It was supposed to rain the past few days, especially along the coast so we’d been planning on going to Acadia to search for some waterfalls, despite Jaime still being sick. I planned on getting up early so I could hit all the potential waterfalls for my book in one day but we stayed up late last night talking and didn’t go to bed until about 4:00, something we tend to do when we have to get up early. After five hours of sleep I managed to roll out of bed and check the rain situation from last night only to find there had been none. In fact the entire past week only produced 0.07” of rain, weathermen lied again.
We went anyway, stopping to get Jaime a lobster roll and ice cream along the way. Nothing good at Circle K this week, just some fried mushrooms which I enjoyed on the ride there, no broccoli bites or fried green beans. Acadia was covered in low clouds and fog, as we approached not a single mountaintop was visible which was a first for us. We’ve seen it foggy and in the haze but never low lying clouds that covered every summit, it looked like NH, which by the way we’ll be going to in just a few days for vacation.
First stop of the day was to the unnamed stream I’ve called Railway River Falls, just to make sure there was no water. There wasn’t. The entire riverbed was nothing more than a trickle which is what I expected after seeing the amount of rainfall, but I needed to climb up it anyway for my book because I’d only ever been up it 0.2 mile, knowing it went another 0.3 or so up to the Cadillac Mountain Road. Since it’s going in my book I figured I should explore it all the way just in case there was something else worth mentioning up there. And it’s a good thing I did or I would have made a complete ass of myself.
I thought the falls I found on the lower section were spectacular, oh my god, the upper portion is breathtaking. After the flat portion where I’d stopped on my previous visits there is a fifteen foot cascade down a cliff with a smaller chute right above it, making maybe a 20 to 25 foot waterfall. Shortly after that was series of falls through a ravine. Of course they were close to dry so nothing much to look at today but it did offer me the opportunity to travel straight up the riverbed, and I do mean straight up as I climbed the waterfall from one section of the ravine to the next. I made my way up it, not intending to climb the entire thing, but just to see the small overhang caves behind the highest drop. By the time I made it to the caves, I only had one more level to make it to the top, so it would have been more dangerous to climb back down the slippery rocks. I tested it for about five minutes first, making my foot slip intentionally so I could get a feel for it and know what arm muscles I’d need to use to catch myself. Without anything to hold onto, I stood backwards and pushed myself up onto the wet ledge. Scary as hell but I did it and luckily there were no slipping incidents.
The ravine didn’t stop there like I figured it would, instead continuing on through another deep gorge with flat cliffs on both sides a good twenty feet high. Now normally rock hopping up a stream is easy because the rocks are dry so you can literally hop from one to another. Unfortunately, the hundredth of an inch of rain we got last night made everything slippery and since the gorge is under tree cover, it didn’t dry out which made for a very difficult ascent and even more dangerous descent. At about this time I could hear sirens in the distance and our radio channel was being used by what sounded like a rescue team and the ones around it were also being used, probably by families driving up Cadillac Mountain, so we had to turn off our walkie talkies. I thought about turning back at the top of the ravine since we couldn’t get in touch with one another, Jaime being back at the car, but knew I was almost there so I kept going.
What are the odds there could be another waterfall past the ravine? I mean come on, there surely would have been a trail along the brook at some point in time. But I’m the explorer here so I knew what I had to do. After the ravine opened up, it lead me to a steep forest that come Spring or a heavy rainfall would be submerged in water. The hundreds of paths the water would take were stunning, but up ahead I could see sunlight. Sunlight peaking through trees on a mountainside typically means something good is coming up. So I climbed up one of the dryer waterfall beds to find a sloping wall of rock before me with just enough water to sparkle on the granite. A slanted cascade, a hundred feet tall. Enormous. After measuring it on the map I realized a hundred feet was low balling it, the entire length of the cascade is 300 feet. Three hundred. I made my way out into the middle of it on the dry slabs of rock for a view of Eagle Lake and the cloud covered summits on the other side of it. Moss, four inches thick, bordered the streambed where small trickles of water passed beneath it at all times, making a lush forest floor.
Hearing the auto road up ahead, I made it to the top of the waterfall until hitting the road which was quite busy despite the mountain being completely in the clouds. Knowing I’d need to come back in the Spring, I went down the other side of the river to see how safe it would be and make sure there’d be views of the falls. I thought traveling up the left side would be better but now that I think about, the right is steeper but the ravine walls are higher so there isn’t any overflow. The entire way down I was walking over muddy sections that were a good 40 feet from the stream so when it’s raging I don’t think it’d even be approachable from that direction. Near the top I took a tumble on some slippery rocks, luckily I wasn’t anywhere near the ledge so I wasn’t worried about falling to my death but I did bang up my elbow pretty bad. That’ll be sore tomorrow. To make up for that, I found a cool rock caught in some branches in the mud, a souvenir from my journey. Wet and sore, I made it back to the car, excited to tell Jaime about what I’d found.
From there we went over to the Witch Hole Pond parking area where I went up to the old standpipe used in the former water filtration system. It was a possible chapter for my book but there wasn’t much to see, just a giant steel tube, no cool stonework or anything. The one noteworthy thing about it is I went up a utility road that is still in use today but came down the old utility road which brought me to a rusty chain hung between two trees about ten feet from the trunk of my parked car. I didn’t even see the abandoned road literally right behind me, covered in weeds and baby trees. But the standpipe has been eliminated from my book which I kind of anticipated.
Onto the Witch Hole Pond carriage path where 0.7 mile along it there had once been a mining quarry. So I ran most of the way there but couldn’t do the whole thing, shut up, most of it was uphill. To my surprise there was a clear path leading down to it, I kind of thought I’d have to search a bit. Also to my surprise, I wasn’t alone, there was a bike at the foot of the quarry and a gentleman across the way, sitting on a block of granite left behind from its days in operation. He mentioned that there were what appeared to be jumps and ramps here, a course for mountain bikers. That would explain the well worn path down to it. He was certainly correct, I found multiple man made ramps where people have rearranged the smaller granite blocks. It was kind of neat but nothing worthy of going into the book which means another scrapped chapter. I was hoping for large drop offs and big piles of rocks, deep pools of water, but it was all pretty flat, I think the highest ledge was maybe five feet. Oh well, moving on.
I had wanted to go up the South Slope Slide and get some dark and ominous pictures from it but with the wet rocks, that would be beyond stupid. After one fall already, and bleeding scratches on both of my shins, I decided to play it safe and return to Latet Cave as I’ve come to call it. Latet means ‘hidden’ in Latin. We first found the cave early last summer but weren’t able to locate it again, after multiple attempts. About a month ago, while searching for the abandoned White Path, we found the cave again, but when I went to write my directions to it, we had no clue how we got there. All we knew was that we went into the woods a ways and followed the rock ledge, not exactly the most decisive directions. So today I planned on finding it and then walking in a straight line back to the road so we could give the most direct route, or hell, any route at all.
In my explorations I actually found another old section of trail we missed last year, despite being on it at least once. The stone steps were a little eroded but still visible, and useable as well. I knew I’d be coming up on the cave pretty soon, I had to be close, but I got sidetracked. The remains of the old trail began to lead upwards, up an easy graded slope located between a rock cliff on the right, and a drop-off on the left. It was the easy path we’d found last year up the ridiculously hard to climb rock ledges. We found it twice but both times were accidental, when we
searched it was quite elusive. But that was definitely it, no question. It was the old trail, we’d been on it all along. And to top things off, fifty feet beside it, along the lower ledge, Latet Cave, hiding in its boulder strewn corner. The two things I was looking for were right next to one another. I happily told Jaime what I’d found over the walkie talkies and she told me to go up and get the pictures I needed for the book since I was already there, despite her having to pee.
So up the easy route I went, recognizing all the landmarks we’d taken note of last summer. Despite having been there a handful of times, I had barely any pictures because the battery on both my camera and my phone were pretty much dead. The pictures I do have aren’t nearly good enough to go in a book, so I needed not just directions but photographic evidence that the amazing natural features on the side of the mountain really do exist. And sure enough, the easy path, which is actually steep, slippery and eroded, brought me to the exact spot I knew it would. Despite being a fairly difficult climb, it’s short and a hell of a lot easier and less dangerous than scaling the cliff like we’ve done before.
I finally got pictures of the dry ravine that I believe had been a river after the last ice age due to the smooth, oddly shaped walls in the gorge. Not only did I take pictures, I took video too, so I’ll know exactly how to get there now. The path goes from the cave, up to the gorge, over a large crack in the rock with the assistance of some iron handrails, through a tight squeeze between a rock cliff and a boulder, then into a slab cave and ending at a rock wall we’ve come to know as waterfall rock. I took video footage of the entire trail so I can do an easy write up for it in the book, no more questioning how the hell I got there. From waterfall rock, you can follow the stream downhill and it’ll pop out right along the road which we discovered last time while searching for the trail. Put it all together and we have the start and end to a loop hike.
It got too dark to film anymore but getting back to Latet Cave was straight forward, following the remains of the old trail. From there, 160 steps straight through the woods brought me to the road. Not only to the road, but to our original starting place from last year. All we had to do was walk in a straight line, lol, we’d been going diagonal the whole time. So even though I didn’t find any new destinations for my book, I finished up three of the incomplete ones I had, making it a successful day.
No comments:
Post a Comment