Elephant Mtn 6/16/15

Parking: 44°45.505'N, 70°46.587'W
Miles: 3.33
Total Elevation: 1,195 feet
Total Time: 2:55

Elephant Mtn Rd doesn't have a sign at the end of it, but it is the first dirt road after Clearwater Brook when driving west on South Arm Rd. The brooks along the road are signed, so that helps. The road is a bit rough in a few places with some larger rocks and a couple culverts that have made good humps in the road. I was driving my wife's Rav4 and had no issues or concerns.

I started heading up the older logging road at the first cairn (which is where I parked). The better road continues right, but you don't want that. I headed up until I got to an old landing with another cairn on the left leading to the herd path. This path was easy to follow for a while. There is some brush down low to push through and it's a bit narrow in places, but easy to follow for the most part.

After a little while I came to a spot where the path appeared to split. To the right it looked like it went under/around a fallen tree. There were no boot prints in the mud here, so I wasn't sure about this route (I had seen recent prints earlier). I went to the left instead. This route stayed open for a bit and then closed in coming to just a wall of small trees with no path leading into it. I looked around and found no definitive path around either. I went back to the split, knowing that I had just passed a small cairn before it. I decided to try to the right. There was a path this way that lead to a small brook, but it seemed to end here. Being fairly open here, I figured maybe people spread out more so no path was defined. I headed up and eventually found what looked like a faint path. I even saw the remains of a single piece of flagging. This path seemed to lead away from the peak in one direction though, and downhill in the other direction. Neither option seemed correct.

At this point I decided that since the overall distance and elevation to the summit wasn't "too far" that I would just bushwhack to the summit and pick up the path on the way back down. The bushwhack went well to start, but soon it got thick. I pushed through some and tried to find routes into more open areas without losing my heading too much. This helped for a while, and then it got really thick. I eventually took the "brute force bull and jam" method and forced my way through and over anything in my way. This was very slow going. I then came to more open woods and was pretty close to the summit. As I got closer I started to pick up a path and saw lots of moose sign. In hindsight though, it might have just been a path made by the moose. Soon I could see an orange hat in a tree, some flagging, and a piece of wood that said Elephant on it (once I got close). I couldn't find a canister, but this looked like the high spot and my GPS agreed.

I'm pretty sure a moose spent a few weeks here at the summit recently. The area was literally a field of moose poop on the ground. I also found what I believe to be the possible remains of after birth/placenta. This makes more sense when you think about how long a moose was up here. I can see a cow staying put in this small open-ish area for a while with a new born calf.

To head down, I followed the well defined herd path leading from the summit (not the route I took up). Unfortunately, I lost this path before very long and ended up crossing back over the route I took up. I ended up just bushwhacking down from here. I picked a better but still not ideal route down past the thickest stuff I encountered coming up. I then cut across the mountain some maintaining my elevation to get back to the area where I crossed the brook. I knew if I could get here I could easily hike back to the car. This worked pretty well and I came right to where I wanted. I quickly hiked down and got to my car about as the rain started. Perfect timing. I put on clean/dry clothes and headed home. Already deciding I need to find a better route if/when I come back.

Blog post which includes pictures

Hi sdways01,
Just wanted to let gently let you know that you got the wrong peak. I know cause I just went to the right peak on Saturday where there is a canister and a sign with the elevation. The orange hat you see on that tree in your picture belonged to me. I left it there on accident last fall when I climbed the wrong peak.
If it helps I found the hike to the "real" summit to be much easier than the fir swim to the other peak.
Best, Tim Horn

That would figure. I had questions about the peak anyways and will admit I didn't have time to do as much research as planned on the peak. Not having a good map of the area, I used Google Maps at times for info/ideas. If you look at the terrain view for GMaps online, it shows the eastern most peak (the one I hit) has having one more contour line than the other peak. Since there was some sort of sign, and my GPS showed me at an elevation about as expected, I figured I was there. "Who would hike through that stuff to hang some sign on a useless peak" was part of my logic. I know sometimes the canisters go missing. I do see now looking at some other's TRs, that they hit the peak I didn't. Do you happen to have a GPS track of your recent hike by any chance? I'd still like to know where I lost the herd path on the hike I did. If nothing else, it was a learning experience.

On my first trip I had a sinking feeling when I did not see the canister and even though my DeLorme says that the peak I was on was taller.....alas no canister.
So I had to go back to get #94.
This was my first trip having a GPS in my pack. So do to inexperience and it being a novelty more than a tool for it seems I have a track of Elephant and also of E Kennebago and the car drive in between. I will see if I can figure out how to just pull the Elephant data for you.
Basically I think the key is to stay left when ever in doubt. When you start in at the cairn there are 2 choices. The "trail" to the left is what you want. The "trail" to the right leads to the boundary swath and the other peak.
Once you get in the groove the path is fairly easy to follow.(Unlike the Eastern route where you are totally screwed and left scaling small cliffs) There are 3 places where blow downs fill in the path and it is necessary to go around and then find the path again. In all cases I ended up going further "left" or west than I felt was correct.
Might be a good time to go as there has been a lot of traffic up there lately. I think 10 people in the past month.

When I did the summit years ago we followed the hints to the hundred highest that recommended the best approach was via the abandoned Clearwater Brook Trail from South Arm Road. We found the old trail and it was quite pleasant but didn't seem to get a lot of use. At some point when things started leveling out, the woods brightened up and we came out on the new logging road that ran to the near the height of land (to paraphrase Homer DOOH!), we then did go to the correct summit. I believe at the time there was prominent welcome to those finding the register that they had just climbed the wrong summit.

The summit has "moved" from the northeast bump (which is fairly easily accessed from Clearwater Brook Trail/old AT) to the southwest peak. This was quite some time ago, over a decade. One now spends substantially less time on the trail before starting the bushwhack. As of 2010 (when I was there), the easy herd paths petered out in the boggy col and you had to either get your feet wet or eat some spruce up to the summit.

Tim Horn said:

On my first trip I had a sinking feeling when I did not see the canister and even though my DeLorme says that the peak I was on was taller.....alas no canister.
So I had to go back to get #94.
This was my first trip having a GPS in my pack. So do to inexperience and it being a novelty more than a tool for it seems I have a track of Elephant and also of E Kennebago and the car drive in between. I will see if I can figure out how to just pull the Elephant data for you.
Basically I think the key is to stay left when ever in doubt. When you start in at the cairn there are 2 choices. The "trail" to the left is what you want. The "trail" to the right leads to the boundary swath and the other peak.
Once you get in the groove the path is fairly easy to follow.(Unlike the Eastern route where you are totally screwed and left scaling small cliffs) There are 3 places where blow downs fill in the path and it is necessary to go around and then find the path again. In all cases I ended up going further "left" or west than I felt was correct.
Might be a good time to go as there has been a lot of traffic up there lately. I think 10 people in the past month.

Click to expand...

Sending me the whole track is fine, I've edited enough of my own that I can easily separate the two hikes.

When I was climbing, I had been following the herd path (left option from the last log landing/road) and was occasionally seeing small cairns. I got to one spot where the path looked like it could go left or right. I went left and followed it long enough for the trees to squeeze in on both sides leaving no path and a wall of tight small trees in front of me. I didn't see any sure path to the left of this, although I think I could have gone that way. I went back and explored the option to the right. I was able to follow what looked like a path until a small brook. At this point I couldn't find the path after I got to the brook. After going uphill through some open woods, I did find a path that headed left (and even one small piece of flagging). After going through a blow down, I started to think this was heading the wrong direction (left), so I turned back and then just headed straight for what I thought was the summit. The Google Earth image I had from another trip report wasn't definitive enough for me to realize this was wrong. I probably should have followed the path more to see where it headed. I'm guessing this is the main area I lost the herd path, but I wasn't seeing what I had read about in TRs when here, so I wasn't sure I was in the right spot. Add that to a map like Google Maps showing the northeast hump higher (another mistake), and my gps having a summit icon on the northeast peak, and I was just headed in the wrong direction.

When I read your response yesterday, I did a quick look and found a page that had GPS coordinates of the peak being the southwest peak. I hadn't seen that page before my hike and wish I had. The small brook I did come to doesn't show on any maps and there isn't enough change in contour of the mountain (no ravine) that I can use for reference to help others know where it was. I could go back to my GPS track and see the logged point at where I think I crossed it though.

Our experience about four years ago was to keep veering left. Early on we had to go through a band of small balsams, very thick for about twenty feet. From there on in it was pretty straightforward: across (or around) one small boggy stretch, then up to the summit. Steep at times but never that tight. We were never really on a herd path until the summit ridge.

We tried going right at first, but it soon felt like the wrong way.

sdways01 said:

When I was climbing, I had been following the herd path (left option from the last log landing/road) and was occasionally seeing small cairns. I got to one spot where the path looked like it could go left or right. I went left and followed it long enough for the trees to squeeze in on both sides leaving no path and a wall of tight small trees in front of me. I didn't see any sure path to the left of this, although I think I could have gone that way. I went back and explored the option to the right. I was able to follow what looked like a path until a small brook. At this point I couldn't find the path after I got to the brook. After going uphill through some open woods, I did find a path that headed left (and even one small piece of flagging). After going through a blow down, I started to think this was heading the wrong direction (left), so I turned back and then just headed straight for what I thought was the summit. The Google Earth image I had from another trip report wasn't definitive enough for me to realize this was wrong. I probably should have followed the path more to see where it headed. I'm guessing this is the main area I lost the herd path, but I wasn't seeing what I had read about in TRs when here, so I wasn't sure I was in the right spot. Add that to a map like Google Maps showing the northeast hump higher (another mistake), and my gps having a summit icon on the northeast peak, and I was just headed in the wrong direction.

Click to expand...

My apologies if I'm reading too much into this, but it sounds a lot like you're relying on the herd paths to go where you want to go. This can be a downright dangerous assumption on the "trailless" NEHH peaks. Secondarily, GPS maps are frequently based on decades-old topos and thus potentially inaccurate.

I strongly recommend getting the packet from the 4000-footer committee. It's well worth the $5 and the stamp.

jniehof said:

My apologies if I'm reading too much into this, but it sounds a lot like you're relying on the herd paths to go where you want to go. This can be a downright dangerous assumption on the "trailless" NEHH peaks. Secondarily, GPS maps are frequently based on decades-old topos and thus potentially inaccurate.

I strongly recommend getting the packet from the 4000-footer committee. It's well worth the $5 and the stamp.

Click to expand...

I was relying on herd paths that (at least to start) matched TRs I had read from others. I also printed out Tim's image of his track overlaid on a GoogleMaps satellite image of the mountain. That image not being on a topo map instead, I should have studied the layout of the mountain a bit more in order to be more familiar with what I was looking at. Looking at it while hiking, it followed what I was doing to start, but then got a bit questionable while still seeming possible. I think the biggest mistake though was that the topo map I did look at showed the eastern peak as the higher one, so I mostly just headed in that direction. The GPS was used more just to keep a line to the eastern peak as I thought that was where I was supposed to end up. As I said before, I didn't have as much time to research this hike as I had planned. It was added onto my weekend plans later than the others I wanted to do and it seems to have bitten me in the butt a bit because of it. I have one more trip to the area planned, so I'll do more research by then.