Bombadil
Active member
2-7-13
Crockers and Redington
Thanks to Jeremy and others for providing details on the 11th hole shortcut. Started from the golf course and quickly followed old tracks to the road, even bushwhacking one only needed microspikes all day today. As others mentioned the turn for the AT up S Crocker is very easy to miss, even when looking for it. If I hadn't seen some tracks from someone earlier this week I might have walked right past it. Hard to believe it's not better marked or signed. Followed some tracks up the AT to S Crocker, navigation was not an issue but the open woods in the lower section might be tough to break out post storm since the trail isn't obvious in the more open areas.
Made quick work over to N Crocker and back. I followed an old GPS track of mine to Redington. There were signs of tracks from after the thaw but they seemed to appear and disappear, they were a nice guide in addition to the occasional surveyors tape. The hardest section is definitely the first 15 mins from S Crocker. Relatively easy going once you hit the more open woods a ways above the clear cut but from the col up to Redington still was a lot of pushing and brute force work through thick growth getting dumped on with fresh snow on a very cold morning (temps at my car were negative at the start and single digits at the finish so pretty chilly up high). I retraced my steps and took the old ATV trail/ snowmobile trail/bushwhack to hit the road and walked back out. All the pushing through dense growth exposed an ear to minor frostnip/bite but besides the bone chilling cold was a pleasant solo morning hike. I haven't uploaded my GPS but I suspect it was around 15 miles and since Tom Caldwell was driving up for an afternoon hike I pushed myself to move quickly so he wouldn't be waiting around. The hike took 6.5h but could have been much longer had I not had the occasional footprint to help with navigation, thanks guys.
E Kennebago
Boy what a day this wound up being. I met up with Tom in the late afternoon and we decided we'd go for one of the easier 6 pack mountains since it was still early. We had a GPS track for the standard summer route but due to a software error in a file transfer my topo was wiped off my Garmin so we went through a lot of trial and error on the lower logging roads to get the right one. We parked at the gravel pit since a backhoe blocked access to the snowmobile trail and we couldn't clear the berm in low clearance. So that added a solid 4 miles each way but Tom and I sucked it up kept going. Btw we did the usual logging road approach to the SE of the summit/boundary swath/uphill bushwhack to the summit. The upper portion of the old atv path was heavily beaten up by moose and made it pretty treacherous in microspikes and bony in snowshoes. After the storm expect there to be tons of hidden soft holes in the powder, I'd highly recommend snowshoes through here to avoid an injury. We found the boundary swath and followed Bryan's tracks to the straight shot to the summit but heavy moose activity made it impossible to pick up their path but it was easy whacking, I made it 2/3 of the way up before opting to switch to snowshoes.
We hit the summit at 11:30 pm with temps a bit below -5 F and retraced our steps for the very long 7 or so mile walk out. Got back to the car at 2:30 and with our wrong turns on the logging roads earlier in the evening it took a full 8 hours but the darkness and cold probably had a role to play in that (almost went through 2 sets of batteries on my headlamp and gps. We walked right past one of the junctions and didn't even see the uphill logging road in the dark with fading headlamps). It probably could be done in 6-7h if done in daylight and one has a gps unit that has the damn topo map loaded on the device. I think it wound up being a 28-32 or so mile day for me but with the storm coming in I wanted to take advantage of the conditions, so thanks Tom for the company on the back half of the day on one of the 'easier' ones :/ Thanks also to Bryan for the tracks to follow up through the swath!
edit: update. was 18.6 miles of wandering for E Kennebago, so it was a 34 mile day. I figured out the gps problem was my sd card getting knocked around in switching batteries.
Pat
pcushing21 at yahoo dot com
Crockers and Redington
Thanks to Jeremy and others for providing details on the 11th hole shortcut. Started from the golf course and quickly followed old tracks to the road, even bushwhacking one only needed microspikes all day today. As others mentioned the turn for the AT up S Crocker is very easy to miss, even when looking for it. If I hadn't seen some tracks from someone earlier this week I might have walked right past it. Hard to believe it's not better marked or signed. Followed some tracks up the AT to S Crocker, navigation was not an issue but the open woods in the lower section might be tough to break out post storm since the trail isn't obvious in the more open areas.
Made quick work over to N Crocker and back. I followed an old GPS track of mine to Redington. There were signs of tracks from after the thaw but they seemed to appear and disappear, they were a nice guide in addition to the occasional surveyors tape. The hardest section is definitely the first 15 mins from S Crocker. Relatively easy going once you hit the more open woods a ways above the clear cut but from the col up to Redington still was a lot of pushing and brute force work through thick growth getting dumped on with fresh snow on a very cold morning (temps at my car were negative at the start and single digits at the finish so pretty chilly up high). I retraced my steps and took the old ATV trail/ snowmobile trail/bushwhack to hit the road and walked back out. All the pushing through dense growth exposed an ear to minor frostnip/bite but besides the bone chilling cold was a pleasant solo morning hike. I haven't uploaded my GPS but I suspect it was around 15 miles and since Tom Caldwell was driving up for an afternoon hike I pushed myself to move quickly so he wouldn't be waiting around. The hike took 6.5h but could have been much longer had I not had the occasional footprint to help with navigation, thanks guys.
E Kennebago
Boy what a day this wound up being. I met up with Tom in the late afternoon and we decided we'd go for one of the easier 6 pack mountains since it was still early. We had a GPS track for the standard summer route but due to a software error in a file transfer my topo was wiped off my Garmin so we went through a lot of trial and error on the lower logging roads to get the right one. We parked at the gravel pit since a backhoe blocked access to the snowmobile trail and we couldn't clear the berm in low clearance. So that added a solid 4 miles each way but Tom and I sucked it up kept going. Btw we did the usual logging road approach to the SE of the summit/boundary swath/uphill bushwhack to the summit. The upper portion of the old atv path was heavily beaten up by moose and made it pretty treacherous in microspikes and bony in snowshoes. After the storm expect there to be tons of hidden soft holes in the powder, I'd highly recommend snowshoes through here to avoid an injury. We found the boundary swath and followed Bryan's tracks to the straight shot to the summit but heavy moose activity made it impossible to pick up their path but it was easy whacking, I made it 2/3 of the way up before opting to switch to snowshoes.
We hit the summit at 11:30 pm with temps a bit below -5 F and retraced our steps for the very long 7 or so mile walk out. Got back to the car at 2:30 and with our wrong turns on the logging roads earlier in the evening it took a full 8 hours but the darkness and cold probably had a role to play in that (almost went through 2 sets of batteries on my headlamp and gps. We walked right past one of the junctions and didn't even see the uphill logging road in the dark with fading headlamps). It probably could be done in 6-7h if done in daylight and one has a gps unit that has the damn topo map loaded on the device. I think it wound up being a 28-32 or so mile day for me but with the storm coming in I wanted to take advantage of the conditions, so thanks Tom for the company on the back half of the day on one of the 'easier' ones :/ Thanks also to Bryan for the tracks to follow up through the swath!
edit: update. was 18.6 miles of wandering for E Kennebago, so it was a 34 mile day. I figured out the gps problem was my sd card getting knocked around in switching batteries.
Pat
pcushing21 at yahoo dot com
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