MacNaughton

June 25, 2016

Hike-a-Palooza weekend. I intended to lead a MacNaughton hike, but Grant wanted to hike it too, and also wanted to lead, so I easily handed over the reins, intent on just hiking and socializing for a change. After a too short sleep at Keene Farm, I was out of my tent at first light and heating water for my coffee at the picnic table. We met at the parking lot for 06:00, and then once our group of six (Grant, Hai, Kellen, Kevin, Jennifer, and myself) were fully assembled, drove off to the Loj. Several were in shorts... I wonder if they knew what kind of hike they were getting into. Travel went quickly down the Indian Pass trail and in short order we were stopped to delayer to t-shirts. Several articles of clothing were seen to be dropped along this route and we made mental note to maybe clean some of them up on our way out later in the day. We stopped for a break at Scott's Clearing on the old dam, where a lot of new growth trees have made this place to be not much of a clearing anymore, but still great views towards Wallface mountain. A few pools in the water of the brook looked tempting for a swim later in the day... we made a second mental note of this. The trail turned upwards, and also turned into the pits as the trail to Wallface Ponds is a pretty awful mucky mess. Jennifer in particular seemed to be very adept at finding the deepest mudholes to sink her knees into. Nevertheless after a lot of slurping and cursing we arrived at the ponds which is quite a nice spot. MacNaughton itself puts in a showing here, and we all looked at the heavily treed mountain we were about to whack up. Grant gave navigational control over to me, so I brought us around the south edge of Upper Wallface pond and after crossing the outlet we pushed into the woods. The internet mentioned a herd-path, but we saw no signs of it. A short but dense whack brought us to a smaller pond where I had hoped to scoot around the east shore. Dense brush and deep muck had us traversing around the shorline to the western edge, and after several small tributary crossings we pushed upwards onto the slopes of MacNaughty. Up we went, checking the compass occasionally to make sure we were heading the right direction. The deer flies became horrendous and we cursed and swatted as we crawled through the brush and blowdown. Some areas were less dense and we travelled quickly, but other areas were thick and cliffy and had to be worked around, through, under, or clambered over. The group slowed down as the going got tough, but the occasional peeks of the ridgeline above us encouraged us to push on. Finally we broke out onto the ridge and scampered along the well worn path here to the sign where a welcome break was taken to refuel and enjoy the limited view, all the while swatting the swarms of flies around our heads. I decided to try a slightly different route down by traversing the ridge past the center summit and then entering the woods at an apparent break in the brush, which ended up being a moose push. Fortunately the gravity assist mode was now on which made clambering through the thick growth slightly easier. I aimed slightly west of the swampy pond and for the most part this route worked quite well. In seemingly no time at all we popped out onto Upper Wallface pond and we worked our way around the shoreline back to the trail, stopping once more to feed ourselves and the flies. A swim was tempting until we saw the massive leaches inhabitting this pretty lake. Back to muck-land trail, we slurped along until past Scott pond where I finally ditched my gaiters (a little bit prematurely) which was a relief in the heat. The short wearing crowd now were sporting great looking legs almost artistically decorated with a mixture of scratches, bug-bites, blood, and mud. At Indian brook I quickly dumped my clothes and took a wonderful, but short-lived bath in the freezing cold pool. Grant followed suit (or should I say unsuit), as others washed their feet and refilled water bottles. The hike out only took a little more than an hour, but felt like eternity. We busied ourselves with looking for the abandonned clothing, only finding a slightly damp cotton sweatshirt, which we hauled back to civilization. I could not convince people to check out the view along the water at Heart Lake, everyone's mind filled with visions of beer and food. Arrived back at the Loj after an eleven hour hike to find Katharina's group (they had hiked Marcy) enjoying refreshments on the porch. We all drove back to Keene Farm and spent the night eating, drinking, and being merry around the fire with the rest of the hike-a-pallooza crowd.

Exploring Indian Pass Brook.