Since I finally got my pictures back from this hike, I may as well submit a trip report.
It was the third day of a weekend jaunt through the mountains of northwestern Maine. With what I anticipated to be the most difficult bushwhack (and thus the most difficult hike) of the weekend (as neither Greater Aziscohos or East Coburn had been that bad) standing between me and my return to the comforts and company of civilization, I guess I wasn't quite looking forward to this final foray into the woods. It just seemed like it was going to be a lot of work.
I had spent the night before car camping near Lake Moxie village, and during my first steps in the morning I could still feel the effects of slightly straining a foot tendon on the steep slopes of East Coburn the previous day. In fact, I was initially limping enough that I seriously considered blowing off the day's hikes. However, I didn't want to drive all the way back to the Bingham area if it could be avoided, so I tried to walk off the gimpiness.
Since I was in the area, I also wanted to do Mosquito Mountain, and so I thought that would be a good warm-up hike to determine if I'd be able to take on Moxie or not.
I had a little bit of trouble finding the trailhead for Mosquito (since it was half a mile further down the road than I thought it would be [it's about 2.0 miles, not 1.5, from Lake Moxie Village]), but once there, I had a straightforward hike up this mountain. It's a pleasant, relatively short, easy hike up to a mostly open summit with gorgeous views of the surrounding lakes, mountains, and endless forests. Since the path passes through open woods the whole way, I was hoping the slopes of Moxie would be the same. Plus, since the tightness in my foot melted away earlier on, I figured I was as ready for Moxie as I was going to be.
The whole length of Troutdale Road from Lake Moxie Village down to Dimmick Pond Road and beyond was in rougher shape than I expected, blighted by constant potholes and some sections of small exposed rocks. This all made for really slow going. Dimmick Pond Road isn't signed (to be honest, I don't even know what the real name of this road is), but it's basically the first right when heading south from the AT. The wood bridge over Baker Stream is right there. I didn't see any squatter colony Papa Bear mentioned in his report, so I don't know if they scattered or relocated their trailers to the Dimmick Pond campsites.
Since this was a logging road, I drove very cautiously for fear of unseen protruding rocks or nasty potholes. I never did see the washout Papa Bear warned about, although there was one low spot halfway along the road where a slow moving stream/large puddle had submerged much of the width of a small stretch of road. I stopped the car at this point to check it out, but luckily the water wasn't that deep, the right side of the road was covered in gravel and actually wasn't submerged, and the water on that shallow side didn't seem to be harboring any malicious rocks. Ensuring I was going fast enough to not get stuck in any car-hungry mud, I was able to clear this section without a problem. Overall, I found Dimmick Pond Road to pretty much follow what it does in the atlas, so I knew to stay left (and on the better shape road) at a fork 2.5 miles in. Even though it got a little rougher after that, I took it slowly and ultimately reached the collection of campsites about three miles in from Troutdale Road. There were a few trailers using some of the campsites.
Parking at an unoccupied site, I walked to the nearest trailer to make sure it was cool to leave my car where it was. The gentleman I spoke to was pleasant enough, and he said as long as I didn't leave my car in the road, I'd be fine. I'm glad I checked though, because that would be a hell of a place to come back from a hike and find out my car had been towed.
Anyhoo, with that settled, I made final preparations and headed off. Due to the mountain's name, I thought it would be a cute picture to have a Moxie product depicted sitting on the helipad at the summit. Because bringing a full can of Moxie would have weight repurcussions, and an empty can bore a great risk of getting bent and dinged on the way to the top, I'd purchased a 20 ounce bottle the day before in Jackman, and had already consumed it's contents. I was about two minutes into this hike when I realized that I'd forgotten to bring the empty plastic Moxie bottle with me. I'm sure glad I didn't get any further before realizing this gaffe! Anyway, since I wasn't bringing a backpack for such a short hike, to carry the bottle I merely stuck it down the back of my t-shirt. Since this was cinched around the waste by a long-sleeve t-shirt, the bottle wasn't going to go anywhere.
So anyway, I was off. Having throughly read Papa Bear's trip report and looked at the maps, I found that the logging roads pretty much went how they were depicted in Delorme and on Topozone. Hence, I took the rough logging road that heads off left from the campsites, and followed it up hill and around the corner to it's end. I had previously pulled the coordinates of the lowest end of the slide off of Topozone, so at this point I pulled out the GPS to find out what direction I should be heading in. It further told me that it was about half a mile to the bottom of the slide. With that established, I headed off into the woods.
The forest immediately proved to be noticeably thicker than Mosquito had been. All the way to the slide it was a mixture of deciduous and evergreen trees, with frequent groves of the latter to struggle through. I kept encountering old, narrow, grown over skidder paths, but I couldn't stay on any of them very long because none of them headed in the same direction I was going. There were blowdowns to navigate too, but not that many.
Early on, crossing through the patches of fir and spruce would be painful, because their dry, dead branches would scrape against my sunburned neck. To remedy this, I took the long sleeve t-shirt I had and wrapped it around my head like a bonnet (sorry, no pictures of this exist). By the time I realized that so doing caused the Moxie bottle to silently fall to the forest floor, it was too late to go back and look for it. Hence, for any future party that happens upon an empty plastic Moxie bottle on Moxie Mountain, please know that it's there completely by accident, not because of some act of malicious littering.
Moving on, after about half an hour of pushing my way through the forest, I came out at the stream below the slide. Initially I thought it was the slide itself, due to the steepness of the water's course and the size of the boulders there (I couldn't help thinking "Man, this isn't much of a slide!"), however, following the stream up and around the corner, I came to the true slide. It's red sand slope makes it seem like some alien landscape out of a scifi movie. Even though its steepness slowed my progress, it was still much preferrable to the woods I was just contending with.
In no time I was soaking in the views from the top of the slide. According to the GPS, it was another 0.37 to the summit. Pushing through the trees on the steep slope above the slide, it seemed like I would be at the summit in no time.
I soon came to a small peak, but since I knew to look for a helipad and communications tower, I quickly observed that I wasn't at the true summit. I had forgotten that the mountain's high point is at the other end of the summit ridge from the slide. Proceeding from there, I found the trees on the top of the ridge to be very dense, so at first I tried to keep following along to the south, which had worked on East Coburn. In this case, it was still pretty thick going. Trying the north side of the ridge, I plugged along, and ultimately popped out of the woods at the rocky outcrop/scenic outlook just west of the true summit bump. From there, I found that little herd paths led to the helipad and maintenance shed. Since I knew that stuff would be up there, I wasn't too disgusted by it. I took a picture of the mountain's highest outcropping (with the helipad in the foreground), and even stood on the platform to check out the views to the east. I wandered around the summit area, but never noticed the small trail Oncoman wrote about (I can only presume it starts behind the maintenance shed). I finally settled at the outlook facing west, which has the best views of the summit. There is a large open ledgy area below there on the shoulder of the mountain that looked like it would be a cool place for a picnic. However, I can only imagine how thick the going is when trying to reach it.
Since the views were lovely and the bugs thankfully not a presence, I tried to linger as much as possible in order to maximize my enjoyment of the experience. However, I knew that soon enough I would be battling the undergrowth again, which I wasn't looking forward to, and I just wanted to get that part over with. The situation caused me to start reminiscing about the little hikes I went on with my angelic girlfriend through the Tongue Mountains (on Lake George) the previous summer. I started thinking "Gee, those were really fun hikes. Especially the part about not having to bushwhack through dense stuff. Why did I ever depart from that?"
It was the third day of a weekend jaunt through the mountains of northwestern Maine. With what I anticipated to be the most difficult bushwhack (and thus the most difficult hike) of the weekend (as neither Greater Aziscohos or East Coburn had been that bad) standing between me and my return to the comforts and company of civilization, I guess I wasn't quite looking forward to this final foray into the woods. It just seemed like it was going to be a lot of work.
I had spent the night before car camping near Lake Moxie village, and during my first steps in the morning I could still feel the effects of slightly straining a foot tendon on the steep slopes of East Coburn the previous day. In fact, I was initially limping enough that I seriously considered blowing off the day's hikes. However, I didn't want to drive all the way back to the Bingham area if it could be avoided, so I tried to walk off the gimpiness.
Since I was in the area, I also wanted to do Mosquito Mountain, and so I thought that would be a good warm-up hike to determine if I'd be able to take on Moxie or not.
I had a little bit of trouble finding the trailhead for Mosquito (since it was half a mile further down the road than I thought it would be [it's about 2.0 miles, not 1.5, from Lake Moxie Village]), but once there, I had a straightforward hike up this mountain. It's a pleasant, relatively short, easy hike up to a mostly open summit with gorgeous views of the surrounding lakes, mountains, and endless forests. Since the path passes through open woods the whole way, I was hoping the slopes of Moxie would be the same. Plus, since the tightness in my foot melted away earlier on, I figured I was as ready for Moxie as I was going to be.
The whole length of Troutdale Road from Lake Moxie Village down to Dimmick Pond Road and beyond was in rougher shape than I expected, blighted by constant potholes and some sections of small exposed rocks. This all made for really slow going. Dimmick Pond Road isn't signed (to be honest, I don't even know what the real name of this road is), but it's basically the first right when heading south from the AT. The wood bridge over Baker Stream is right there. I didn't see any squatter colony Papa Bear mentioned in his report, so I don't know if they scattered or relocated their trailers to the Dimmick Pond campsites.
Since this was a logging road, I drove very cautiously for fear of unseen protruding rocks or nasty potholes. I never did see the washout Papa Bear warned about, although there was one low spot halfway along the road where a slow moving stream/large puddle had submerged much of the width of a small stretch of road. I stopped the car at this point to check it out, but luckily the water wasn't that deep, the right side of the road was covered in gravel and actually wasn't submerged, and the water on that shallow side didn't seem to be harboring any malicious rocks. Ensuring I was going fast enough to not get stuck in any car-hungry mud, I was able to clear this section without a problem. Overall, I found Dimmick Pond Road to pretty much follow what it does in the atlas, so I knew to stay left (and on the better shape road) at a fork 2.5 miles in. Even though it got a little rougher after that, I took it slowly and ultimately reached the collection of campsites about three miles in from Troutdale Road. There were a few trailers using some of the campsites.
Parking at an unoccupied site, I walked to the nearest trailer to make sure it was cool to leave my car where it was. The gentleman I spoke to was pleasant enough, and he said as long as I didn't leave my car in the road, I'd be fine. I'm glad I checked though, because that would be a hell of a place to come back from a hike and find out my car had been towed.
Anyhoo, with that settled, I made final preparations and headed off. Due to the mountain's name, I thought it would be a cute picture to have a Moxie product depicted sitting on the helipad at the summit. Because bringing a full can of Moxie would have weight repurcussions, and an empty can bore a great risk of getting bent and dinged on the way to the top, I'd purchased a 20 ounce bottle the day before in Jackman, and had already consumed it's contents. I was about two minutes into this hike when I realized that I'd forgotten to bring the empty plastic Moxie bottle with me. I'm sure glad I didn't get any further before realizing this gaffe! Anyway, since I wasn't bringing a backpack for such a short hike, to carry the bottle I merely stuck it down the back of my t-shirt. Since this was cinched around the waste by a long-sleeve t-shirt, the bottle wasn't going to go anywhere.
So anyway, I was off. Having throughly read Papa Bear's trip report and looked at the maps, I found that the logging roads pretty much went how they were depicted in Delorme and on Topozone. Hence, I took the rough logging road that heads off left from the campsites, and followed it up hill and around the corner to it's end. I had previously pulled the coordinates of the lowest end of the slide off of Topozone, so at this point I pulled out the GPS to find out what direction I should be heading in. It further told me that it was about half a mile to the bottom of the slide. With that established, I headed off into the woods.
The forest immediately proved to be noticeably thicker than Mosquito had been. All the way to the slide it was a mixture of deciduous and evergreen trees, with frequent groves of the latter to struggle through. I kept encountering old, narrow, grown over skidder paths, but I couldn't stay on any of them very long because none of them headed in the same direction I was going. There were blowdowns to navigate too, but not that many.
Early on, crossing through the patches of fir and spruce would be painful, because their dry, dead branches would scrape against my sunburned neck. To remedy this, I took the long sleeve t-shirt I had and wrapped it around my head like a bonnet (sorry, no pictures of this exist). By the time I realized that so doing caused the Moxie bottle to silently fall to the forest floor, it was too late to go back and look for it. Hence, for any future party that happens upon an empty plastic Moxie bottle on Moxie Mountain, please know that it's there completely by accident, not because of some act of malicious littering.
Moving on, after about half an hour of pushing my way through the forest, I came out at the stream below the slide. Initially I thought it was the slide itself, due to the steepness of the water's course and the size of the boulders there (I couldn't help thinking "Man, this isn't much of a slide!"), however, following the stream up and around the corner, I came to the true slide. It's red sand slope makes it seem like some alien landscape out of a scifi movie. Even though its steepness slowed my progress, it was still much preferrable to the woods I was just contending with.
In no time I was soaking in the views from the top of the slide. According to the GPS, it was another 0.37 to the summit. Pushing through the trees on the steep slope above the slide, it seemed like I would be at the summit in no time.
I soon came to a small peak, but since I knew to look for a helipad and communications tower, I quickly observed that I wasn't at the true summit. I had forgotten that the mountain's high point is at the other end of the summit ridge from the slide. Proceeding from there, I found the trees on the top of the ridge to be very dense, so at first I tried to keep following along to the south, which had worked on East Coburn. In this case, it was still pretty thick going. Trying the north side of the ridge, I plugged along, and ultimately popped out of the woods at the rocky outcrop/scenic outlook just west of the true summit bump. From there, I found that little herd paths led to the helipad and maintenance shed. Since I knew that stuff would be up there, I wasn't too disgusted by it. I took a picture of the mountain's highest outcropping (with the helipad in the foreground), and even stood on the platform to check out the views to the east. I wandered around the summit area, but never noticed the small trail Oncoman wrote about (I can only presume it starts behind the maintenance shed). I finally settled at the outlook facing west, which has the best views of the summit. There is a large open ledgy area below there on the shoulder of the mountain that looked like it would be a cool place for a picnic. However, I can only imagine how thick the going is when trying to reach it.
Since the views were lovely and the bugs thankfully not a presence, I tried to linger as much as possible in order to maximize my enjoyment of the experience. However, I knew that soon enough I would be battling the undergrowth again, which I wasn't looking forward to, and I just wanted to get that part over with. The situation caused me to start reminiscing about the little hikes I went on with my angelic girlfriend through the Tongue Mountains (on Lake George) the previous summer. I started thinking "Gee, those were really fun hikes. Especially the part about not having to bushwhack through dense stuff. Why did I ever depart from that?"
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