North Brother via Williams Pond Rd, Nesowadnehunk, and Marston Trail 2/14-15/2010

[MarkL]

Part 1 of 2

President’s Weekend looked like the best chance for summiting North Brother. I’d have a better chance of finding partners to hike with. Also, I saw from Baxter State Park’s campsite availability page that a group was already planning to be there.
Arm, Mtnpa, and Frodo had contacted me after seeing my partner plea post.

From exchanges with them, I built up some expectations. The group of 7 staying at Nesowadnehunk Field Campground (NFC) would climb Coe, and maybe some would continue to NB. People staying at Kidney and Daicey Pond cabins might be going for NB, Chances are it would be broken out by the time I got there. So Plan A was to ski in, drop overnight gear at the lean-to, climb NB, return to the l/t, sleep, and go out to Telos Rd. the next morning. I was also warned to bring a snow shovel in case I needed to dig a parking place out of the way of the lumber trucks.

Saturday, Feb. 13, 2010. After a long, long drive, I arrived in Millinocket. I went to House of Pizza for a spaghetti and chicken cutlet dinner with an extra side of garlic bread. A local said Millinocket hadn’t had snow for 24 days, but the area I was going to tends to get more. I was also told that Nesowadnehunk was pronounced "sadahunk". That was a great disappointment. I so liked the way "Nesowadnehunk" rolled off my tongue that I thought about converting to Nesowadnehunkitarianism. But now, why bother? I drove the Golden Road, then turned right on to Telos Rd. When I got to the Williams Pond Road after dark Saturday night, it was a relief to find the road plowed extra wide there, with enough space for 7 or more vehicles. The basic directions say "WPR is at mile marker 35", you "park at mile marker 35". There was a turn-out on the left just before 35, but the correct area is on the right about 1/2 mile past mm 35. I looked for a place to lay out my plastic, ground pads, and bag. At first the tracks on WPR. looked good, but some of those were snowmobile tracks, and I couldn’t be sure there wouldn’t be any night riders. I was too lazy to put on the snowshoes to pack down an area away from the trail and road, so I just dug into the snow bank by the car to make a flat area wide and long enough for me. It was very comfortable, and from the time I got there until after I arose at 3:45AM, no vehicles went by on the road.
Sunday, Feb. 14. Frodo said they’d be starting for Coe around 7-8AM. I wanted to be part of whatever effort it took to break out the trail, so I got up at 3:45AM Sunday in order to eat, load the sled, and ski the expected 2 hours to NFC. I wasn’t ready to start pulling til around 6AM. The sled turned over less than a minute later. It did that a lot for the first hour or so despite many rearrangements and re-tightening of gear. Finally I accepted the need to wear the day pack on my back so the sled wouldn’t have gear piled so high. After that, I made better time, but there was no way I’d ever catch up to the Coe climbers. After I was about a mile down the WP Rd, I thought: it should all be broken out; maybe this is the time to do it as a long day hike. It would be mostly skiing, which would be fast without all the overnight gear. But I already had the gear on the trail, and a summit attempt might drain me enough so I’d desire or even need the option of sleeping at NFC that night. So I let that idea go.
I thought that if I got to NFC by 11AM, I might still make a try for the summit. If I didn’t succeed, I could still try again Monday. I got to “Cozy Cabin” at 10:45AM and met Christine. I told her I might still try. I went around to lean-to #4, dragged the picnic table out of it, and put all my gear inside. Then I gave thought to going for NB. As I sat there, my legs felt weak. Not trembling jello weak, but weak. The four previous nights I’d had less than 6 hours sleep each, with less than 5 hours Saturday night. But I was willing to do it, even if it meant returning in the dark. Even if it meant summiting in the dark. I’d just done that a week earlier on Mt. Isolation, and wasn’t happy at the prospect of doing it again so soon. But I really wanted to be sure of getting NB after all my planning, preparation, obsessing, and over 500 miles of driving. I wanted to try ASAP, which would give me a second chance if I failed. As I thought about all this, I started to doze off a few times. Maybe the sleep deficit was a bigger factor than I’d thought. Maybe I urgently needed some good rest before going for the summit. What if my strength or energy level drops a lot during the attempt? I decided to wait til Monday. I napped for over 3 hours, made dinner, and went back to Cozy Cabin to find out how their climb had gone. Only Arm and Sean were back already. I hung around a bit, waiting, and gladly accepting an offer of mtnpa’s wife’s spicy chicken soup. Finally, maybe a little after 7:30pm, the other 4 returned. They reported a very tough day on Coe. So tough, that they didn’t want to break trail anymore. Though their original plans were to do South Brother too, then descend the Marston Trial, they just went down the way they’d come up. So the 4.5 mile Marston Trail was only going to be broken for 1.2 miles, and I’d have to do the rest myself. Arm had the wisdom to ask if crampons were needed on the slide. The answer was no, and he thought that with good snowshoe cleats, I could get NB. I was happy for that bit of good news. It meant a little less weight and bulk on my back.
Well, it was going to be a tough day tomorrow, and if conditions were as bad on the steep sections of Marston as they were on the Coe slide, summiting was in doubt. I returned to L/T #4 in time to get 7.5 hours of sleep

Monday, Feb. 15th. Up at 4:20AM. Cooked and ate oatmeal while still in sleeping bag. When I got up and got gear ready, I became aware that my legs felt the same kind of weak as the day before. This didn’t bode well, but I had to give it a try, had to hope that after an hour or few they’d feel stronger. At 6:20AM I started skiing the park perimeter road with day pack, snowshoes, and hiking boots in the sled behind me. After a few issues with the sled and a stop at an outhouse along the way, I arrived at the Marston trailhead at 7:45AM. I brought the sled up the trail about 50 yards, out of sight from the perimeter road. I changed boots, signed the register, and started hiking at 8:10. The last group to sign in for NB was on 1/30. It took them 7 hours r/t from the register. I don’t remember the group size. The next previous group to NB was in mid-November. I didn’t expect to see any tracks from 1/30. I was told the trail had blue blazes. I hoped they were frequent.

 

[MarkL]

NB via WPR, Neso, & Marston Tr. 2/14-15/2010

Part 2 of 2

Monday (continued) I bare booted for the first 300’ of elevation gain. The trail was supportive, but I wanted better traction, so I put on my 30” Havlick snowshoes. They have pretty aggressive front claws. The 1.2 miles to Coe jct. took a surprising 1:10 to hike, and the time used to put on the snowshoes doesn’t explain that to my satisfaction. It had snowed a bit the previous evening, so I could tell that no one had been on this trail or the Coe trail since yesterday’s group. Leaving the Coe Trail jct, I was relieved to find that the unpacked snow was just a few inches deep, and the trough from the 1/30 group was still frequently visible! But it wasn’t always visible, so trail finding rather than trail breaking became the major concern and time consumer. There was a nice view from the small pond, though clouds limited how high up the ridge I could see. A little after leaving the pond, it got steep, very steep. This section of trail seemed to be pretty clear, but after it leveled off a bit, trail finding became an issue again. In addition to blowdown and leaning trees, there had been enough snow since 1/30 to make the trail difficult to spot at times. It was a relatively warm day, so I didn't want to put on G'tex and sweat. So I hiked in fleece and tried to keep it from getting caked with snow by knocking snow off branches ahead of me. This slowed me down a lot.
After a while I figured it was time to keep an eye open for the trail junction sign where the SB trail meets the Marston. I was looking for either a sign, or the snow/rime ice that would be covering the face of the sign. And in case the sign was so thickly rimed that it looked like a tree, I was also looking for the SB trail itself. The Topo! map I was using apparently showed an older trail route, not the route by the small pond. Its location for the trail junction didn’t agree with the map I’d bought at BSP HQ 2 years ago. Which was right? There might have been a recent trail relocation that made both maps wrong. But both maps showed the trail to SB bearing away to the S and SW from the jct, so I kept an eye on it with my compass. When it looked like the trail was bearing SW without correcting to NE, I figured I’d missed the sign. I went back looking closely, but didn’t see it. I thought that maybe the Marston Trail went a little way SW just before meeting the SB trail. So I turned around and went further SW by 100 yards or so until I lost the trail. I turned around again and saw the lower part of a much higher bit of mountain. It was in the right direction for NB, and it didn’t feel right that the Marston would be heading directly away from NB at this point. So I retraced my steps yet again, and this time, in a tiny clearing I was now entering for the fourth(!) time at 2:10PM, I noticed a hint of a passage off to the right/NE. It was narrow and encroached upon by snowy spruce, but I had to take a look. What seemed to be a passage continued far enough to convince me it wasn’t just a natural opening. The trees were too small to be blazed, but after 5 minutes or so there were larger trees and one had blue paint on it! Only a mile to the summit! But there were more and more spots where the trail was hard to find, with two of them taking me almost five minutes each. In both of those spots, the trail actually went straight ahead! Every time this happened, I wondered if it was going to get much worse, and take so much time that I’d have to turn around empty handed. Then I remembered that today, unlike most of my hikes this winter, I had plenty of daylight left. That lifted my spirit, and I told myself “Go,go, go!”
It was steep again now, and I was getting high enough to hear and feel the breeze more. I stopped to put on my shell for what could be much stronger wind at the summit. The trees finally became shorter and farther apart, and the previous tracks were more and more blown over until I could no longer follow them. Here I took Arm’s advice and started checking my bearing so I could follow a reverse bearing back from the summit if my tracks weren’t visible. I also started making frequent deep ski pole holes too deep to get blown in quickly. The surface was now too firm for snowshoes to make a deep impression, and even without falling snow, wind can sometimes cover tracks with loose snow in a very few minutes. I came upon 2 or 3 rocks with blue blazes, and made pole marks by them for confirmation on the way down. I was in the cloud and it was distorting distances for me. What I thought was a huge slant-sided boulder in the distance was really less than 3 feet high and about 50’ away. I thought I was approaching the summit ridge when I saw another white ridge in the far distance. “Oh no”, I thought, “that’s too far. Please let that be Katahdin!” But I sensed it wasn’t K. It was NB’s summit, but it turned out to be less than 200 yards away, maybe much less. I crossed that rocky ridge and followed it on the east side which I think reduced the breeze hitting me. In a minute or two I was at what appeared, as far as I could see, to be the highest point. So I looked for a sign. Everything was heavily rimed. One thing stood just a tiny distance apart from the highest rock outcropping, and I correctly guessed that it was the sign. After a minute or two of gouging, scraping, and brushing, “North Brother 4143’” (IIRC) became visible.
( My blue hat serves well to keep the snow from going down my back when crashing through snow-laden trees. On the summit, however, it was a double liability. I had to be mindful of it so it wouldn't blow away. And with the brim blown up by the wind, it really didn't help my image any.) Summit photo
It was 3:20PM. The whole way up, whenever I was aware of my legs, they felt weak, yet they were sufficient after all! I took two pictures, and with no views at all to detain me, I took off at robust walking speed in hopes of finding intact prints. Happily, I was able to follow my snowshoe prints all the way back to tree line! Without the hesitancy of trail finding, and being downhill on soft, glissadable snow, the descent went very, very quickly! I wouldn’t have enough water to keep me well hydrated back to the l/t, and didn’t bring the filter, so I declared “Baxter Beavers are Benign!” and filled a bottle between the small pond and the Coe Tr. Jct. Time will tell. On the way back I thought about what would have happened if I’d gone for the summit starting at Noon the day before. If I had tried, and moved at the same pace as today, I would have gotten to the Marston-SB jct. 2:20 after sunset! I wonder if I would have even found the passage. And what about losing the trail in other places in the dark? It’s unpleasant to even imagine myself being in that situation. And I wouldn’t have gotten back to the l/t until 1:30AM or later!

I got to Coe Tr. jct. at 5:25PM. There were no new tracks on that trail. About half an hour below this junction I finally turned on my headlamp to avoid eye pokes. Back at the Perimeter Road, I didn’t feel energetic enough to change boots and ski generally uphill for 3 miles, so I lashed the skis to the pack in the sled and pulled the rig wearing snowshoes all the way back to the l/t. I got there before 8PM, left the gear, and immediately went to the cabin to check in. I briefed them on the conditions encountered, and they were happy for my success. Being too tired and lazy to get out my own filter and go down to the stream, I bummed a quart of drinking water from them. I didn’t want to get too comfortable there because of a decision I’d made on the way back. I needed to get home Tuesday night, and the drive itself would be about 12 hours. To ski the six miles out Tuesday and then do the drive seemed overwhelming and maybe even dangerous. To pack up and ski out the same night after a 15 mile, 13.5 hour hike was also not a good option. Two options, neither one good. But I figured I might as well do at least some of that 6 miles that night to make Tuesday slightly easier. If I got too tired along the WPR, I could just lay out the big sheet of plastic, the pads, and bag, and sleep. I excused myself and went to pack up.
It was about 10PM when I pulled away from NWC. There was a half mile uphill section of x-c ski trail to deal with, so I kept my hiking boots on and wore snowshoes. After that, on the WPR, I tried barebooting and pulling everything, but the ski and sled track wouldn’t support me. I didn’t want to ski because it was so slow doing so on the way in and my wax just hadn’t grabbed well. And snowshoe tracks would be wider than the sled track, making it less helpful in guiding the sled. So I tried skiing again. This time it went a lot better, in part due to it being generally downhill on the way out. Despite many sled overturnings, I got to the car at 1:40AM. I quickly put most gear in the car and set up the sleeping gear in the same spot I’d dug out and slept in Saturday night.



Tuesday, Feb. 16 At 6:20AM I woke up in a snow bank in northern Maine, 35 miles from the nearest town. And that's a good thing! It means I got some rest (okay, just under 4 hours, and not all of that was sleep.) to help me recover from that extra 6 miles before starting the long drive home. I stopped at BSP HQ to say hi to the woman who had helped me with my reservation, and to buy two bottles of MOXIE at the IGA. Enough suspense, long story short: I got back home in time to shower and watch Lost! That is success!

 

[mtnpa]

Great job Mark!
That's one long tough day.
See you on the trails.

 

[jjo]

Great TR and description of a challenging hike!!! Thanks for sharing....Liked your detail..

 

[bryan]

cool trip. quite an epic hike to get to that one summit. looking forward to getting up there one of these winters myself....
thanks for sharing.

bryan