ACC Maine Hiking Camp - Day 7

Cranberry Peak

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September 20, 2014

Given that Cranberry Peak had defeated Jim and Paul earlier in the week, we decided on a full camp assault from three flanks simultaneously. Sharon and Don attacked from the west, Pat, Na, Cedric, and Judith took the east ridge, and finally Debbie, Jim, and I decided to make an attempt directly up the south face. The ridge groups were traversing, and our plan was to summit and take the west ridge trail down. We followed a snowmobile trail for about three kilometeres around the base of the mountain and then spied an old logging road which took us into the woods and upwards for a bit before it turned off in a direction which did not correspond to where we wished to go. The bushwhack was now on! For the most part it was fairly open forest with the occasional thick section and tangles of blowdown. Some parts were steep and we had to route find through a couple of rock bands, but for the most part it was a fairly benign forest scramble. We stopped for a short break at about 2200 feet beside a small creek and then pushed on towards the summit ridge. Some thick sections were found up here as we crossed the ridge and then back down the north face until we intersected the trail about 500 meters west of the summit. A short walk brought us to the summit cone, where we layered up for a cold and windy final push. After a few photos on top, we dropped down a bit to a sheltered spot where Don and Sharon were waiting. We had lunch and a celebratory summit beer, even though it was only 10:00. Sharon and Don decided to start heading down and we waited for a while to see if Pat's group would arrive. In a short time though, we started to get cold so packed up and headed downwards ourselves. At about the point we had originally finished the bushwhack, we looked back and saw Pat's group climbing the summit. We shouted, but they could not hear us in the wind. Continuing on, we made a short detour to the Cave Ledge which was a really neat rock formation. We spent a few minutes exploring this and then headed onwards and downwards. We met an enthusiastic little boy who was geocaching the mountain with his parents. A short bit later we were at the parking lot. As we did not have a vehicle, we just walked the last two kilometeres back to camp. A 5.5 hour day with a great bushwhack scramble concludes a fantastic week in Maine.


Following the snowmobile trail.


Forest scrambling.


Gravitaionally challenged tree.


Making like a moose on the ridge.


On the trail, the summit awaits.


Final ascent.


Finding our thrill on Cranberry Hill!


The Cave-Ledge.



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