Today I needed one final trip to Acadia in order to finish up the first book, with a few new locations thrown in there for the second one currently in the works. A couple chapters needed some more details and better pictures so we set out today to finish it up. My first stop was a ledge above the Loop Road which had a spectacular view over Bar Harbor and the Porcupine Islands. It will be appearing in book two.
The first destination from Book One I needed to finish was Railway River Falls. I've followed them up quite a ways but wanted to go up further to the Cadillac auto road and make sure I wasn't missing anything. We weren't sure if there'd be any water but it must have rained last night because the rivers were raging. We drove up Cadillac Mountain and at about the halfway point we entered complete cloud cover so driving was a bit terrifying. I followed the Railway River up further than I'd been before and found this neat cascade where two streams meet up.
I followed the left brook shortly past the auto road but it split up again so I stopped at a small gorge which would have a really nice little cascade if there were more water. On my way back down I followed the brook on the right and again found some cool but small cascades.
I decided to go further down to the highest in the series of waterfalls on Railway River to check it out with more water in it than I'd ever seen. It was beautiful and worth the extra steps. I can't wait to visit this one after a few inches of rain.
This was Jaime's view from the car while I was out exploring. We'd first seen this seasonal run-off about ten years ago but I never knew how many amazing waterfalls stemmed from this sometimes-there-sometimes-not brook beside the road.
Next I needed to make a return trip to McFarland Mountain to get some pictures from the old ski slopes. I followed the abandoned ski trail to the top and then cut across to the actual summit I'd visited last fall.
From there I followed the abandoned trail to Youngs Mountain. I took a different approach last year which was rather difficult and hard to find so I wanted to try another route. Despite the higher summits being cloaked in clouds, the view was excellent. The horseflies here were awful, I killed between 20 and thirty of them, sometimes two at once they were in such close proximity to each other. I really should have brought the bug zapper.
At 3.5 miles round trip, this is easily one of if not the longest hike in Book One. Back on McFarland Mountain, the nearby peaks to the west were in the clouds.
The South Slope Slide on Champlain Mountain, a location I stumbled upon a couple years ago, has got to be the most difficult and dangerous in the entire book. So when I realized I had to go back in order to get pictures, I wasn't looking forward to it. Today was the day. So I headed up the rock slide and carefully walked along the top of the cliff in search of the second story rock slide but couldn't find it. When going over my gps tracks, it turns out I was 80 feet away but had decided to turn around because I can't in good conscience lead people up to this dangerous place. So it looks like that one is getting scrapped from the book. Here's the view coming down the main rock slide which is impressive in itself.
I searched around the area, hoping for a nearby ledge that could replace the South Slope Slide but didn't find anything. The only ledge I found had too many trees that blocked most of the view so I decided to try a nearby spot I had seen on the map. On the slope of Enoch Mountain which is already in the book, there appeared to be some rather flat rock slabs that stretched on for a couple hundred feet. After following traces of an old trail I reached them but the mosquitoes were too horrendous to really enjoy it. I got a few pictures and ran but this spot will probably make it into one of the books.
After over 7 miles, most of it on extremely steep terrain and battling bugs for most of it, it was time to call it a day. But that should be everything I need to finish up the first book which is nearly complete and ready to be released. On the way home we stopped at Blueberry Hill for some ice cream which was exciting because we swore they had closed for the day by the time we drove by.
No comments:
Post a Comment