BillDC
New member
I located a portion of the old watchman's trail up Soubunge back in 2009 around half way up, but never followed it back down toward the bottom to see where it came out. This trail was discontinued in 1969, but was easily found once in the woods. The lower half of the mountain has been heavily logged, so I figured my mileage will vary.
To access Soubunge Mountain, take the Telos road up from the Golden road to the top of Harrington Lake. On the left, there is a major logging road that comes in. As you begin to take this left, immediately take a spur road on the right. Take this road to a fork and then bear left (A Moose was waiting for us when we pulled in). The right goes to the east side of the mountain where there are ledges prominent. We went in and parked in a clearing just before a slash field. If you continue along this road, there are slash yards where many skid roads go north from past logging.
There are multiple flagged trails of varying ages and colors in the logged area. To save time following any of those, we wacked in directly north on a skid road in the general direction of the watchman's trail until we located it. The old trail is well marked with flagging from many generations ago, some orange, pink, and even white plastic bags! There was plenty of phone line insulators and line visible on this trail as well. As we climbed near the top, the treadway weakens and the trail is eventually disrupted in a large blowdown field. The route is flagged around this area and continues toward the top. Near the summit, the route rejoins the watchman's trail and then arrives at the top.
Arriving at the summit, the old firetower steel remains standing in a largely bare summit. Trees all around have grown up, but the interior of the summit remains a grassy meadow. Yet another day of broken cloud views, but there were some views into parts of Baxter and to the north from the tower. Katahdin and the higher peaks were all in the clouds most of the time, but worth the effort nonetheless. The geocache up there was also still present. An overall nice day on this odd-ball summit west of Baxter.
We went down on the same old watchman's trail, but decided to see how far we could follow it. The trail went all of the way down into the logged area and was eventually lost due to logging. The route was flagged and following it out, the flagging lead to the same road we came in on, just on a different skid road. At this spot, there is an abundance of pink flagging and a cairn marking the skidder road that we came out on. You can easily locate this and take this skid road up to where the watchman's trail was lost and continue on it to the summit. On the way out, another moose was on the side of the road and slowly went back in the woods when we stopped for a photo.
Some photos of this trip are here -
https://picasaweb.google.com/BillDC3/SoubungeMountainME5242012?authuser=0&feat=directlink
Bill
To access Soubunge Mountain, take the Telos road up from the Golden road to the top of Harrington Lake. On the left, there is a major logging road that comes in. As you begin to take this left, immediately take a spur road on the right. Take this road to a fork and then bear left (A Moose was waiting for us when we pulled in). The right goes to the east side of the mountain where there are ledges prominent. We went in and parked in a clearing just before a slash field. If you continue along this road, there are slash yards where many skid roads go north from past logging.
There are multiple flagged trails of varying ages and colors in the logged area. To save time following any of those, we wacked in directly north on a skid road in the general direction of the watchman's trail until we located it. The old trail is well marked with flagging from many generations ago, some orange, pink, and even white plastic bags! There was plenty of phone line insulators and line visible on this trail as well. As we climbed near the top, the treadway weakens and the trail is eventually disrupted in a large blowdown field. The route is flagged around this area and continues toward the top. Near the summit, the route rejoins the watchman's trail and then arrives at the top.
Arriving at the summit, the old firetower steel remains standing in a largely bare summit. Trees all around have grown up, but the interior of the summit remains a grassy meadow. Yet another day of broken cloud views, but there were some views into parts of Baxter and to the north from the tower. Katahdin and the higher peaks were all in the clouds most of the time, but worth the effort nonetheless. The geocache up there was also still present. An overall nice day on this odd-ball summit west of Baxter.
We went down on the same old watchman's trail, but decided to see how far we could follow it. The trail went all of the way down into the logged area and was eventually lost due to logging. The route was flagged and following it out, the flagging lead to the same road we came in on, just on a different skid road. At this spot, there is an abundance of pink flagging and a cairn marking the skidder road that we came out on. You can easily locate this and take this skid road up to where the watchman's trail was lost and continue on it to the summit. On the way out, another moose was on the side of the road and slowly went back in the woods when we stopped for a photo.
Some photos of this trip are here -
https://picasaweb.google.com/BillDC3/SoubungeMountainME5242012?authuser=0&feat=directlink
Bill
