ACC Maine Hiking Camp - Day 3

South Crocker, Reddington, and Crocker

September 16, 2014

Today had light rain in the morning. Nevertheless, Pat, Debbie, Lynne, Cathy, Na, Don, Sharon, and I drove down towards the ski hill, and with a bit of difficulty found the unmarked road down Caribou Valley. The drive in was fairly exciting with decrepit bridges and broken culverts, but with only one instance of bottoming out Don's car we arrived at the trailhead. A short jaunt further down the road brought us to the Appalachian Trail and we started climbing. The rain stopped as we went, and without too much trouble we got to the summit of South Crocker. We were fogged in, but we sat on the summit rock and enjoyed the views of the man-made lookout thanks to an acre sized swath of trees which were cut down here. We decided to head out to Reddington next, as we hoped the cloud cover would clear for Crocker later on in the day. The herd path was narrow, but fairly easy to follow. We did need to keep navigational wits about us as many other paths and survey cuts wound through the forest here. We ended up off track for a little bit, but a short bushwhack brought us back on the path. The summit had been clear cut with some survey anchors and a small cairn. After a quick break we continued on back the way we had come to South Crocker. Pat led this section and I took up the sweep position. Lynne and I took our own pace ascending South Crocker for the second time, Lynne complaining that I was making her climb four peaks instead of three. On South Crocker summit the sun came out so we enjoyed views of the Sugarloaf traverse which we had done two days prior. Unfortunately the clouds rolled in as we rolled out towards Crocker propper, or propper Crocker (say that five times fast), however, in a short stretch we were on top of another fogged in and treed summit. Another round of photos and we were off back to South Crocker again. Lynne realized now that I was making her climb five peaks today and let me know her displeasure of my earlier claim of a three peak day. I replied that I had not lied, she did climb three peaks just as I had promised, plus a fourth and fifth that I simply had neglected to mention. Anyway wih some grunting we got Lynne up South Crocker again, and then it was all downhill from there. We stopped for one final break at the Caribou pond campsite junction. As we finished our snacks it started raining lightly, but a short hop later we were walking down the road and back to the gate after an eight hour hiking day.

Gate blocks any further vehicle progress.