Little Wildcat

[Nate]

I'm thinking of climbing Little Wildcat soon, and was wondering what words of wisdom anyone would care to impart regarding this endeavor. My plan is to hike in from the Nineteen Mile Brook Trail, near where it intersects the Carter Dome Trail. Is this considered the best way to go? Does this peak have a reputation for being densely vegetated? Once at the summit, is the true high point obvious, or will I really have to hunt around a large area of dense spruce and blowdowns in order to find the canister? Any information would be greatly appreciated.

 

[onestep]

From the Glen House in April

Nate - Last April we 'whacked this peak starting from the Glen House. We found conditions to be Mostly open woods down low with bands of thicker spruce fir higher up. Nothing *really* thick but the forest floor was littered with lots of downed storm damage. Very scrappy.
The jar was easy to spot even though the summit is rather flat. It wan't very thick up there.

Onestep

 

[dms]

Nate, I went in the way you are thinking of from the trail, it worked out well, we did not encounter any real problems. The old guidebooks showed several old trails leading to the summit, and we found some traces of those. The Wild Kitten is not all that wild.

 

[RoySwkr]

This used to be a destination for AMC bushwhacking courses, you could turn the beginners loose (in pairs?) to find it without too many worries.

 

[Nate]

I finally made it up to Little Wildcat this past weekend. Even though the bushwhack is shorter from the Nineteen Mile Brook Trail, it involves following trails for two miles each way, so, due to time constraints, instead I followed Onestep's advice and headed up from the Glen House. Starting at the back of the fields behind there, it's only about a mile to the top. There's quite a bit of deciduous forest on that side of the mountain, which becomes increasingly intermixed with spruce as one approaches the summit. Thankfully none of the spruce sections lasts very long. Since this peak's high point is toward that side of the summit, once I reached the top it didn't take very long to observe where the true high point was, so in just a matter of minutes I was at the old peanut butter jar. The summit last had a visitor about a week ago. Coming down was just about as straighforward, so in a short while I was back at the ol' ghetto cruiser.

Since I was able to go up to the canister and back without any problems, I now wonder how I would have done in that AMC bushwhacking course.