eddie
New member
Summer #5 (2007 - 2011) of hiking for our hiking team, me and my 18 year old son Eric together with my brother-in-law Mark and his 16 y.o. son Alex from Medfield , MA, saw the completion of my son’s and my list of NE111 peaks and Mark and Alex’s completion of the NE67. Our Baxter SP trip was planned after last summer’s 5 VT and 11 other Maine 4K mountains were completed. We only had three to go and we certainly saved the best for last. The weather cooperated and we are thankful for that.
It was a bittersweet finish for me. We all completed together and that was great. However, I will also lose my best hiking buddy for a while because he has answered the call to duty and on August 1 he will go to Marine bootcamp. It has been great discovering these mountains with my son. I started hiking and climbing with my son in the ADKs when he was age 9. The original plan was to complete the ADK46 by time he was 18 but we ended up hiking all of the NE111 with the added accompaniment of our other hiking partners for the 67 in New England. Mark always wanted to hike the White 4Ks with his son and we were what he needed to get them out there to do them. So we became a hiking team.
Monday June 27 – A beautiful sunny day with low humidity. We drove into BSP and to the Marston trailhead after an overnight stay at Ruthie’s in Millinocket and breakfast at the AT Café. Our goal was to get North Brother but also to tag Fort, S. Brother and Coe. Mark decided he didn’t want the added prize of three NEHH peaks so after N Brother and with two cars, he returned to the trailhead to set up camp at Katahdin Stream and enjoy the nearby ponds. The three of us bushwhacked our way to and from Fort along faint herd paths. After a return to N Brother we continued on to S Brother and then to Coe. All summits had rocky tops with great views all around including the next day's target, Katahdin. Did you know you can see the Chimney on Katahdin from all four of these summits? The hike down the Coe slide on the return was really fun but slippery in places due to wet, steep rock and algae. We completed this four-bagger in under eight hours. Bugs weren’t too bad. Does anyone know what those large bee-look-alike bugs are on these summits? They are non-threatening but the goofiest bugs I have ever seen – short-bus riders in the bug kingdom – funny to watch.
Tuesday June 28 – Another sunny day although the humidity was up and so were the temps. We packed up camp and drove around to Roaring Brook trailhead. We had reservations at the Bunkhouse at Chimney Pond for this evening so loaded our backpacks for an overnighter. A quick hike into Chimney Pond where we dropped the backpacks at the bunkhouse and filled the daypack hydration bladders with water at the pond. The first great view of the mountain is from the pond and regardless of how many photos I had seen in the past, being there in person is breathtaking and awesome. I just stood there and stared in complete reverence to this great mountain. Our route was thrilling - up Dudley to Pamola, across the Knife Edge to Baxter, down to the saddle and back up to Hamlin, down Hamlin Ridge and back to Chimney Pond. It was the most remarkable hike I have ever been on, and coupled with great weather and my hiking partners, it was very memorable to say the least. Total time for the loop was just under eight hours. Side note: Mark is acrophobic so he either got over his fear on the Knife Edge or he is now suffering from PTSD.
In retrospect, the NE111 journey has been amazing. We have climbed mountains in four states, visited numerous resort towns and hick towns (best town: Lake Placid), met the local folks, backwoods rednecks, tourists and other hikers, ate at all sorts of diners and restaurants (best breakfast: tie Munroe’s and AT Cafe, best dinner: Common Man, best pizza: G&H Pizza), drank various local beers (best beer: tie Lake Placid Pub and Woodstock Inn), swam in nice lakes and swimming holes, stayed at some nice resorts, some dumpy motels, campsites and everything in between , seen all sorts of wildlife and scenery, driven thousands of miles, away from home for probably a combined eight weeks, hiked hundreds of miles and hundreds of thousands of vertical feet, and all of them are now fond memories and wonderful experiences.
Special thanks to my wife and daughter for putting up with our absence in our near-obsession to climb these peaks (the only requirement was to bring home landscaping rocks for my wife’s gardens). Also thank you and greetings to some people we have met or hiked with along the way – first and foremost my brother Bill, an ADK winter 46er, with whom I have spent the most time hiking, Peggy and Rich, Lee and Siobhan, and Mark Lowell in Lake Placid; Bob, Tim and Ed in Stratton and at the Crockers and Redington, TrishandAlex and Dave Bear at Owl’s Head, all of those AT thru-hikers we have met and numerous other anonymous persons who crossed paths with us and shared a story, information or just took our picture for us. Last but most importantly, thank you God for keeping us all safe and injury-free on this memorable journey and bless my son who will now help defend this great country so we can all continue to enjoy these wonderful mountains and our freedom as Americans.
Click on photo for album link
It was a bittersweet finish for me. We all completed together and that was great. However, I will also lose my best hiking buddy for a while because he has answered the call to duty and on August 1 he will go to Marine bootcamp. It has been great discovering these mountains with my son. I started hiking and climbing with my son in the ADKs when he was age 9. The original plan was to complete the ADK46 by time he was 18 but we ended up hiking all of the NE111 with the added accompaniment of our other hiking partners for the 67 in New England. Mark always wanted to hike the White 4Ks with his son and we were what he needed to get them out there to do them. So we became a hiking team.
Monday June 27 – A beautiful sunny day with low humidity. We drove into BSP and to the Marston trailhead after an overnight stay at Ruthie’s in Millinocket and breakfast at the AT Café. Our goal was to get North Brother but also to tag Fort, S. Brother and Coe. Mark decided he didn’t want the added prize of three NEHH peaks so after N Brother and with two cars, he returned to the trailhead to set up camp at Katahdin Stream and enjoy the nearby ponds. The three of us bushwhacked our way to and from Fort along faint herd paths. After a return to N Brother we continued on to S Brother and then to Coe. All summits had rocky tops with great views all around including the next day's target, Katahdin. Did you know you can see the Chimney on Katahdin from all four of these summits? The hike down the Coe slide on the return was really fun but slippery in places due to wet, steep rock and algae. We completed this four-bagger in under eight hours. Bugs weren’t too bad. Does anyone know what those large bee-look-alike bugs are on these summits? They are non-threatening but the goofiest bugs I have ever seen – short-bus riders in the bug kingdom – funny to watch.
Tuesday June 28 – Another sunny day although the humidity was up and so were the temps. We packed up camp and drove around to Roaring Brook trailhead. We had reservations at the Bunkhouse at Chimney Pond for this evening so loaded our backpacks for an overnighter. A quick hike into Chimney Pond where we dropped the backpacks at the bunkhouse and filled the daypack hydration bladders with water at the pond. The first great view of the mountain is from the pond and regardless of how many photos I had seen in the past, being there in person is breathtaking and awesome. I just stood there and stared in complete reverence to this great mountain. Our route was thrilling - up Dudley to Pamola, across the Knife Edge to Baxter, down to the saddle and back up to Hamlin, down Hamlin Ridge and back to Chimney Pond. It was the most remarkable hike I have ever been on, and coupled with great weather and my hiking partners, it was very memorable to say the least. Total time for the loop was just under eight hours. Side note: Mark is acrophobic so he either got over his fear on the Knife Edge or he is now suffering from PTSD.
In retrospect, the NE111 journey has been amazing. We have climbed mountains in four states, visited numerous resort towns and hick towns (best town: Lake Placid), met the local folks, backwoods rednecks, tourists and other hikers, ate at all sorts of diners and restaurants (best breakfast: tie Munroe’s and AT Cafe, best dinner: Common Man, best pizza: G&H Pizza), drank various local beers (best beer: tie Lake Placid Pub and Woodstock Inn), swam in nice lakes and swimming holes, stayed at some nice resorts, some dumpy motels, campsites and everything in between , seen all sorts of wildlife and scenery, driven thousands of miles, away from home for probably a combined eight weeks, hiked hundreds of miles and hundreds of thousands of vertical feet, and all of them are now fond memories and wonderful experiences.
Special thanks to my wife and daughter for putting up with our absence in our near-obsession to climb these peaks (the only requirement was to bring home landscaping rocks for my wife’s gardens). Also thank you and greetings to some people we have met or hiked with along the way – first and foremost my brother Bill, an ADK winter 46er, with whom I have spent the most time hiking, Peggy and Rich, Lee and Siobhan, and Mark Lowell in Lake Placid; Bob, Tim and Ed in Stratton and at the Crockers and Redington, TrishandAlex and Dave Bear at Owl’s Head, all of those AT thru-hikers we have met and numerous other anonymous persons who crossed paths with us and shared a story, information or just took our picture for us. Last but most importantly, thank you God for keeping us all safe and injury-free on this memorable journey and bless my son who will now help defend this great country so we can all continue to enjoy these wonderful mountains and our freedom as Americans.
Click on photo for album link
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