"EAST Turner?!?"

So asked the BSP Ranger. "Do you guys know what you're doing?"

Spencer and I spent a nice 11 hours or so in the woods yesterday walking from Roaring Brook to East Turner's summit in the next county - and back.

This morning, I'm a little tired.

We found 3 moose antlers, saw one moose in Sandy Stream Pond, and saw two bears, including a cub who has taken a liking to Roaring Brook, and one larger bear on the State Rd. on the way out.

I'll put up some pictures when I get a few minutes. I'm feeling a bit sluggish today...



spencer

Congrats guys! I know you've wanted that one for a long while now.

East Turner

So,

It turns out that the highest point in Penobscot County is the summit of East Turner Mountain, located just outside of Baxter State Park, across the eastern boundary. I wanted to climb it because it is a NECoHP, Spencer I think just knows a good tough bushwhack when he sees one. Pic: East Turner

The night before, at Roaring Brook, Spencer spotted a young bear cub driving his pickup truck along the short road from lean-to to the day use parking area. Spencer alerted the ranger and gave me a heads up so that I could see the cub as well. His truck was unharmed.

We awoke at 4:00 am, and were on the trail up South Turner just a little after 4:30. With occasional clouds passing over the nearly full moon, we used headlamps most of the way up until we peaked out onto the slide by dawn's light. Pic: Dawn. We made the 2 miles and a good climb in about an hour and a half. Nice pinks and oranges, a fine sunrise from the South Turner summit, and we were quite pleased with the start of the day.Pic: Sunrise.

Our destination of East Turner lay a mere two or so trailless miles to the east. We had all day, right? No problem.

Map: Leaving South Turner

We started our bushwhack just after sunrise, about 100 yards north of the South Turner summit. The woods here were quite open, and we had some of our easiest bushwhacking of the day. Pic: Open woods. If you can see where the "X" is next to 2592RT, that's pretty much where we were headed. We crossed a couple of nice streams draining down from the S. Turner / 2795T col, and then we hit the thick stuff. After some time in tight squeezing saplings, we got out into the most difficult part of the day. Fields of young fir, about 8 to 12 feet high, with tons of logs and brush underfoot. Walking on rotten log 5 feet off the ground, falling off, climbing up onto next log, etc., you know the drill. Our speed slowed to probably less than 0.25 mph, and we began to question whether we would make it all the way to East Turner and back. But how do you turn around at 8:00 am?

Eventually we did get out, into more open woods, right around the time we were to turn right a bit, down towards the 2795T / East Turner col and the county line. This is where we started finding moose antlers, 3 total. We also saw some bear scat in there, and of course we were often ankle deep in moose signs.

Across the col to East Turner

Incidentally, we saw no indication of either the county line or the "Boundary Monument" line set down by the old surveyors. We climbed easily through many moose yards with scattered connecting trails, reaching the East Turner (2456T) summit area around 10:45 am. The highest ground is probably 20 feet east of one of the bigger moose yards. High fives and summit pics all around, we had made it. Pic: Summit. It had taken us over four hours to bushwhack from South Turner, and that was all flat or downhill. We had to climb at least 700 feet or so on the return.

After the first col, we stayed higher on the shoulder of 2795T than we had on the way out, and this was much better going. We still got caught again in thick stuff coming down into the 2795T / South Turner col, and we seemed to find all the tough bushwhacking we could on the climb back up South Turner. So, it ended up taking about 4 hours back as well, but I was pretty tired at that point, and not moving very fast. We came out of the scrub about 20 feet from the summit and took in some fine late afternoon views of Katahdin and all surrounding peaks, valleys and lakes.

The descent by trail was fairly uneventful, though we did find a nice moose feeding out in the center of Sandy Stream Pond. Pic: Sandy Stream Pond. We checked back in on the ranger's clipboard, by now around 3:30 pm, and realized that we were the not only the first but in fact the only group that headed out to East Turner that day.

We spotted an adult black bear crossing the road just outside the park gate - nice. Back in town, Spencer and Joanna cooked up a fine dinner and a mug full of hot coffee, both of which were critical to my arriving safely back home that night.

Thanks again Spencer for another fine day in the woods. We'll get some pictures in here if we can.

Re: East Turner

Tramper Al said:

Spencer spotted a young bear cub driving his pickup truck along the short road

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Would you believe that? BSP has issued trucks to bears now!

A few pictures are up. I suppose due to frustration, I didn't get any shots of the really thick stuff, but you all know how it can be. Tramper handled most of the navigating for the day and we had great lines.

Thanks for a great day, Tramper! I'm glad you made it home okay. Joanna and I had our doubts.

Roy, I'm not sure if you are scolding us or not. I'm a resident and don't pay any entrance fee. We did pay for a night at Roaring Brook, but I don't see that as a deterrent to a fun time... I originally planned to try E. Turner from the lower route (via Katahdin Lake, etc) and even did some scouting last year when we were all discussing this. However, Tramper suggested we try it from BSP and I saw no reason it couldn't be done, so that's what we did. We did not try the low-level return (I assume you mean the Katahdin Lake route), although the thought crossed my mind if we were way behind schedule, we could at least get to easier terrain that way if we had to bail out. From the Katahdin Lake Wilderness Camps there is a trail that goes to Avalanche Field in the park. From there, one could hitch back to Roaring Brook.

Roy, any idea how many folks have been up there?

If I ever do it again, it will be in winter, on skis, via Katahdin Lake. However, I'm not in any rush to do that. Unless, someone was interested in joining me...

spencer

and Sherpa,

you would've loved it!

spencer

OK Al, now you have to help Spencer when he does Barren in BSP (between OJI and The Owl). I hear it's a good one!

MMG says from OJI it is "slow" and from Owl it is "very difficult", plus a cryptic comment: "A blowdown that occured in 1974 eliminated possible approaches from the south and southwest". Come on, a 30 year old blowdown shouldn't stop you guys!

Let me know when you go. I might be interested.

Pb

Spencer,
I'm sure I would have enjoyed a day out in the woods with you two. Unfortunately my fractured foot (compliments of BSP June trip) would not. Well done gentlemen!

East Turner Peakbagging History

Hey,

This was a tough little bushwhack, so I wanted to find out what I could about previous hikes in there.

According to the county highpointers website, FOUR individuals have stood atop the summits of all of the counties in Maine. They are Fred Lobdell, Bob Packard, Bill Schuler, and most recently Clifford Young.

Maine CoHPs

I will quote from a VFTT poster from last year, whose name is quite similar to the fellow in this thread who was so critical of our approach. This is helpful, because it's the only thing I have been able to find online about these first three cohp climbing trips.

RoySwkr said:

Two of the three ME completers used float planes to Katahdin Lake, the 3rd never said how he did it. One guy made two tries from South Turner but never got there.

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Certainly it is very possible that others have climbed East Turner and not completed the rest of Maine's counties. Spencer is of course now in this category.

Here is Clifford Young's report of climbing East Turner from the eastern approach late last fall.
Cliff Young's report

So, it does appear that in recent (i.e. Internet) history at least, the mountain has been rarely climbed. Nobody said it couldn't be done the way we did it, but maybe some would say it shouldn't!

Why take the low-level route, when you can go high-end, I say.

RoySwkr said:

Why anyone would pay the entry fee and a camping fee when you can camp outside for free and climb it in half the time ...

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Clearly they were misguided. I've also heard that folks actually hike to the top of Mt. Washington when there is a perfectly good road AND a railroad to take them there. And speaking of misguided, this you won't believe: I've heard there was a guy, think his name was Wasserman or somthing like that, who hiked all the 4ks in the Whites from each of the 4 compass directions instead of just using the trails as any sensible person would. Why would anyone do that? Sheesh!

The very same "Wasserman" and his other half wrote about the very first known ascent of E. Turner. It of course was the surveying done by Joseph Norris and son for the monument line in 1825. They of course did it in reverse and when they got to S. Turner, said, "oh sh _ t" when they saw what was ahead of them.

anyway, read the Waterman's description of it sometime (page 54 of F & C).

spencer

Sherpa,

I'm sorry to hear about your injury. I noticed some alluding to it in other posts and wasn't quite sure what had happened.

how's the recovery going?

spencer

spencer said:

Sherpa,

I'm sorry to hear about your injury. I noticed some alluding to it in other posts and wasn't quite sure what had happened.

how's the recovery going?

spencer

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Slowly. I hope to be trailready by the whacker weekend. I'll be there regardless.

spencer said:

Roy, I'm not sure if you are scolding us or not.

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I was complaining about the way the trip was being posted one paragraph at a time. As Al has fixed that, I've removed the complaint.

spencer said:

We did not try the low-level return (I assume you mean the Katahdin Lake route),

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No, I was thinking that since it's usually thicker up high, it might have been easier to DESCEND from the col and circle S Turner rather than climbing back over the summit. I guess that's for some later explorer.

spencer said:

Roy, any idea how many folks have been up there?

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Al has posted my note on the hikers, of course there have been surveyors (as later mentioned), loggers, hunters, etc. When the Wassataquoik Brook Road was in better condition that would have been an easy approach but that was before county highpointing became popular.

The thought of circling around S. Turner occured to us as one possibility on the way back (more in jest than anything), but as I've noticed a couple of times from up on S. Turner, the terrain southeast of the mountain appears to be quite wet. There is also kind of a steep gully of sorts on the SE face of S. Turner (the actual trail kind of follows the edge of it for a bit).

With the exception of the summit area of E. Turner itself, the easiest terrain was found between the summit of S. Turner and the col before peak 2795.

Interestingly, at one point about a .2 miles from the summit of E. Turner, I remarked to Al that there appeared to be the remnants of an old road. The trees were quite uniformly spaced with no trees or stumps growing in the middle. The middle of this area was grassier in composition than surrounding areas. This only lasted for 50-100 yards. It's easy for the mind to play games out there, but I spend a lot of time on old logging roads and skid trails (for both work and pleasure) and it sure looked like that to me. Despite this, I doubt there was ever a road there.

spencer

Re: East Turner

Tramper Al said:

... Incidentally, we saw no indication of either the county line or the "Boundary Monument" line set down by the old surveyors.

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Question: what is the "Boundary Monument" Line and what boundary was it marking if not the county? According to the trail report by Cliff Young, Piscataquis County (along with Mount Katahdin and all the surrounding peaks) was cut off from Penobscot County in 1838. So what were they suyveying in 1825? If they put in monuments, is there any record as to where. Has anyone ever found them in recent times?

This was one of the more interesting parts of the report.

BTW, good job.
Pb

Survey Line

Spencer and others are going to have to help me on this one.

I believe that Maine as a state came into being in 1820, breaking away from Massachusetts, of all places. I think the 1825 'Survey' that Spencer mentioned was in part a result of new statehood.

As Spencer suggested, the survey must have been an incredible challenge for Norris and son back in the day. The 'Monument Line' can be seen on some of the better BSP maps (and the USGS topo), and it runs I believe due east-west right over the summit of East Turner (a nice coincidence). I should not have used the word 'boundary', except that my map reads 'Indefinite Boundary' along it. Going due west, the surveyor runs into some tough country, and at one point I believe they stopped and came back in from the west. As such you can see a major zig zag right around Doubletop Mountain in this otherwise straight line.

I hope that helps, Pb, until further info is forthcoming.

Info from F & C:

the Norris men reached the Northwest Basin and when they saw the Klondike followed by the Brothers, they called it quits. To get out they headed across the Tableland and took the known Abol route down. The next year, the son Norris continued the line, but skipped the 16 mile section from the Northwest Basin and Chesuncook. In 1826, he tried to head east from Chesuncook but was stopped by Doubletop. Eventually, John Webber was hired to finish the 8 miles not completed by Norris.

as for the Monument Line itself (still paraphrasing from F & C):

it was decided that a standard east-west line would be established from which all other delineations would be established. the line itself was not any boundary. It began at the Canada-Maine boundary where a yellow birch was affixed with metal bands.

I know I've read more about the origination of the monument line, but I can't remember where. I checked in Neil Rolde's comprehensive The Interrupted Forest, but it wasn't in there that I saw it. I'll keep looking.

spencer

spencer said:

Despite this, I doubt there was ever a road there.

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Why? Don't you think this was logged in the heyday of Wassaquoik Tote Road?

PB should probably read this whole section in F&C for his amusement. If you look at DeLorme, the Monument Line appears to start at ME state line where it changes from river to straight and run due W, deviation explained in F&C. The main township numbering system is WELS (west of the easterly line of the state) and I thought perhaps the Monument Line was the horizontal base but it's not - they start 2 down so there are no N/S/E/W tags like the midwest.