North Turner

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Nate

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When visiting North Turner, do most people head over from South Turner, or from the Wassataquoik Stream Trail? Also, is North Turner one of those open summits where the canister is stashed among the rocks at the top, or is it attached to a tree at the edge of the summit clearing? Plus, just overall, how difficult of a bushwhack is it?
 
Nate, I've done North Turner a couple of times from South Turner. It's another great Baxter Park 3000 footer, all of which have outstanding open views. I found the L-shaped bushwhack to be moderately open with a few scrappy spots. Baxter officials frown on canisters on their peaks, and have even gone so far as to remove them. There's a chance you may find one in the summit rocks. On the return route, I used to drop down to the col (red cross on map), then head basically west avoiding steep drop-offs :rolleyes: (wishful thinking) and staying just north of that snake-like stream that's pictured. Once intersecting the trail below, it's an easy walk back to civilization again. Have fun!
 
Is Barren another example of an L-shaped bushwhack, or are its southern slopes steep enough that it's better to return to OJI before descending?
 
Just got back from Barren, I will be posting a trip report later today. There is no easy approach to this peak.
 
So, I took a swing at North Turner this past weekend. I must say, crossing over from South Turner was much slower going than I expected. I wonder if things have have gotten thicker since Dennis C. was up there, and if anyone's passed through there in the last few years perhaps they can confirm this.

I started my whack in the open area north of the South Turner summit cone, and initially the vegetation was thick, as is often the case when entering the woods from a large clear area. Descending further down the peak, I came to a section of more mature evergreens, which would have been comfortably open were it not for all the shorter spruce trees (5-6' tall) that grew in between that I had to push my way through and which conveniently obscured many of the blowdowns underfoot, leaving me to unsuspectingly trip over them. Even this patch didn't last all that long.

Once down on the connecting ridge, the spruce were about 7-10' high, with very few small clearings or animal paths, so it was a constant fight to get through the stuff. Due to my morning nap and the sleet that fell on South Turner while I was up there, I didn't start my bushwhack until 1:30. The two peaks are about two miles apart, but after an hour of battling along, I was only able to gain 0.6 of a mile (usually I can bushwhack a mile an hour). At that point I did the math, and realized that at my current rate, by the time I whacked over to North Turner and then dropped down to the Wassataquoik Trail, it would be long dark before I returned to Roaring Brook, and not having a flash light on me, it simply wouldn't happen. All my preparation for this whack was geared toward contending with "moderately open" woods, which were not what I encountered.

Then, I came to a frightening realization: perhaps what I was encountering during my attempt on North Turner really is "moderately open" compared to what the experienced bushwhackers have experienced. What if, as bad as it was, going to North Turner is easy compared to some of the other mountains out there? :eek: When I hear "open woods" I assume it's like much of the whack going up Little Wildcat. To me, "moderately open" is like the saddle on Aziscohos, where there's a fair amount of mature spruce trees to manuever through, but if you pick your spots you can move along. Perhaps I've simply been bushwhacking in a naive little bubble all this time. :confused:
 
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Nate, I recall that you bushwhacked from Boundary Peak to White Cap and Kennebago Divide last year. How did that hike compare to the one you just tried?

(I've never been off South Turner toward North Turner, but I do need to return to try to bag those mountains in the Cupsuptic region, so I was just curious how you think they compare.)
 
Fifty foot rule

When you encounter thick going on a bushwack, always invoke the 50 foot rule. That is the rule that says the woods are always much better and more open by going 50 feet either to the right or the left of your current direction of travel. Sometimes it actually works out to be true!
 
Raymond, I actually bushwhacked over to White Cap from Monument Peak, not Boundary. Even though bushwhacking the two miles from Boundary to White Cap is shorter distance-wise than backtracking 4.5 miles along the border swath back to monument 450, then going the 0.9 miles over the White Cap, at the time it seemed like a really daunting two miles because those woods are so thick, and on top of that you have to have to try to avoid running into Dennison Bog.

As it was, the 0.9 miles I bushwhacked over to White Cap took about an hour. I know Gamehiker described this stretch as being not very thick, but with numerous blowdowns. The way I remember it is that I thought it was thick, but perhaps in retrospect it wasn't too bad (after all, I hadn't bushwhacked that much to that point, so I thought everything was thick). I certainly do remember the blowdowns, and once in the col I remember crossing a number of old skidder paths, but since they all ran perpendicular to my route none of them were of any use to me. I do remember that the Monument-White Cap col wasn't as bad as the section of NKD I bushwhacked up before I found the herd path.

Just overall, I think the thickness one encounters has a great deal to do with the course you happen to take through the woods, as well as numerous other conditions (i.e. vegetation growth) that are constantly changing.

As for the fifty foot rule, I'm glad I'm now aware of it, and it will be interesting to see how well it holds up in the field. I do know that the Turner ridge seemed so constantly thick that applying this rule would have meant thrashing 50 feet sideways before continuing to fight my way forward. But then again, in such conditions it's difficult to see very far in any direction to the degree that you could determine if better conditions exist not too far away.

For all I know, the "moderately open" woods Dennis wrote of weren't that far from where I was, or perhaps they were waiting about 200 feet ahead from where I turned around.
 
Maybe it's just the area. I haven't done that much bushwhacking, but somehow Baxter seems, well, thicker than other places. 0.5 miles in an hour is pretty typical. Spencer and Tramper Al climbed East Turner a couple of years ago, and they said it was one of their all-time hardest.
 
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