Baxter State Park

I haven't been to Baxter State Park since I was a kid.  And that is a long time ago.  This little thing called COVID-19 came through, maybe you have heard about it, and canceled the IronMan my wife was going to compete in.  No problem we would go and stay in the hotel we already booked in Canada for a vacation.  Nope, they closed their borders to us dirty Americans. can't really blame them.   Our third choice turned out to be a lot of fun.  We got an opportunity to rent a camp in Millinocket Maine instead.  OK, so Millinocket turns out to be the latest hyped COVID hot spot which made national news a few days before we got there. You can't escape this shit.  No big deal, we weren't planning on going anyplace more public than a 209,644 acre national park.  We're going to take our chances.  Enough on COVID.

The rock shows what the mountain would look like without fog.

We packed the car and embarked on the 3 hour drive to the camp.  Once we got there we took a quick ride on the Golden Road.  This road is a private dirt road where logging trucks travel 70MPH.  Luckly we didn't see one and decided that we would avoid it in the future.

Packed to the gills.

Our first trip brought us to the ice caves. The trail was almost as interesting as the caves themselves.  It was strewn with glacial erratic boulders.

Walking through 2 erratics.

There was still some ice at the bottom in late August.

A short side trail brings you to a view over several lakes.

The next big outing was a trip from the Baxter south gate to the South Branch Campground at the north end of the park on the Park Tote Road.  If you are into groading I would highly recommend it.  I planned a loop trip that would have been close to 130 miles but an out and back seemed more manageable.

I'm just going to post a bunch of random (kinda boring) road pictures

so that anybody considering this ride

can see what the surface looks like.

I like my Di2 bike.  I don't think it is a game changing technology like some but it generally works well.  Some people complain that they don't' need another thing to charge but I'm hear to tell you that you don't need to charge it that often.  So infrequent in fact that I didn't remember the last time I charged it.  I know it was before camping. I first thought of it after I had traveled 3-1/2 hours away from my charger with no known bike shop for 100 miles. Hmmm. How long does it take to go from flashing green to solid red?  Don't know.  Why do the red and green indicators come on simultaneously? Don't know.  So I was pretty conservative with my shifts, yeah, I tried not to shift at all in case I really needed to.

The reward at the halfway point.

So far we are up to about 10 hours in the north Maine woods and do we see any Moose? No. We saw a lot of great scenery but I was really hoping for a moose.

Ledge Falls was a nice place to stop for a snack but it was too cool to want to swim.

In all it was a great ride.  We were on cross bikes which were a great choice.  No need to go full mountain.  Of course a gravel bike (cross bike with tires that are 4mm wider) would be great.

It turns out that I probably could have shifted for another few hundred miles.  The green and red indicators together indicate that it is in "Manual Mode" Maybe it has been doing that since I updated the software a year ago.

4.4 miles to the peak, IDK, maybe it will take an hour. :)

Our next adventure brought us to the big rock pile itself. We chose Abol trail because it was the only parking reservation we could get.  GET YOUR PARKING RESERVATIONS EARLY.  After reading a lot of trail reports about how "serious" this trail was I packed way too much stuff.

The views are pretty good.

My wife has a pretty good case of acrophobia and we knew this hike might push her limits in places.  We also knew we weren't going over the Knife Edge on this trip.  But after the first wave of panic and thinking she would turn back, she did it! I'm proud of you honey!

If you click on this and zoom in you can see my wife trying to hide from the mountain.

For the first mile my wife was in "gazelle mode" and we did it in about 24 minutes. The next one in about 40 and the climby mile in about 1:10.

It really is just a big pile of rocks.

Maybe I am adding too many pictures, caption this.

Made it to the top in about 2.5 hours. 

The view is worth the climb.

That's all I've got to say about that.

Camping Groading

Our annual camping trip brought me to the land of dirt roads and hills. Well the first trip out didn't have any hills but it did have a few segments I was going to try for.  But my effort fell flat.

I had a 26 second lead until this happened.

Then the battery in my watch died.

I climbed a hill with no view.

Otherwise it was a great ride.  My second ride of the trip was somewhat unplanned.  I headed out to the north of the campground.  About 10 miles out I decided to ride 10 miles further to the top of Evens Notch.  I hadn't planned on a 40 mile ride, luckily the national parks have water at campgrounds.

Pump up your tires and pump up your water

I'd never climbed Evens from the south.  My goal wasn't so much a KOM but to make it to the top. My legs felt like stumps by the end of this ride and I'm not sure why.

Made it.

The last ride of the week was the big adventure.  It started with climbing Hurricane Mountain Road.  This beauty is a 2 mile climb with an average grade of 10% and a maximum grade of  27%.  It's a bitch.  It seemed steeper this time.  This wasn't the biggest hill of the climb but it was definitely the hardest.

That trail doesn't look that great.

I took a beautiful dirt road that follows a rolling river for about 5 miles up a mountain.  When I got to my planned cutoff to get back to camp it looked not all that trail like.  So I continued up the better trail option only to find out that it eventually turned into a rocky hiking trail. But on my way I did get to see a moose.

Excuse me sir, may I pass through your trail?

I eventually convinced him or her to move off to the side but it was definitely on the moose's schedule.

I also found a small patch of chanterelle mushrooms.

So back to the not so trail like trail I went.  Some parts were quite fine.  Some parts were swampy and buggy.  It was one of those trails where after a certain point you just give up trying to keep your feet dry and you are trudging through calf deep water.

But I made it to the other side. 

Since i was already wet and muddy and there are no shower facilities where we were camping I took advantage of a very refreshing (AKA cold) mountain stream. I'd kind of like to find this spot again.  Did I mention it was hot out? I stayed wet for about 10 minutes.

There was a nice pool that was deep enough to submerge in.

About 2 1/2 hours later than expected I was done.  10 miles/hour and 100' of climbing/mile.  I'm a tired puppy.

No Strava, I don't think I will be riding this route again.  Maybe pieces of it without the hike-a-bike.

Life is Good.