Mount Redington and Abraham

Mts Abraham and Redington – the unconventional way

11/12/11
Matthew and Eric Gilbertson

Mt Abraham: 53rd highest in New England
Mt Redington: 62nd highest in New England

We had some unfinished business with Caribou Pond Road. Several weeks earlier, on our quest for the Hundred Highest Mountains in New England, we had been foiled in our attempt to climb three nearby Maine mountains in one day: Mts Abraham, Redington, and Sugarloaf. Because of an unexpected eight inches of late October snow, that day we were forced to settle for just Mt Sugarloaf – a respectable mountain by itself – which meant that old “Abe” and “Red” would have to wait for another weekend.

Veteran’s Day presented the perfect 3-day weekend to pay them a visit. As Eric and I watched the weather the previous week we concluded that this would be one of the very last weekends of the year where rough unplowed Maine gravel roads like Caribou Pond Road would still be drivable by car.

This time we were prepared. We were equipped with a Subaru Outback with a solid 8.5” of clearance and our mountain bikes in the trunk. The plan would be: drive as far as possible up the unmaintained gravel road until the road became too rough, bike from there until the trail became too rough, then hike and bushwhack the rest of the way to the summit of Mt Redington. It would be a mini-expedition.

Earlier that day we had conquered three other “New England Hundred Highest” peaks in New Hampshire: The Horn and North & South Weeks during a 20-mile trek and had subsequently driven through 60 miles of Maine Woods during a raging blizzard to once again put ourselves face-to-face with our old arch-nemesis: Caribou Pond Road. It was time to put on our gamefaces.

CARIBOU POND ROAD

Now Caribou Pond Road isn’t exactly your run-of-the-mill gravel road. It was abandoned about fifteen years ago and now the only maintenance it receives is the occasional clearing of downed trees by hunters and snowmobilers. As a result the bridges are falling apart, it’s heavily rutted in spots, you have to be vigilant for big rocks, and there’s the occasional pothole that looks more like a pond, waiting to swallow your car whole. We knew the road would be muddy from the previous snowstorm, and dusted with a fresh layer of snow from the squalls that had just passed through. From the reports we’d read you can’t make it farther than a mile or so in an average car, without carrying boards to help you drive over the deeper ditches. But we figured that with our 4wd and high ground clearance we’d still be able to cover a respectable distance.

The Subaru did not disappoint. We rumbled over the first few rocks and potholes without even noticing them. As we approached another large rock I was cautious at first, and asked Eric to get out and make sure we wouldn’t scrape. But he happily reported that we had plenty of inches to spare. Soon I was navigating deftly around obstacles that would have at first seemed insurmountable. It was like we were mountain biking without any effort. Occasionally I’d have to swing the car into the woods a little and it’d scrape agonizingly against some branches. If it were my car I wouldn’t mind the “Sierra Racing Stripes,” but we figured Budget wouldn’t be so happy about them.

Soon we passed a truck that had presumably stopped due to the roughness of the road. But it still seemed OK to us so we kept going. 3 miles in… 4 miles in… 5 miles in… each mile that we drove meant two fewer miles of mountain biking the next day. At about 5.5 miles we turned a corner and came upon a super-muddy section dusted with a half-inch of snow. The tires spun but the car kept moving. This was our indication that it was the end of the line. I backed the car into a nice little pull-off at about 9:30pm and it was time to set up camp.

SHAMEFUL STEALTH CAMPING

Fortunately the seats folded down, forming a nice cozy bed with plenty of room for the both of us. It felt a little shameful to be sleeping in this comfortable car instead of in the cold tent, but we figured we’d get going much faster in the morning if we didn’t have to pack up the tent. It was purely a convenience consideration.

For the moment the heavy snow had let up but with a few flurries in the air I was still a little worried. If it snowed more than a few inches overnight we’d be in trouble. Sure we had 4wd but the tires weren’t really meant for snow, especially on such a rugged road. Over the phone near Rangeley, our Dad said that the snow was forecast to end soon, with partly cloudy skies overnight. I tried to relax but every few hours that night I peeked out the window to make sure we weren’t getting snowed in.

We woke up to a beautiful bright and sunny morning with no new snow and now it was time for Phase II of the journey: mountain bikes. Earlier in the fall Eric had done a fair bit of Google Earth satellite photo research and concluded that with mountain bikes we might be able to bike nearly to the top of Redington, and within just 1.5 miles of the top of Abraham. On foot each mountain would deserve a full day’s effort, but by bike it appeared that we could hit both mountains in just a few hours. It was time to put his hypothesis to the test.

BIKE-MOUNTAINEERING

The extra equipment overhead in the form of jackets, hats, boots, and gloves required for this cold weather trip didn’t fit too well into our typical mountain biking day-packs. But over the past few mountain bike + hike trips we had figured out the system. Rather than loading everything up in our backpacks as we had naively done in earlier trips, this time we distributed some of the day’s gear into one or two waterproof panniers mounted on our back rack. The rest of the gear, along with an extensive bike tool kit and plenty of extra tubes, we carried in our backpacks.

As we pedaled we discovered that we weren’t the first creatures to traverse this road this morning. With a light dusting of snow it was easy to spot the bear tracks that ended just thirty feet from our car. We figured the bear had probably been attracted by the smell of my food bag that I had unwittingly left outside the car overnight, but once the bear came close he saw the big black mysterious metal box with four wheels and decided he’d rather not get too close to the humans inside. Along with the bear tracks we also saw plenty of footprints from moose, fox, squirrel, and grouse. It seemed that all the animals we on the hunt for some last bits of food before winter set in. The nice thing about winter is that the snow preserves history very well.

As we pedaled up the rugged, snowy hill we tried to remind ourselves that the true benefit of the mountain bikes would be realized during the descent. While we climbed the bikes enabled us to go a little faster than walking, but with significant effort. On the way down, however, as long as the bikes were in still good shape we wouldn’t have to pedal, and could cruise effortlessly back to the car.

REDUCED TO FOOT TRAVEL

The road became more and more rugged and eventually it was time to start walking the bikes. They were becoming increasingly troublesome, but we knew we’d appreciate the downhill action later so we pushed on to Redington. After blasting through puddles frozen with a solid ¾ inch of ice and plowing uphill through some dense snowy bushes it was time to ditch the bikes. Our route description indicated that we should pass a “recently bulldozed path” and intersect a maintained hiking trail “at the far end of the clear cut.” But it seemed that the scenery wasn’t exactly matching the route description.

“When was that description written Eric?” I asked.
“Um, looks like 1999.”
“Well then, that explains why the ‘clear cut’ is now a forest of ten-foot-tall trees.”

The GPS indicated we were just 0.4 miles from the top of Redington. As much as we wanted to bring the bikes to the summit we realized that this last stretch would best be accomplished on foot. We’re not sure who maintains the trail, we sure appreciated the ability to hike instead of bushwhack. After fifteen minutes we were on top of Mt Redington, the 62nd-highest – and arguably one of the most remote – peaks in New England. The clearing at the top afforded us a little peek at some of the surrounding peaks, including Mt Abraham to the east, our next target.

PHASE III: MT ABRAHAM

After locating the frozen summit register, and without anything else to do, it was time to head down for the third phase of the hike: getting to Mt Abraham. Soon we made it back to the bike parking spot and were relieved to find them undisturbed. I suspect there probably weren’t any other humans within a ten-mile radius, so the bikes had probably been pretty secure. With the upcoming downhill in our minds, the bikes instantaneously transformed from two 35-pound collections of useless metal junk into a mechanism to enjoy the elevation we had worked so hard to gain.

ADRENALINE AT LAST

Still wearing our winter boots, gaiters, mittens, and snow-proof jackets we hopped onto the seats and grasped the brakes tightly for the anticipated rush of adrenaline. As the hill steepened I squeezed my brakes even harder, but to my surprise I couldn’t slow down. Realizing that my terminal velocity would probably be faster than I was comfortable with, I jumped off the bike and crashed into the bushes in order to slow down, just like a runaway truck ramp. It turns out that the aluminum rims were covered with ice. They must have gotten wet after riding through the puddles and froze quickly in the 18F air. After scraping off the ice, we soon discovered that the trick was to apply the brakes immediately after riding through puddles in order to evaporate the water. This was not your everyday mountain biking trip through the Fells.

In the cold, crisp November morning air it was quite a rush to blast through the snowdrifts, the frozen puddles, the loose gravel with no more effort than the force to squeeze the icy aluminum brake handles. After just fifteen minutes of descent over terrain that had taken ninety minutes to climb were back down at the intersection near Caribou Pond, the beginning of our next little foray to Mt. Abraham.

The summit of Mt Abraham is conventionally attained via an 8-mile roundtrip hike along the Fire Warden trail, on the east side of the mountain. But since we were already on the west side, our plan was to bike as far as possible up the abandoned logging roads, then bushwhack about a half a mile to the Appalachian Trail, then hike along a side trail 1.5 miles to the summit. Based on Eric’s satellite photo research the route looked reasonable, we just weren’t sure about the quality of the bushwhack.

THE DICHOTOMY OF BUSHWHACKING

We shifted into both our mental and physical uphill gears and pedaled up the rugged route towards Mount Abraham. With giant ice-covered puddles and creeks flowing freely across the path, this road was a little more interesting that the road to Mt Redington. It was exhilarating to race full speed at an ice-covered puddle of unknown depth and after an explosion emerge on the other side with icy shrapnel and a cloud of water in our wake. Pretty soon, however, we came upon a creek that was too deep to pedal through. It was tempting at first to build up a lot of speed and just blast through, but upon closer examination of the creek we realized that it was probably two feet deep in the middle. If it was summer it wouldn’t be a big deal, but in this weather we valued our dry, warm feet. So we ditched the bikes, hopped across a little log bridge, and started hiking.

After following the turns that I had previously programmed onto the GPS we arrived at the start of the bushwhack. We looked intensely at the trees ahead, wondering what type of bushwhack was in store for us. Over many trips we’ve discovered that New England bushwhacks can be categorized into two types: easy and dense. With easy bushwhacks (ex: Vose Spur) you might be hiking along a herd-path or unmarked route through the woods, but the trees and undergrowth are so thin and there are so few downed trees that it’s as easy as hiking along a maintained trail. Dense bushwhacks, on the other hand, can be ten times harder. On the Scar Ridge bushwhack, for example, I spent more than an hour thrashing through, climbing over, and disentangling my clothes from just a half a mile – 2500ft – of razor-sharp spruce trees. On that trip I was plowing through treetops, stumbling over downed trees, and at times the trees were so dense that I wasn’t sure if I was walking along on solid ground until my leg punched through the canopy, leaving me hanging in space. Dense bushwhacks can be like hiking through a “Barbed Wire Jungle, ” and indeed the Scar Ridge bushwhack left me with plenty of scars on my arms and legs.

Thankfully the beginning the bushwhack was of the easy variety. We followed old logging cuts about 0.4 miles until we hit the dense stuff. But after just ten minutes of thrashing we were past the dense stuff and emerged into a thin forest where we could take a little breather. Just then Eric looked down and to our amazement there was an aluminum Appalachian Trail marker! We knew we were close. We followed some mysterious flagging tape and red tree blazes and soon met the Appalachian Trail and the intersection of the Mt Abraham Trail, the exact spot we had been aiming for. We breathed a sigh of relief. This meant we could turn on our psychological cruise control and stop worrying about picking a path through the trees.

PSYCHOLOGICAL CRUISE CONTROL

We were a long ways from Boston indeed. We figured that we were probably the first people on this stretch of the A.T. in the past few weeks and probably the last ones of the month. The Thru hikers had passed through a month ago, and people who just wanted to climb Abe would probably take the shorter eastern route.

1.4 miles later we were at the edge of tree line at last. By now we knew that we should suit up here because it would be much windier once we left the protection of the trees. We put on all our layers as if we were suiting up for battle. Only a small part of my face was exposed to the enemy: the cold.

As expected, as soon as we left the protection of the trees we stepped into a wall of wind. But the weather was still nice, it wasn’t too cold, and we could see the summit so we pushed on, reaching the top at 12:14pm, just three hours after being on top of Redington. The clear skies gave us a spectacular 360-degree view. The higher peaks were all frosted with snow, but down in the valleys it was still fall and the roads looked dry.

On the summit was an interesting little steel structure that had once served as the base of an old fire tower. The remains of the wooden tower building were lying in ruins on the ground but the little 10ft steel tower was still very climbable, and afforded us an excellent view from the top.

THE PROOF

Next we needed the photo – the irrefutable proof – of both of us together on summit. This proved to be a little tricky because the wind was gusting to 40mph and we hadn’t brought a tripod. But after considerable effort I finally had the camera stabilized by some rocks and the ten-second shutter delay was just barely enough time for me to run to and climb up the first run of the tower. After snapping another couple of pics of some cool lenticular clouds forming over nearby mountains it was time to head back down. We figured it’d still take some decent time to get back to the car.

But with our footprints to follow, we didn’t need to consult the GPS, and the descent was a piece of cake. We arrived back at the bikes in record time and prepared to reap the reward for all the elevation we had gained: more adrenaline. On the way down we fooled around a little and I got a few pictures of Eric blasting though some icy puddles. As we descended we were surprised to see the snow disappear. It hadn’t seemed that we had climbed very much earlier that morning, but at this point in the day we sure did appreciate the pure downhill action. With a skid stop we rendezvoused with the Subaru at 2:30pm with plenty of daylight to spare.

With a combination of bushwhacking, mountain biking, and off-road driving we had finally conquered Mt Redington and Mt Abraham. As we followed the previous day’s tire tracks down the rough road we breathed a little sigh of relief. But the action wasn’t over yet for the weekend. On the menu for tomorrow were three more of the New England Hundred Highest…

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