TRIP REPORT - Grotto Cave above Beech Hill Pond (Otis, ME)

    This one is a little outside of my usual Acadia or White Mountains explorations but I figured I should post it because it’s a place not many people know about. I love caves so I’m always trying to find any information I can on them and this one is quite elusive. I first read about it on the Northeast caver website but they don’t give any information other than the fact that such a place exists. I was able to find it on a geological website which has since disappeared but they did give its size and a good description of it. Unfortunately they didn’t say how to get there.

    After studying some maps and getting bits of information from the locals I finally figured out where the cave is located. Don’t get your hopes up thinking this is a real cave, its just a talus cave but its pretty cool nonetheless. The geological site referred to it as Grotto Cave and its known by the locals as Glacier Rock or the Bear Caves. It is located on top of Grotto Hill in Otis Maine, just outside of Ellsworth along the southern shore of Beech Hill Pond.

    There is no trail to the cave, or to Grotto Hill for that matter, but there are old jeep roads and atv trails that lead you almost to it. While traveling along Rte 180, also known as the Mariaville Road, almost across the street form Beech Hill School is a dirt road with multiple names. The street sign has it listed as the Gary Moore Rd. Follow it for a quarter of a mile until you reach another road with a row of mail boxes out front, this is the West Shore Rd. Bear right onto the West Shore Rd and follow it for 1.4 miles past a multitude of camps where you’ll come to the Beech Hill Pond boat landing.

    I recommend doing this in the off season or the boat landing will be a popular place with possibly nowhere to park. Walk along the road for a house or two and across the street from 307 you’ll see a small shed with a gravel road beside it that looks like a driveway. The shed is posted as private property and the land might be as well but there is only that one sign, so just be respectful of other people’s property and move across it quickly. Follow the gravel road up past an old tarped over abandoned boat house that was never finished. After the boat house the gravel gives way to grass but remains a wide road not fit for most vehicles. The grassy road brings you uphill for 0.3 mile where you’ll reach the edge of a swamp. The beavers have made quite the home here, submerging the road beneath a few feet of water. You’ll have to tightrope across the beaver dam for a little over a hundred feet.

    Once you’ve made it across the dam and back onto the dry dirt road, you’re going to leave the road and make your way into the woods. They’re quite open and pleasant for bushwhacking despite a couple wet and steep sections. There are multiple atv trails cutting through the woods but your best bet is to just ignore them and make your way uphill, the trails will take you all over the place, eventually bringing you to the summit but in a very roundabout way. Just simply keep going up until you can’t anymore. It’s roughly a 0.3 mile bushwhack up the ridgeline of the hill.

    You’ll find yourself at a small open grassy area at the top. To your right are the ledges overlooking Beech Hill Pond as well as Graham Lake. Be careful around the edge because the cliff is made up of a rather smooth stone and it slopes downward to a pretty big drop off, anywhere between 20 and 40 feet depending on where you’re standing. Beech Hill Pond is the one right in front of you, Graham Lake is to the right. Above Graham Lake you’ll see a ridge of mountains including Peaked, Black, Tunk, Catherine and Schoodic Mountain. Its quite an impressive view that seems to come from out of nowhere.

    Once you’re done taking in the view from Grotto Hill, its time to explore the cave, which is located directly beneath you at the bottom of the rock cliff. The cave is pretty much in the middle of the cliff so it doesn’t matter which way you go to get down. Slightly to your right is a crack in the rock with a few small trees growing out of it that is the most direct way down, its also the most dangerous. If you keep bearing right you’ll find a steep slope going down between two ledges that will take you to the bottom rather quickly but without too much difficulty. There’s even a few small caves along the way that the animals have claimed as their homes.

    Follow the base of the cliff a hundred feet or so to the multiple entrances of Grotto Cave. The first one is a large oval shaped hole in the cliff that apparently had steps leading up to it long ago. Unfortunately those steps are no longer there which makes getting into the cave nearly impossible. The rocks are too smooth to grab onto so there’s nothing to pull yourself up by. If you’re determined to get into that first chamber then I recommend dragging a log to the mouth of the cave and climbing up that. Its only four feet up or so, its only the angle of the ledges that make it difficult.

    The next entrance is just on the other side of the giant slab that’s broken off from the main cliff. It’s a tight squeeze but if you’re willing to crawl through some mud it’ll bring you around the backside of the slab and into the main chamber of the cave. There is also a break in the cliff to your right which also requires some crawling but if you’re small enough you’ll be able to enter the small room and climb up towards the light through a chimney like crevice. My shoulders and hips were too broad to allow me clearance but someone a little smaller could certainly make it through.

    Just past the second entrance is a third one, the easiest to get into. It looks almost like a natural doorway leading into a hall. The hallway is a few feet wide and tall enough to comfortably stand up in. It leads to an open room with sunlight pouring in, directly beneath the ledges you were standing on earlier. There’s really no need for flashlights unless you plan on squeezing up through the chimney, plenty of sunlight finds its way in between the fallen boulders.

    If you climb up the jumble of rocks you’ll find yourself at the top of the dark chimney crevice, where again if you’re small enough, you could climb down through the chimney. You can also make your way onto the top of the flat boulder in front of you and peer down into the main entrance of the cave but be careful because it’s a long drop down.

    Although not a true cave, just a huge pile of large talus, Grotto Cave is a really cool experience. The journey is worth it just to see the expansive view from the top of Grotto Hill. With no hiking trail to it, its really only seen by locals out riding the atv trails, and most of them don’t realize there’s a cave beneath the cliff. I think what makes the crevices so impressive is the fact that they’re not comprised of small boulders but rather huge chunks of the cliff that dislodged over time, breaking away from the main ledge but not crumbling into your average rockslide found beneath unstable rock cliffs. The enormous slabs have formed some interesting caves that are certainly worth checking out if you’re ever in the Ellsworth/Otis/Mariaville area.

BLOG - Exploring Grotto Cave in Otis Maine

    Yesterday was Jaime’s birthday so today continued her four day celebration. We got together with her father for lobsters and some exploration. A few years ago I read about a cave near his house, where Jaime grew up, but he had never heard of it. He had been to the area it was located though, in fact right on top of it but never knew there was a cave down below. I copied the information into a word document which is good because the geological website it was featured on appears to be gone. With no real directions on how to get there I did some research on Google Earth and got a pretty good idea where to start. Today was the day to begin the search.

    With my research and Jaime’s dad’s knowledge of the area, as well as a couple firsthand accounts he’d heard from local friends, we knew we were heading in the right direction. Boy is it nice to do these sorts of things with a local, we parked at the boat launch and Dicky knew the guy who was washing his truck and we got some directions from him which pretty much matched up to what I had gathered from my research. He referred to the cave as ‘the bear caves’. So we headed up a gravel road that looked like nothing more than a driveway. He told us we’d get a little wet by the swamp this time of year which seemed about right because I knew we had to follow the road to the edge of a swamp before cutting uphill through the trees.

    Sure enough we came to the swamp which was dammed up pretty good by beavers. The road was under a few feet of water with the dam running right along the side of it. We skirted around the first dam, crossing a small brook, but came to another much longer dam that we couldn’t easily walk around. So we tight roped a hundred feet or so across it. We got a little wet but no one fell in. The dam brought us up close and personal with the beaver hut but there was no activity.

    On the other side of the dam we made our way into the woods and off the muddy jeep road. All we knew was that we needed to get to the top of the hill so we made our way up, crossing multiple atv trails along the way. Luckily it was kind of chilly today which prevented the sweat from pouring as we wandered through the woods, eventually making it to the top of the ridge. We followed the ridgeline for a couple minutes before spotting a clearing up ahead. Jaime and I stopped to watch a couple of snakes sun bathing while Dicky made his way through the clearing, yelling back that we’d made it to the top and there was one hell of a view.

    When he was a kid he’d been camping there before, right on top of the hill with a beautiful view looking out over Beech Hill Pond and Graham Lake as well as a few ridgelines of nearby mountains. We hadn’t expected such a spectacular view, figuring trees would surely obscure it, but there was a long ledge we were standing on that towered over most of the trees. We knew we were on top of the cave, we just needed a way down. A safe way down, the way I found was direct but something only a fool would do. Yes I would have done it but opted to find a safer way everyone felt comfortable with.

    While traveling along the band of ledges looking for a safe way down I spotted a hole in the cliff, one of the chimney entrances into the cave I had read about. We found it. Right around here we found a good way down that brought us beside a small cave in the ledges where we assume a porcupine lived, the entire entrance to it was covered with porcupine poop, not even an inch of ground being visible. The cliffs we were just on top of were a lot higher up than we thought, between 30 and 40 feet. We were right in our decision to not get too close to the edge.

    Following the base of the cliff we came to the multiple entrances to the cave I had read about. The main entrance no longer had any steps leading up to it, just an old rotted log that was no longer useable. The cliff walls were too smooth for me to get a good enough grip to climb my way into the crevice so we carried on, finding other ways in. Everything was a little wet from the recent rain but we found a nice dry opening that required a little climbing but no crawling in the mud. That entrance ended up being the only one we could really get into but it was pretty cool.

     I did some more climbing and made it into another chamber but couldn’t squeeze my broad shoulders down into a tight squeeze that lead to another portion of the cave. I explored a bit, figuring out where the different cracks and crevices lead to. It’s a neat little talus cave system, nothing I would consider to be a real cave though. Only one tiny portion really required a flashlight and it was just a little too small for me to fit into. Jaime offered to help me carry over a log so I could climb into the main chamber but it wasn’t really necessary as I had seen it from above and knew which chamber it lead to. It was cool how they were all connected though.

     We bushwhacked our way back down, aiming for the road so we could avoid tight roping across the beaver damn but we came out right at the swamp anyway. This time we picked our way over rocks and logs on the lower side of the dam thinking it might be easier. Turns out it wasn’t but luckily nothing too strenuous. We explored an abandoned boat house along the jeep road we passed on our way out and made it back to the truck with lots of scrapes but no major injuries. Although the scratch a branch had left on the back of my knee was still burning hours later, I realized after my shower that a sliver of the branch was actually jammed in the cut. A pair of tweezers pulled it right out and it still hurts but not nearly as much as it did when the piece of wood was in my skin.

    After our successful adventure we headed into town to pick up supper. We each had a lobster, some corn on the cob and shared a few pounds of clams. Everything was incredible. It more than made up for the disgusting mussels we had a week ago that we ended up throwing out. Dicky’s looking forward to joining us on some of our Acadia excursions this summer.

    We were shocked to have actually found the cave on our first try considering we had no real directions and weren’t even sure if we were searching on the right hill. I figured it would take a few trips to find. Now that I’m looking at the information I took down about the cave off the geological website, there is no question we found it. Everything matches up exactly to their diagram. But I still can’t find any information on it whatsoever online, no pictures, nothing, so it looks like this will be the first.