Caribou is a relatively small Mountain in western Maine but offers spectacular views in all directions. I hiked today with a guy I met coming off Sunday River Whitecap, the last time I climbed it. Scott met me at my house at 8:00 and we headed to the trail head at the end of the Bog Brook Road in West Bethel. I was looking for a nearby and relatively snow-free hike and had narrowed the choices to Kearsarge North in North Conway which has a mostly South facing trail and Caribou which has North Facing but is not too high. I let Scott choose. Since he had done Kearsarge several times in recent years, Caribou it was. I was able to drive to the gate and parking lot and although a bit soft, I was able to get into the parking lot. There was one car parked in the road next to the gate with Quebec plates.
Not sure what conditions would be like and not wanting to slog through knee deep snow, even for a short distance, we elected to carry snowshoes. We were glad we did. We geared up and set off about 9:00. The Trail starts as a road walk on a National Forest fire road. The formerly indistinct left turn a short distance from the gate, has been brushed out and the arrow that indicates the turn is now clearly visible. A tenth of a mile further, the trail turns off the fire road onto an old logging road and narrows to a mostly single file trail. There are several brook crossing but none are difficult and we managed all with dry feet. Approaching the Caribou- Speckled Wilderness Area sign, we started to encounter frequent patches of snow that increased as we got higher on the mountain.
We were not seeing any tracks from the occupants of the car from Quebec who we had supposed were ahead of us on the trail and did some speculating as what had become of them. We reached the trail junction around 11:15.
Here the Caribou Trail continues straight ahead and the Mud Brook Trail heads left toward the top.
At 2,400 feet we had gained most of the elevation and with .6 of a mile and 440 feet to climb to Caribou’s summit, we set off. The snow which had previously been patchy and less than a foot in depth, quickly turned to nearly full cover and was getting deeper. As long as we stayed on the packed trail we were fine but to get off meant post-holing in a couple of feet of snow. Once, Scott plunged his entire leg out of sight and we then put on the snow shoes and kept them on till we got to the open ledges of the summit.
We topped out at noon and were treated to long views in all directions. The clouds which had been forecast to dissipate, were still hanging around but even the Presidentials peeked out at us occasionally.
While we were getting our snowshoes back on, the sole occupant of the car came up the Mud Brook Trail. He spoke only broken English and with a heavy accent so we didn’t quiz him about which route he had taken. We started down and a short time later, the gentleman passed us on his way down. A few short minutes brought us again to the trail junction where we removed and stowed our snowshoes once again. About a half mile down the trail we were once again overtaken by the man from Quebec and wondered why he was behind us. His explanation, as best we could tell was that he had done a bushwhack to Tyler Notch that morning and climbed Caribou via the East ridge. Which explained why we hadn’t seen his tracks. After hitting the summit of Caribou he had done a bushwhack of Gammon Mountain to the North of Caribou trail. He was very obviously a strong and capable outdoorsman, he had done all that in about the same time it had taken Scott and I to climb Caribou.
He headed off and we behind him. We had an uneventful hike back to the parking area, arriving there about 3:00. All in all, a great day out.
No comments:
Post a Comment