August 29, 2008
It was cold this morning, causing me to force myself out of the sleeping bag about 6:30. I was on the way to the outhouse when I saw Ed.
"Did you see her?" Ed asked.
"See who?" I asked.
"The moose," replied Ed. "There was a cow right over there for several minutes."
"I guess I just missed her," I said.
A little earlier, Darcy had gone over to Leslie's tent. Leslie is originally from California and part of her mission on this trip is to see a moose. We had a feeling we would see one in the morning so Leslie had asked Darcy who is an early riser to wake her if she saw a moose.
"Leslie," Darcy said.
"What?" Leslie replied.
"The moose is here," Darcy said.
Leslie's next word was probably the funniest thing anyone said all week. She responded with "Already".
All Darcy could think of was: "What? Did you order the moose for 7:00."
I got a good laugh at this when it was relayed to me later.
I fixed myself some oatmeal and got ready for the day. Five of us would be making the long drive up the dusty tote road to The Travelers. I first spied these mountains last year as I crossed the Knife Edge on Katahdin. They've been on my mind ever since. On this hike it would be Bob, Darcy, Annie, Leslie, and myself. The weather was 'socked in', but Bob assured us that it was morning fog and would burn off. We loved his positive attitude. We were briefly on the Pogy Notch Trail . . .
. . . before coming to the North Traveler Trail.
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We waisted no time going up. Within minutes we were looking down at South Branch Pond and across to South Branch Mountain.
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A little balancing act
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Darcy, who had hiked The Travelers before, had told us to each bring a container for blueberries. She was right. They were everywhere. It was a tough hike. Tough in the sense that I kept getting distracted by the blueberries. I would pick for a few minutes and then catch up with the group.
Heading up to North Traveler
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"If we are ever going to finish this hike, we will have to put blinders on our eyes so we can't see the blueberries," said Darcy while picking the small, delicious fruit.
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Leslie and Annie nearing North Traveler
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A few minutes later, we were on the 3144' summit of North Traveler
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I forget who took this picture of me, possibly Leslie.
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On to The Traveler
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I ate my peanut butter sandwich. Now I had another container for more of these blueberries.
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By now Bob was pretty sick of blueberries.
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This pile of rocks wasn't part of the trail, but Darcy couldn't resist climbing it.
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The group nearing The Traveler.
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This mountain was actually a volcano. I've lived in Maine eight years and never realized Maine had volcanos.
I'm assuming that it is dormant and couldn't find any type of whole in the top.
"Where's the hole?" I asked.
"They filled it with rocks," joked Darcy.
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The mountain falls nearly 500 feet short of being a 4000 footer, but there is enough prominence to make it onto the list of New England's 50 finest. This makes #28 for me. The view was limited because of the fog. Speaking of which, when was this 'morning' fog going to burn off? After all, Bob promised.
Lunch on the summit
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On to Peak of the Ridges. What's that? Some blue in the sky. Looks like Bob is going to keep his promise.
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There's the top.
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Almost there
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Oh man! It was a false summit. There's the true summit.
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The group was a few minutes ahead of me, so I stopped to take a video clip. FYI - In the narration of the video clip I incorrectly referred to Peak of the Ridges as Pinnacle Peak.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ A few minutes later we bagged our third 3000 footer of the day.
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Looking across to North Traveler
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Enjoying the summit
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Looking back up to Peak of the Ridges
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We've got to lose a lot of elevation to get back down to the ponds.
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This ledge was a little off the trail, but I couldn't resist climbing it.
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Neither could Darcy or Bob
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I love Baxter State Park!!!
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I took another video clip before dropping below treeline.
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Down, down, down we went until we got to the trail junction. This sign indicates where we were.
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We were now back on Pogy Notch Trail with 1.5 miles to go.
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At one point, the trail came within a few feet of Lower South Branch Pond. I wanted to jump in but Bob said it would be better back at the other end. He was right about today's weather, so I had no reason to argue with him.
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He was right. There was a pristine area for swimming at the end of the trail. Unfortunately, there was no sand. After eleven miles of hiking on rocks we now had to walk on rocks with our bare feet if we wanted to swim. It hurt my feet but the cold water felt great. Here's a view of Lower South Branch Pond with The Traveler on the left and Peak of the Ridges on the right.
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It was a great day, but I wasn't in a hurry to eat any more blueberries. I stuffed myself with them. That evening our group was joined by Mike Milos and Al from Canada. Now that Mike, the fire god, was with us my temporary fire god privileges were revoked.
As I prepared my dinner that night with lots of fresh vegetables, Mike commented, "You've come a long way. Last year that can opener came out one to many times."
"Yes, I've come a long way since then," I said. "This year I'm going for the most improved award."
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