buckyball1
New member
After my flame-out on W Scar W a month ago, i felt the need to do another bushwack to "get back in the game", and decided on Saddleback 2998', near Katahdin Ironworks.
Approach Roads: Turn left off Rt11 north of Brownsville Junction and take the good dirt road toward the KI gate. At 6.0 miles turn right onto a decent dirt road. This is labeled the Werther Rd in Delorme, but is unsigned. At 1.1 miles, take the right fork-the worst spot on the approach is a washed out area 3.5 miles from KI road. At 4.0 miles turn left and go 1.6 miles. This road is generally rough, but has no major problems; a high clearance car would be best. At 1.6 miles, the road bends left and downhill and a logging road forks right. You can park here although if you've made it to here it would be possible to drive past the now moved boulders a short way down the road to the right and make it to the skid roads that go up Saddleback.
I started hiking up the right fork road, passed the boulders and saw at least 4-5 large skid roads to my right in the first 8 minutes. My plan was to follow the logging road for maybe 15-18 minutes and try to head up the ridge at around 2000-2100'. I found no good entry into the woods as the logging road flattened and looped right around Saddleback at about 2100' so i retreated to the earlier skid roads. I chose one "at random" and was able to follow it easily toward Saddleback as high as 2250-2300'. I then turned "up" toward the ridge (probably NNE) and found the going fairly steep and very dense (lots of blowdowns and some thick evergreens) until i reached the ridge around 2600'.
I turned almost directly NE and followed the ridge to the summit. You pass a fairly open "false summit" around 2750' and can then follow decent animal trails interspersed with thick patches. I reached what i thought was the summit, a particularly thick section with no visuals where my altimeter read almost 3000'. It didn't "feel right", so i pushed on another 0.1? miles, the woods got a bit less dense and i finally came to the "end of the ridge" which was "obvious" and clearly the high point. There i spotted a register placed by "Nate" last Septmeber (if you summit, you can't miss it, hangs from a tree and well placed). I was the first to sign the register since it was placed-strange that there were no entries save Nate's original.. There was nice moss to sit on and some decent views if you scrambled around a bit.
I'm reluctant to post this as i may have be hallucinating or just plain wrong, but my altimeter read about 3075' and was 60' higher than what i originally thought was the summit. I still don't use GPS and have an old, but accurate Thomens altimeter-of course i know BP can change rapidly at times . However I calibrated the Thomens down low before the hike at 2 know elevations and checked the same spots when i returned from the hike-only about 10' from original numbers...so....am i just "wrong" or is there a possibility this peak is mis-mapped/wrong elevation? The obvious summit also seemed further north on the ridge than either of the maps i used showed it to be.....all very odd.. could some of the few people that come up here not make it all the way to the true summit?
I returned the same route with my eyes glued to the compass so as not to drop off the ridge (if you do this stuff, you know how easy it is to make that mistake-really need to start using a GPS), cut back "down" around 2600', found the skid roads after passing through the thick stuff again and came out about 100' (one skid road "up") from where i entered the woods.
While i was a bit rattled in the thick stuff a few times after my bad experience on Scar, the day turned out well and i was a happy camper as i drove toward Orrington
jim
Approach Roads: Turn left off Rt11 north of Brownsville Junction and take the good dirt road toward the KI gate. At 6.0 miles turn right onto a decent dirt road. This is labeled the Werther Rd in Delorme, but is unsigned. At 1.1 miles, take the right fork-the worst spot on the approach is a washed out area 3.5 miles from KI road. At 4.0 miles turn left and go 1.6 miles. This road is generally rough, but has no major problems; a high clearance car would be best. At 1.6 miles, the road bends left and downhill and a logging road forks right. You can park here although if you've made it to here it would be possible to drive past the now moved boulders a short way down the road to the right and make it to the skid roads that go up Saddleback.
I started hiking up the right fork road, passed the boulders and saw at least 4-5 large skid roads to my right in the first 8 minutes. My plan was to follow the logging road for maybe 15-18 minutes and try to head up the ridge at around 2000-2100'. I found no good entry into the woods as the logging road flattened and looped right around Saddleback at about 2100' so i retreated to the earlier skid roads. I chose one "at random" and was able to follow it easily toward Saddleback as high as 2250-2300'. I then turned "up" toward the ridge (probably NNE) and found the going fairly steep and very dense (lots of blowdowns and some thick evergreens) until i reached the ridge around 2600'.
I turned almost directly NE and followed the ridge to the summit. You pass a fairly open "false summit" around 2750' and can then follow decent animal trails interspersed with thick patches. I reached what i thought was the summit, a particularly thick section with no visuals where my altimeter read almost 3000'. It didn't "feel right", so i pushed on another 0.1? miles, the woods got a bit less dense and i finally came to the "end of the ridge" which was "obvious" and clearly the high point. There i spotted a register placed by "Nate" last Septmeber (if you summit, you can't miss it, hangs from a tree and well placed). I was the first to sign the register since it was placed-strange that there were no entries save Nate's original.. There was nice moss to sit on and some decent views if you scrambled around a bit.
I'm reluctant to post this as i may have be hallucinating or just plain wrong, but my altimeter read about 3075' and was 60' higher than what i originally thought was the summit. I still don't use GPS and have an old, but accurate Thomens altimeter-of course i know BP can change rapidly at times . However I calibrated the Thomens down low before the hike at 2 know elevations and checked the same spots when i returned from the hike-only about 10' from original numbers...so....am i just "wrong" or is there a possibility this peak is mis-mapped/wrong elevation? The obvious summit also seemed further north on the ridge than either of the maps i used showed it to be.....all very odd.. could some of the few people that come up here not make it all the way to the true summit?
I returned the same route with my eyes glued to the compass so as not to drop off the ridge (if you do this stuff, you know how easy it is to make that mistake-really need to start using a GPS), cut back "down" around 2600', found the skid roads after passing through the thick stuff again and came out about 100' (one skid road "up") from where i entered the woods.
While i was a bit rattled in the thick stuff a few times after my bad experience on Scar, the day turned out well and i was a happy camper as i drove toward Orrington
jim
, etc)-i wrote it off to BP change. I was just glad to be there after a rare bad wacking experience on Scar last month. Only when i rechecked calibration at know elevations down low did i even think to question summit height. Will research to find that discussion.Hoping a person or two might visit summit with multiple altimeters in future. --jim
