Amicus
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Joy Spring
I left Freedom at 3:30 a.m. for the three-hour drive to my rendezvous with buckyball1 (Jim from Orrington, ME) at Bridge Rd., the dirt road between Rangeley and Stratton that leads to the trail to E. Kennebago. We decided on an early start because we didn't know how long these logging road drives and bushwhacks would take and because of the forecast, which called for rain by midday (but it actually started before then).
Wide awake with the help of four cups of coffee and a close encounter with a bull moose south of Errol, I topped a rise between Oquossoc and Rangeley and witnessed the rosy-fingered dawn blazing over the Saddleback range, which I realized would be my highlight view for the day.
Neither of us had a vehicle suited for these logging roads and we went with my minivan in part because it was older and well-weathered (over 131,000 miles). We had plenty of directions from trip reports, which Jim had taken the trouble to reconcile and compile. We found the critical left turn .4 mile past a gravel pit, also on the left. That road was rougher and we took it only to 2,350 feet, 3.8 miles from Route 16. Any vehilce with 4WD or a higher chassis could go up to .5 farther up.
Jim and I ambled up the road north for 1.4 miles to the town-line "boundary trail," blazed in yellow, which heads west into the woods at around 2,950 feet. We followed this about a third of a mile west, which took 15 minutes. There we picked up a mossy herd path which headed straight north to the summit in about a quarter-mile, another 15 minutes as there were no obstacles. The path hit the summit plateau maybe 50 yards to the east of the canister, to which it led us.
We went off the herd paths a couple of times on the descent but had no trouble picking them up again. Of the NEHH peaks I have climbed (89, and Jim is in the 80's also), this is the shortest and probably easiest hike (but far from the easiest drive).
We discovered that we share many interests, especially musical, such as the sublimely joyous jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown, whose young life ended in a car wreck in the '50s. One of his great numbers - Joy Spring - would serve well as the theme song for this hike.
Cold Rain and Snow
The rain really started to come down shortly after we started our drive back to Route 16, but we had made excellent time and didn't mind getting wet, so we headed west to Oquossoc, where we would pick up the network of logging roads that would take us to the tralhead for Cupsuptic Snow. We had helpful reports of hikes both from the south (Burnt Mountain Road) and north (Wiggle Brook Road) but knew no one who had done both, making our choice difficult. We chose the Wiggle Brook Road route in part because I'd already driven to the trailhead, earlier this summer when Poison Ivy, Oncoman, Sal, Mark and I had taken a wrong turn on our drive in to a hike to White Cap and North Kennebago Divide.
Our logging road sequence was Morton Cutoff/Lincoln Brook Road/"new" Wiggle Brook Road (up the west bank of the river)/ "old" Wiggle Brook Road. The trailhead - an old road heading south (left) just before the yellow "22" mile marker - was 17.4 miles from Rte. 16/4.
TR's by Papa Bear and Oncoman described our general hiking route and we made the best use of them we could. The rain let up as we started south and varied in intensity throughout our hike. The cloud ceiling lowered to just overhead, however, so we couldn't take any useful sight bearings. It had gotten colder also.
At .67 "crow-flight" miles from the trailhead (per my primitive GPS), the road swings left (east) but also goes straight ahead. We thought the left was a turn we were supposed to avoid and contiued straight for another .4 mile or so before we realized the "left" was in fact the main road. We took a few boggy detours looking for Oncoman's elusive "herd path straight to the canister" and succeeded only in soaking our feet.
After retracing our steps and continuing up the main road to about 2,950 feet, we reached the intersection-with-cairn described by Papa Bear. Rather than follow the road toward the left, we went straight, on a herd path that headed into the woods ascending fairly steeply. This may in fact have been Oncoman's route at first, but there were many junctions without an obviously correct fork and at some point we took the wrong one.
Our general idea was to stay to the right (south), to avoid the thick spruce reported on the NW slopes of the summit. We overcompensated, however, and at around 3,400 feet found ourselves smack in the middle of a wide band of the thickest spruce imaginable, on the SW slopes. After working our way painfully into the middle of it, we went sideways for a spell looking without success for some kind of path. A line from another Dead/J. Garcia standard - The Wheel -was running through my head:
"Can't go back and you can't stand still."
This went on for nearly 30 minutes that seemed much longer, until we decided to just bash our way through uphill, which should lead to the summit. This wasn't easy but it worked. The spruce finally thinned and we hit the herd path leading east to the canister, which we were a lot more relieved to spot than we had been for the first.
We were both soaked and cold by now so we didn't linger on the summit. Jim led the way down and this time we got lucky and made correct choices. We were surprised how much of the same ground we were covering as on our ascent, but we managed to stay a little north of our spruce band and had a straight and unobstructed shot down to the old road and our car, which we reached one hour 15 minutes after leaving the summit. That was nearly an hour shorter than our ascent had taken.
These were excellent hikes, in large thanks to the company. For me, this was making optimal use of a rainy Saturday in September.
I left Freedom at 3:30 a.m. for the three-hour drive to my rendezvous with buckyball1 (Jim from Orrington, ME) at Bridge Rd., the dirt road between Rangeley and Stratton that leads to the trail to E. Kennebago. We decided on an early start because we didn't know how long these logging road drives and bushwhacks would take and because of the forecast, which called for rain by midday (but it actually started before then).
Wide awake with the help of four cups of coffee and a close encounter with a bull moose south of Errol, I topped a rise between Oquossoc and Rangeley and witnessed the rosy-fingered dawn blazing over the Saddleback range, which I realized would be my highlight view for the day.
Neither of us had a vehicle suited for these logging roads and we went with my minivan in part because it was older and well-weathered (over 131,000 miles). We had plenty of directions from trip reports, which Jim had taken the trouble to reconcile and compile. We found the critical left turn .4 mile past a gravel pit, also on the left. That road was rougher and we took it only to 2,350 feet, 3.8 miles from Route 16. Any vehilce with 4WD or a higher chassis could go up to .5 farther up.
Jim and I ambled up the road north for 1.4 miles to the town-line "boundary trail," blazed in yellow, which heads west into the woods at around 2,950 feet. We followed this about a third of a mile west, which took 15 minutes. There we picked up a mossy herd path which headed straight north to the summit in about a quarter-mile, another 15 minutes as there were no obstacles. The path hit the summit plateau maybe 50 yards to the east of the canister, to which it led us.
We went off the herd paths a couple of times on the descent but had no trouble picking them up again. Of the NEHH peaks I have climbed (89, and Jim is in the 80's also), this is the shortest and probably easiest hike (but far from the easiest drive).
We discovered that we share many interests, especially musical, such as the sublimely joyous jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown, whose young life ended in a car wreck in the '50s. One of his great numbers - Joy Spring - would serve well as the theme song for this hike.
Cold Rain and Snow
The rain really started to come down shortly after we started our drive back to Route 16, but we had made excellent time and didn't mind getting wet, so we headed west to Oquossoc, where we would pick up the network of logging roads that would take us to the tralhead for Cupsuptic Snow. We had helpful reports of hikes both from the south (Burnt Mountain Road) and north (Wiggle Brook Road) but knew no one who had done both, making our choice difficult. We chose the Wiggle Brook Road route in part because I'd already driven to the trailhead, earlier this summer when Poison Ivy, Oncoman, Sal, Mark and I had taken a wrong turn on our drive in to a hike to White Cap and North Kennebago Divide.
Our logging road sequence was Morton Cutoff/Lincoln Brook Road/"new" Wiggle Brook Road (up the west bank of the river)/ "old" Wiggle Brook Road. The trailhead - an old road heading south (left) just before the yellow "22" mile marker - was 17.4 miles from Rte. 16/4.
TR's by Papa Bear and Oncoman described our general hiking route and we made the best use of them we could. The rain let up as we started south and varied in intensity throughout our hike. The cloud ceiling lowered to just overhead, however, so we couldn't take any useful sight bearings. It had gotten colder also.
At .67 "crow-flight" miles from the trailhead (per my primitive GPS), the road swings left (east) but also goes straight ahead. We thought the left was a turn we were supposed to avoid and contiued straight for another .4 mile or so before we realized the "left" was in fact the main road. We took a few boggy detours looking for Oncoman's elusive "herd path straight to the canister" and succeeded only in soaking our feet.
After retracing our steps and continuing up the main road to about 2,950 feet, we reached the intersection-with-cairn described by Papa Bear. Rather than follow the road toward the left, we went straight, on a herd path that headed into the woods ascending fairly steeply. This may in fact have been Oncoman's route at first, but there were many junctions without an obviously correct fork and at some point we took the wrong one.
Our general idea was to stay to the right (south), to avoid the thick spruce reported on the NW slopes of the summit. We overcompensated, however, and at around 3,400 feet found ourselves smack in the middle of a wide band of the thickest spruce imaginable, on the SW slopes. After working our way painfully into the middle of it, we went sideways for a spell looking without success for some kind of path. A line from another Dead/J. Garcia standard - The Wheel -was running through my head:
"Can't go back and you can't stand still."
This went on for nearly 30 minutes that seemed much longer, until we decided to just bash our way through uphill, which should lead to the summit. This wasn't easy but it worked. The spruce finally thinned and we hit the herd path leading east to the canister, which we were a lot more relieved to spot than we had been for the first.
We were both soaked and cold by now so we didn't linger on the summit. Jim led the way down and this time we got lucky and made correct choices. We were surprised how much of the same ground we were covering as on our ascent, but we managed to stay a little north of our spruce band and had a straight and unobstructed shot down to the old road and our car, which we reached one hour 15 minutes after leaving the summit. That was nearly an hour shorter than our ascent had taken.
These were excellent hikes, in large thanks to the company. For me, this was making optimal use of a rainy Saturday in September.
