS will often show you as not being on a road, much farther than can be accounted for by GPS error. It’s incredibly easy to make a wrong turn because new roads are constantly being made by loggers and won’t show up on any map.

 

[NH2112]

@NH2112, do you know if Gold Brook/Beaudry Rd. passable in winter? E.g. access to Kibby Mountain and other peaks in the Beaudry? If so, does it go to through to 201 in the winter? Is there any word on washouts from the late-fall storms?

I just checked with my co-worker and was told Beaudry Rd is only passable to mile 6.5. He wasn’t sure about Gold Brook Rd.

 

[TomK]

You can probably count on it to tell you where you are, but I wouldn't trust it to lead me anywhere. I can't count the times it's tried to send me a route up there that ends up not being viable for one reason or another.

Now I get it. Thanks for the clarification.

TomK

 

[peakbagger]

Reminds me of early in the GPS era. The early units did not have electronic maps in them, they just read out a set of coordinates and might be able to go from point to pre-entered point or collect a series of "breadcrumbs" along the route to form a crude track. The joke was that the sensitivity of the units under any sort of canopy was really crappy. (If anyone wants one I have 2nd generation Magellan for sale for cheap ).

During one rescue a person with a fancy cell phone and a new GPS (they were not integrated yet) managed to get a cell signal in the Dry River area (still an accomplishment) and called 911 that he needed help. He was not lost, he knew exactly where he was down to the decimal degree on his GPS but he did not have a map of the area and needed someone to come get him and lead him out since he didn't know how to get out.

One of the reasons the Delorme Gazetteer was a big seller in Maine was that about 1/3rd of the state had no public roads, much of the road networks on private land were private built for forestry and these roads were intended for log extraction, not the use of the general public. They were usually open to the public with the strong warning that logging vehicles had the absolute right of way and private vehicles had to pull oll the way off the road when encountering logging traffic. The various private land owners did not necessarilly publish any road maps (many did) but they tended to be only the main road. The founders of Delorme were fisherman taking advantage of the road network and started filling in the blank spots on former a state gazetteer that was updated by the Census every ten years. Long after Delorme was thriving and satellite data was becoming more readily available, Delorme was quite diligent in collecting recent road condition reports on the private road networks and for those heading out in the woods frequently, it was worth buying a new yearly edition to ensure they had the latest info. Much of the "free" data out there tends to be "good enough" and it updated predominantly by aps like Google Maps tracking locations of users. The problem comes in that in many cases that up to date info is not cached for later transmission to the mother ship so logging roads in areas with no cell coverage does not get updated. In that case the map info may be very dated. I have driven around BSP in the past where google maps has directed me to turn down a hiking trail that was a logging road 70 or 80 years ago.

The other aspect for navigation maps being inaccurate is tied to Best Management Practices (BMP) for the endangered Atlantic Salmon which have spread into many areas in Maine that are covered by various conservation easements. BMP for logging roads in general are to make them seasonal on frozen ground if possible and only harden the major roads. Anytime there is drainage crossing, in the old days a culvert would be installed, BMP now requires a much larger open bottom culvert sized for much higher seasonal storm flows. The bottom of the culvert is maintained to resemble the stream bed and structure on either side of the road. This usually means a much more expensive crossing by a factor of 10 or more. In addition to the more expensive culvert, the road usually has to be built up much higher on either side of the crossing. These higher costs means man companies are just not building or repairing bridges if at all possible and may access areas different methods.

 

[TEO]

I just checked with my co-worker and was told Beaudry Rd is only passable to mile 6.5. He wasn’t sure about Gold Brook Rd.

Aren't Gold Brook and Beaudry Rd. the one and the same? The sign on 27 and in the DeLorme call it Gold Brook Rd., but the USGS topos, Mapbuilder and OpenStreet maps call it Beaudry Rd.

When I was saying "through to 201," I was thinking Gold Brook/Beaudry to Spencer>Hardscrabble. Are the gates on Holeb Rd. on either side of the Moose River typically open in summer?

 

[NH2112]

Aren't Gold Brook and Beaudry Rd. the one and the same? The sign on 27 and in the DeLorme call it Gold Brook Rd., but the USGS topos, Mapbuilder and OpenStreet maps call it Beaudry Rd.

When I was saying "through to 201," I was thinking Gold Brook/Beaudry to Spencer>Hardscrabble. Are the gates on Holeb Rd. on either side of the Moose River typically open in summer?

I’ve seen the same thing, but more maps I’ve seen call it Beaudry Rd. If you drive down Holeb Rd from 201 the junction before you reach Holeb village has a “Beaudry Rd” sign. I *think* Gold Brook Rd is where you turn left off Spencer Rd to get to 27, and if you go right you’ll eventually get to Beaudry Rd. I’ve never been all the way to 27 from either Holeb or Spencer Rds, every time I’ve meant to I either ended up exploring side roads or getting frustrated at the disconnect between the map and the ground.

 

[NH2112]

I just spent quite a bit of time following roads on Google Maps and here’s what I found:

Gold Brook Rd goes off the north side of 27 past Eustis, and turns into Beaudry Rd after Spencer Bale Rd on the right (maybe what I thought was Spencer Rd?)

Beaudry Rd continues and turns BACK to Gold Brook Rd after Kibby Mtn Rd, passes West Branch, Haynestown, Pine Tree, and Appleton Rds, then the next road on the right is Holeb Rd.

Gold Brook continues on in a generally NW direction toward the border but stops about 5 miles from it.

Holeb Rd goes generally NE, passing Moose Rd and Barrett Rd on the right, and a little after Barrett Rd becomes Beaudry Rd again.

Beaudry Rd continues for a few miles and all of a sudden in the middle of nowhere becomes Old Skinner Rd. This continues for a short distance, maybe a mile or so, before meeting Holeb Rd at a kind of upside-down T.

If you go left at the T (the vertical line) you'll eventually hit 201 and if you go straight (the horizontal line) you’ll reach Holeb Village after passing ANOTHER road on the right labeled as Old Skinner Rd. The last time I was at that T the sign said Beaudry Rd, not Old Skinner Rd. So that’s why I wouldn’t trust GPS or road names, you might be on the right road but when the roads start and stop at random and have 2 or 3 names…

I don’t think I’ve ever been much more than 5 or 6 miles down Beaudry Rd from the Holeb Rd/Beaudry Rd split, and that was over 4 years ago, so I can’t verify any of the road names and changes as they appear on the map. Google Maps used to show a Spencer Rd route to get to the Eustis area, but now it has you going down 201 to Solon, taking 201A until you hit Embden, then taking a couple town roads until you reach 16. Follow that through New Portland until you hit 27 at Kingfield.

 

[NH2112]

I have a pretty kickass 4runner

Is it white with a snorkel and were you just at Bishop’s store in Jackman?