I and a few friends made a quick attempt at Moosilukee on New Years day. We called it early as the winds were quite high on the summit.
This was the first time I have driven up a plowed Ravine Lodge Road to the new winter parking spaces. The road is plowed for two vehicle travel but I expect that as the winter progresses it will lose width. With the exception of a few wide spots, there is not room to park along the road without potentially impacting travel along the road. The new parking area looks to be just short of DOC property line and is most likely on WMNF land so it saves about 3/5th of mile of walking from the highway. The new parking area is not huge, the road has just been widened to allow diagonal parking off one side of the travel lane. I expect a long wheelbase van could not diagonally park without sticking out into the travel lane and would have a heck of time getting turned around. At best, if folks follow the signage it may hold 25 vehicles. Unfortunately there were construction materials and equipment parked in the middle of the lot and that ate up several spaces. Since its diagonal parking with no turn around area except the road and on a slight slope I could expect in slippery conditions getting turned around could be an issue. A FYI is that cell coverage (Verizon) jumped from none to one bar so getting help when stranded could be an issue.
We got there early (8am) and there were plenty of room. When we came down in the early afternoon the lot was full and folks were ignoring the signage and had parked up the Ravine road past the explicit signage. A Subaru from PA was stuck in the ditch, we offered to help but they had already called AAA and were going to wait for them. They were totally blocking the road to the Ravine lodge and blocking in a few hikers vehicles who had parked past the no entry signs. As I drove out there were a couple of vehicles parked in wide spots in the road back towards the highway. A general rant is that when parking on a narrow road in the winter common courtesy is to let the passengers out and then park directly up against or into the snow bank rather than leaving clearance between the vehicle and the snow bank (argh!).
I am somewhat curious on the intent of this parking lot. Because its not that large its just going to encourage folks to drive up and once the lot inevitably fills up, park along the length of the road making construction access difficult. IMHO it would be far better to leave the gate closed at the highway and keep the road plowed for construction to prevent the inevitable conflicts between construction traffic and hiker traffic.
I am curious if this is just the first step at permanently restricting the Ravine House trailhead general public parking to FS land outside the DOC boundary? The new lot is about 1 mile from turnaround on the Ravine House road, so what it will really do in the summer is just push the line of vehicles lining the sides of the road back down to the highway (it was getting close to being lined continuously from turnaround all the way down to the highway on nice weekends as it was. Since there is no turnaround at the new lot, cars will still will most likely attempt to drive the length of the road up past the lodge to the turnaround and then drive back down so there will still be lot of traffic on the road and the temptation for the general public to park wherever they can find a place. The slope in the area of the new parking lot is fairly steep, widening it out is not really viable without some massive earthwork. There are more suitable areas closer to the highway where a much wider lot could be built.
We didn't go down near the Ravine house construction site but we could look down and could see fairly complex foundation structure in place.
This was the first time I have driven up a plowed Ravine Lodge Road to the new winter parking spaces. The road is plowed for two vehicle travel but I expect that as the winter progresses it will lose width. With the exception of a few wide spots, there is not room to park along the road without potentially impacting travel along the road. The new parking area looks to be just short of DOC property line and is most likely on WMNF land so it saves about 3/5th of mile of walking from the highway. The new parking area is not huge, the road has just been widened to allow diagonal parking off one side of the travel lane. I expect a long wheelbase van could not diagonally park without sticking out into the travel lane and would have a heck of time getting turned around. At best, if folks follow the signage it may hold 25 vehicles. Unfortunately there were construction materials and equipment parked in the middle of the lot and that ate up several spaces. Since its diagonal parking with no turn around area except the road and on a slight slope I could expect in slippery conditions getting turned around could be an issue. A FYI is that cell coverage (Verizon) jumped from none to one bar so getting help when stranded could be an issue.
We got there early (8am) and there were plenty of room. When we came down in the early afternoon the lot was full and folks were ignoring the signage and had parked up the Ravine road past the explicit signage. A Subaru from PA was stuck in the ditch, we offered to help but they had already called AAA and were going to wait for them. They were totally blocking the road to the Ravine lodge and blocking in a few hikers vehicles who had parked past the no entry signs. As I drove out there were a couple of vehicles parked in wide spots in the road back towards the highway. A general rant is that when parking on a narrow road in the winter common courtesy is to let the passengers out and then park directly up against or into the snow bank rather than leaving clearance between the vehicle and the snow bank (argh!).
I am somewhat curious on the intent of this parking lot. Because its not that large its just going to encourage folks to drive up and once the lot inevitably fills up, park along the length of the road making construction access difficult. IMHO it would be far better to leave the gate closed at the highway and keep the road plowed for construction to prevent the inevitable conflicts between construction traffic and hiker traffic.
I am curious if this is just the first step at permanently restricting the Ravine House trailhead general public parking to FS land outside the DOC boundary? The new lot is about 1 mile from turnaround on the Ravine House road, so what it will really do in the summer is just push the line of vehicles lining the sides of the road back down to the highway (it was getting close to being lined continuously from turnaround all the way down to the highway on nice weekends as it was. Since there is no turnaround at the new lot, cars will still will most likely attempt to drive the length of the road up past the lodge to the turnaround and then drive back down so there will still be lot of traffic on the road and the temptation for the general public to park wherever they can find a place. The slope in the area of the new parking lot is fairly steep, widening it out is not really viable without some massive earthwork. There are more suitable areas closer to the highway where a much wider lot could be built.
We didn't go down near the Ravine house construction site but we could look down and could see fairly complex foundation structure in place.
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