Sometimes a plan doesn’t work out exactly as planned and aerial photos can only be so useful. Sable and Chandler are two NH 100 highest located in a fairly forgotten area of WMNF straddling the Me/NH line. The only means of car access is the Slippery Brook Road that starts out as Town Hall Road in Bartlett. It eventually dead ends at Slippery Brook Trail Head. Near the end of the road is Mountain Pond a fairly large pond with campsites around it which I expect is the main destination of most. This area used to be one of the more heavily managed areas for forest production in the WMNF as it was out of sight out of mind. Sable and Chandler stretch out on a ridge SW of the Baldfaces. There is distinct 500 foot col between the summits which adds to the effort.
I did much of my planning with Google Earth using the backwards in time function to view the historical aerial imagery along with the most recent USGS topo. My first goal was to try to guess the tree coverage in the area to try to stick to hardwoods and minimize dense spruce fir along the ridge line. Based on the various aerial images, it looked to me like the potential for dense spruce/fir on both summits and in most of the col between. This prediction proved to be wrong. The next goal was to minimize the bushwhacking distance. I had considered heading up Slippery Brook trail to South Baldface and running south along the height of the ridge, possibly picking up the remains of the Sable Mountain trail that used to run this ridge until 1940. This was long day and using my incorrect assumption of the potential vegetation along the ridge I elected not to do this route. I looked to the west of the summit using an approach via the East Branch trail (or logging road). I haven’t been in this area for quite a while but my maps indicated that the road was gated quite far south of the closest approach to the two summits so I elected not to do this route. Dependent on vegetation this may be the shortest bushwhacking approach offset by extra road walk.
My final selection was to start off using Fire Road 17A that turns left off the Slippery Brook road just short of the Slippery Brook trailhead. The Google earth imagery showed this as very active logging road accessing three large clear cuts dated back to 2005, the latest aerial from 2013 showed them quite open. The plan was to go up the westerly clear cut and head to the top of it then take a straight bearing just under a mile and 1000 feet elevation to the summit of Chandler. The vegetation showed hardwood for most of this run swapping to softwoods near the summit.
We headed out at 8:15 up the fire road which was fairly open, we easily followed it up to an obvious landing south of the much larger clear-cut. This is where we diverged from the plan. There were numerous grown in logging lanes heading up into the woods but no obvious main haul road up the clear cut. We picked the most likely candidate but it soon turned into diverging logging lanes and never found the clear cut. We were at roughly above the elevation of the top of the clear cut so we headed upslope. The woods quickly switched over to white birch stands surrounded by ferns and occasionally hobble bush. The birches weren’t particularly healthy with no real canopy. It was also hot and humid. The slope is a steep steady climb but the biggest impediment is not being able to see the footing due the dense fern growth. Contrary to the aerial survey, we never hit the dreaded spruce/fir band and the woods were mostly the same right to the summit. The summit canister complete with the obligatory moose shed is quite obvious and the views are potentially good but yesterday was quite hazy due to the humidity. We also encountered what we expected was the old Sable Mtn Trail. After a break we headed to Sable zig zagging a bit to stay on the crest as the crest curves east a bit. We would occasionally encounter the old trail but the woods were open and occasional blowdowns limited its appeal. The woods eventually transitioned to older softwood. In what looks to be the traditional col we encountered what looks to be a very old fire road heading east and west but looking at the map I think they were just natural features leading to drainages on either side of the saddle. We went up and over a small bump in the ridge and came out at a mostly dry mud hole.
The hike up Sable is pretty obvious, there is a skinny ridge heading up from the col and we stuck to the crest. The open birch woods with ferns and/or hobble bush returned quickly, with an occasional softwood band. It was steep and footing was a bit tough in places. It was even hotter and more humid. After a quick bypass around a small 20 to 30 foot cliff, we continued on and reached the summit. The summit is more wooded than Chandler. The old Sable Mountain Trail was a lot more obvious heading north from the summit. I could speculate that folks might have done an out and back from South Baldface via this section of trail and therefore it was more distinct but maybe it was just the terrain. After a break we started to head down. The plan was to take a ridge east and curve back to the Slippery brook trail. We looked for quite a bit and couldn’t find a distinct head of the ridge and after some discussion elected to do the “devil we knew” and headed back to the col. From there we headed SSE figuring that we would get back to one of the logging cuts and then back onto the fire road. This turned out to be less than successful, we ended up crossing numerous heads of drainages and in general the canopy was not dense enough to lock out the understory.
We eventually went downslope a bit and encountered the head of large wetland visible on the aerials east of Chandler. It was dry and open but could be a bad place in wetter conditions. We had been drifting a bit east of our intended bearing. The woods didn’t get any better so after about 45 minutes the group elected to drop off the slope heading east south east to drop down to Slippery Brook. Eventually we did pick up an older logging road which after a few zigs and zags brought us up to the edge of one of the cuts. Contrary to the aerial photo the edge of the cut was grown up in dense new growth , we following an eroded road down avoiding the worst of it and then eventually headed though the woods down to Slippery Brook. We looked around a bit on the East side of the brook but did not see the trail but did find an older logging path/trail that ran right along the river. It was old and we would lose it on occasion but would find it again. In spots it was obviously a somewhat newer trail that had been put on top of an older path. In one spot there was an impressive section of side cut slope of trail that skipped a washed out section of the road. We eventually came to an opening on the side of Slippery Brook and there was a newer standard wooden arrow mounted on a tree pointing across the stream. This trail we were hiking must have been an older version of Slippery Brook trail. We elected not to cross and switched to a slightly more prominent old logging road and after a few minutes intersected the new Slippery Brook Road and were soon back at the cars at around 6 PM. This was a lot later than I expected.
If I were to do it again I think the approach to Chandler via FR 17A and its extensions was a good approach. Where we burned up a lot of time was the cross country run back from Sable. I would suggest spending the time on the summit of Sable to pick up the SE ridge off of Sable and heading down it staying at its crest and picking up Slippery Brook Trail as soon as possible, then using Slippery Brook Trail to get back to the beginning. Someone had read a recent report that this approach was good going. Other comments are possibly waiting until a hard frost to knock out the low under growth. This entire area is loaded with moose sign and we encountered numerous moose beds and shed antlers all along the route. Those who use the “follow the beep” method of GPS might be more successful in finding those clear cuts.
I did much of my planning with Google Earth using the backwards in time function to view the historical aerial imagery along with the most recent USGS topo. My first goal was to try to guess the tree coverage in the area to try to stick to hardwoods and minimize dense spruce fir along the ridge line. Based on the various aerial images, it looked to me like the potential for dense spruce/fir on both summits and in most of the col between. This prediction proved to be wrong. The next goal was to minimize the bushwhacking distance. I had considered heading up Slippery Brook trail to South Baldface and running south along the height of the ridge, possibly picking up the remains of the Sable Mountain trail that used to run this ridge until 1940. This was long day and using my incorrect assumption of the potential vegetation along the ridge I elected not to do this route. I looked to the west of the summit using an approach via the East Branch trail (or logging road). I haven’t been in this area for quite a while but my maps indicated that the road was gated quite far south of the closest approach to the two summits so I elected not to do this route. Dependent on vegetation this may be the shortest bushwhacking approach offset by extra road walk.
My final selection was to start off using Fire Road 17A that turns left off the Slippery Brook road just short of the Slippery Brook trailhead. The Google earth imagery showed this as very active logging road accessing three large clear cuts dated back to 2005, the latest aerial from 2013 showed them quite open. The plan was to go up the westerly clear cut and head to the top of it then take a straight bearing just under a mile and 1000 feet elevation to the summit of Chandler. The vegetation showed hardwood for most of this run swapping to softwoods near the summit.
We headed out at 8:15 up the fire road which was fairly open, we easily followed it up to an obvious landing south of the much larger clear-cut. This is where we diverged from the plan. There were numerous grown in logging lanes heading up into the woods but no obvious main haul road up the clear cut. We picked the most likely candidate but it soon turned into diverging logging lanes and never found the clear cut. We were at roughly above the elevation of the top of the clear cut so we headed upslope. The woods quickly switched over to white birch stands surrounded by ferns and occasionally hobble bush. The birches weren’t particularly healthy with no real canopy. It was also hot and humid. The slope is a steep steady climb but the biggest impediment is not being able to see the footing due the dense fern growth. Contrary to the aerial survey, we never hit the dreaded spruce/fir band and the woods were mostly the same right to the summit. The summit canister complete with the obligatory moose shed is quite obvious and the views are potentially good but yesterday was quite hazy due to the humidity. We also encountered what we expected was the old Sable Mtn Trail. After a break we headed to Sable zig zagging a bit to stay on the crest as the crest curves east a bit. We would occasionally encounter the old trail but the woods were open and occasional blowdowns limited its appeal. The woods eventually transitioned to older softwood. In what looks to be the traditional col we encountered what looks to be a very old fire road heading east and west but looking at the map I think they were just natural features leading to drainages on either side of the saddle. We went up and over a small bump in the ridge and came out at a mostly dry mud hole.
The hike up Sable is pretty obvious, there is a skinny ridge heading up from the col and we stuck to the crest. The open birch woods with ferns and/or hobble bush returned quickly, with an occasional softwood band. It was steep and footing was a bit tough in places. It was even hotter and more humid. After a quick bypass around a small 20 to 30 foot cliff, we continued on and reached the summit. The summit is more wooded than Chandler. The old Sable Mountain Trail was a lot more obvious heading north from the summit. I could speculate that folks might have done an out and back from South Baldface via this section of trail and therefore it was more distinct but maybe it was just the terrain. After a break we started to head down. The plan was to take a ridge east and curve back to the Slippery brook trail. We looked for quite a bit and couldn’t find a distinct head of the ridge and after some discussion elected to do the “devil we knew” and headed back to the col. From there we headed SSE figuring that we would get back to one of the logging cuts and then back onto the fire road. This turned out to be less than successful, we ended up crossing numerous heads of drainages and in general the canopy was not dense enough to lock out the understory.
We eventually went downslope a bit and encountered the head of large wetland visible on the aerials east of Chandler. It was dry and open but could be a bad place in wetter conditions. We had been drifting a bit east of our intended bearing. The woods didn’t get any better so after about 45 minutes the group elected to drop off the slope heading east south east to drop down to Slippery Brook. Eventually we did pick up an older logging road which after a few zigs and zags brought us up to the edge of one of the cuts. Contrary to the aerial photo the edge of the cut was grown up in dense new growth , we following an eroded road down avoiding the worst of it and then eventually headed though the woods down to Slippery Brook. We looked around a bit on the East side of the brook but did not see the trail but did find an older logging path/trail that ran right along the river. It was old and we would lose it on occasion but would find it again. In spots it was obviously a somewhat newer trail that had been put on top of an older path. In one spot there was an impressive section of side cut slope of trail that skipped a washed out section of the road. We eventually came to an opening on the side of Slippery Brook and there was a newer standard wooden arrow mounted on a tree pointing across the stream. This trail we were hiking must have been an older version of Slippery Brook trail. We elected not to cross and switched to a slightly more prominent old logging road and after a few minutes intersected the new Slippery Brook Road and were soon back at the cars at around 6 PM. This was a lot later than I expected.
If I were to do it again I think the approach to Chandler via FR 17A and its extensions was a good approach. Where we burned up a lot of time was the cross country run back from Sable. I would suggest spending the time on the summit of Sable to pick up the SE ridge off of Sable and heading down it staying at its crest and picking up Slippery Brook Trail as soon as possible, then using Slippery Brook Trail to get back to the beginning. Someone had read a recent report that this approach was good going. Other comments are possibly waiting until a hard frost to knock out the low under growth. This entire area is loaded with moose sign and we encountered numerous moose beds and shed antlers all along the route. Those who use the “follow the beep” method of GPS might be more successful in finding those clear cuts.
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