dms
Active member
What a great mountain for me to finish my quest for the New England 3ks!. It was what I consider to be a "typical" western ME day, with a mix of clouds, sun and a bit of rain also. I was delighted to be accompanied on the trip with my son, Dan, his friend Jenn, and my long time hiking friend Jeff Romano. BTW, Jeff just wrote a wonderful book, The Best Loop Hikes in New Hampshire and ME, it is published by The Mountaineers, and he will be at the AMC in Pinkham this Saturday with a slide show on the hikes. The trail is a beauty, the first 2.5 mi is on a old moderately graded road that takes you to the doorstep of the warden's cabin, it is a bit run down, but was very clean inside and still gets a lot of use in the summer. From the cabin, the trail steepens significantly, but there is a series of stone steps which make the steepness easy to navigate. As you reach the summit ridge, there is a short trail going off to the south which leads to a great outlook to the east, the views make this detour well worth the effort. The main trail then turns directly north for about .5 mi to the summit. There is another outlook trail to the west for views of the Bigelows, Sugarloaf and Abraham. At the summit the firetower looks to be in tough shape and the cab may not last too much longer. The ME Mountain Guide states that this tower was the first built in ME in 1905. The ladder had been removed, so we did not make an effort to climb up. There were plenty of views from the summit and a wide open ledge a short distance to the north.
From the ledge there are views of Mooshead Lake, the Spencers, Lily Bays and Bakers, as well as the BSP peaks. We could pick out OJI, The Owl, the Brothers, but because of clouds, we could only see the base of Katahdin. We stayed on the summit for over an our with no other hikers around. Because of the coolness of the temps we did not open the bottle of celebration champagne, we took care of that later.
After 25 years of hiking this list I do want to offer some thanks to several folks who made it all possible. First is to my wife Susan, who has put up with my hiking "obession" all these years! To Gene Daniell who really got me interested in hiking and provided me with the infamous list! Thanks also to Dennis Crispo who helped me learn how to use a map and compass, to Doug and Jeff Romano with whom I did the majority of my peaks.
As it turns out I ended up doing 476 3k peaks, the "new" list contains 453, but I had done virtually all of the "disqualified" peaks when the new list was established in 1992. I am pretty sure I hold the record for taking the longest time to complete the list, as there were several years when I decided to get back to trail hiking, because believe me there are some bushwacks on the list that make you think about whether it's all worth it. But I managed to hook up with several other finishers such as John Swanson, Narcisso Torres, soon to be finisher Jim C., and my son Dan, to help me through my last ME peaks, which are by far the toughest to do.
Finishing still hasn't sunk in yet, but I do want to say that I love being in the mountains, next to my family, it is my greatest passion, so I know that I will continue to hike as long as I can! I will post some pics tomorrow. Good hiking to all!!
From the ledge there are views of Mooshead Lake, the Spencers, Lily Bays and Bakers, as well as the BSP peaks. We could pick out OJI, The Owl, the Brothers, but because of clouds, we could only see the base of Katahdin. We stayed on the summit for over an our with no other hikers around. Because of the coolness of the temps we did not open the bottle of celebration champagne, we took care of that later.
After 25 years of hiking this list I do want to offer some thanks to several folks who made it all possible. First is to my wife Susan, who has put up with my hiking "obession" all these years! To Gene Daniell who really got me interested in hiking and provided me with the infamous list! Thanks also to Dennis Crispo who helped me learn how to use a map and compass, to Doug and Jeff Romano with whom I did the majority of my peaks.
As it turns out I ended up doing 476 3k peaks, the "new" list contains 453, but I had done virtually all of the "disqualified" peaks when the new list was established in 1992. I am pretty sure I hold the record for taking the longest time to complete the list, as there were several years when I decided to get back to trail hiking, because believe me there are some bushwacks on the list that make you think about whether it's all worth it. But I managed to hook up with several other finishers such as John Swanson, Narcisso Torres, soon to be finisher Jim C., and my son Dan, to help me through my last ME peaks, which are by far the toughest to do.
Finishing still hasn't sunk in yet, but I do want to say that I love being in the mountains, next to my family, it is my greatest passion, so I know that I will continue to hike as long as I can! I will post some pics tomorrow. Good hiking to all!!
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