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East Kennebago Maine Winter Bushwhack 3-4-07
Well, the time has come to kick off the quest to snag the Maine peaks on the NEHH list. so I am starting off this leg of the frenzy on East Kennebago. East Kennebago is considered an easy bushwhack, by and large it is. In the Summer you can shave off about 8 miles worth of hiking by driving to the washout at 2600' but what fun would that be? Doesn't a nice 11.6 mile hike sound better??? Saturdays plans to snag some 4000 footers were flushed down the toilet by the evil Friday snow, so Pamola and I decided to carpool up Saturday afternoon. He had found a place to stay in Wyman (between Sugarloaf and Stratton ME) so we ventured up there after scoping out some trails (this was half hike weekend half scouting mission weekend). We hit the trailhead at 8:45 after having some good food at "Mainely Yours" in Stratton. As we were preparing for the hike a pleasant surprise showed up! None other than MTNRUNR from VFTT! We knew he would be in the area but we were not anticipating running into him. He asked if he could join us, which of course we said yes. The Logging road was well packed by Snowmobilers up to Mile 3. The trail started off flat through previously logged land. around 1.4 miles we saw a Moose on the loose fleeing into the woods (not much of a sighting I guess). The road gradually got steeper until we came across the junction at mile 3. our turn was not packed by snowmobilers, so we had break trail for 2.8 miles. It wasn't bad really, there were several varieties of snow along the way. There was about 2/5 of a mile where the snow was of the awful sticky variety. There was between 4-8 inches of new snow on top of a previously packed base so it was by no means a huge energy hog. After the washout, the trail became more primitive. No more snow mobile tracks, all we had was the pack from the group that had hiked the mountain a week prior. This pack was very very handy as our effort was greatly reduced by its presence. My ski poles constantly reminded me that we were on top of about 3' of snow. We came across the fabled yellow blazed county boundary at 2950'. This is where the bushwhacking began. It was a very tame form of bushwhacking.. considering a path was more or less cleared, not to mention it was packed! At around 3300' the boundary reached the height of land, so the tracks veered off up a steep incline which was a huge pain to get traction on. There were virtually no blow downs along this path (there were some that were thoroughly buried though!) Sure enough after about 450' of climbed we came to a flat area, which led us to the summit canister. It was a relatively warm 23 degrees out at the summit which allowed us to hang around for 15 minutes or so. It took 4 hours to reach the summit. The descent was a blast -- well, part of it was. We cruised through the bushwhack portion sliding down the hill on our snow shoes. However when we reached the logging roads the sliding abruptly ended and the less than exciting 5 miles of minor decline began. Overall a very good trip. Good company and good times. I did acquire a new blister on the way however! grr! Special thanks to the group from the week before for breaking the trail! the effort to rebreak the trail was quite minimal thanks to you guys!
Click Here for the Hike Map
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