On the AT - Rangeley to Caribou Valley Road

September 7, 2008 | Miles: 13.5
Start: Rangeley
End: Old woods road past Orbeton Stream

Photos of the hike

Although we ended up having 6 "yeahs" to my "does it count?" question (2 via the blog; 1 via email; and 3 by phone), of course, what did we do this weekend? Go out and hike the section again. Yes, I am clearly insane. But I think Jamie said it best when he said it counted unless you had set a goal to hike the whole thing in a certain amount of time. To me, when we stopped hiking in 2005, I wanted to finish the rest of the trail we had remaining, all northbound, until we were done. To me, it would only count if we did it after 2005. So, case closed, we were hiking this weekend, unless weather made things dangerous.

I was up at 5:30am, checking the weather channel and online. It had rained a lot here on the coast (5 inches in Portland), but I couldn't find anything indicating that there was severe flooding in the Rangeley area, or that the forecast was calling for lots of additional rain up north. So, we headed out around 7am, a bit later than planned due to all the hemming and hawing and confirming that we weren't headed out into disaster.

But before we could start hiking, we had to park a car at our end point on Caribou Valley Road. Although we had run the road last weekend, it was much worse to drive it! Lots of bumps, sketchy bridges, potholes, puddles, big pointy rocks, oh my! Those 4.5 miles (and back) took a while. We finally started hiking at 10:45am. It was overcast, cool and breezy, but didn't seem too bad.

Our big climb for the day was Saddleback. When we hiked this section in 2000, we had beautiful views along the summit and the whole ridgeline. Not so much this time. As we neared treeline, we stopped to put on our raincoats, hat and gloves. The wind was whipping like crazy. It actually was sort of fun, in a crazy sort of way, to be making our way up and along the rocky summit being buffeted around by the wind. To make this section even better, we ran into Ghost, an old hiking friend from 2005. We knew he was out hiking with a friend, but had assumed they'd be hiking north and didn't expect to run into him at all. As we were hiking up, we noticed two people hiking south towards us. Snowman said, "Well, there are at least 2 other crazy hikers out here today." And it was Ghost! We had a nice 10 minute conversation, standing on the side of Saddleback in the wind and clouds, before continuing on.

The wind didn't relent and the terrain stayed above treeline for a few miles as we went over Saddleback and the Horn. Being constantly hit by the wind was tiring us out, but we knew most of our above-treeline terrain was done for the day after the Horn. We dropped back down into the woods for a bit, but were up in the wind once again over Saddleback Junior. However, on the descent off Junior ("Junior!" "I told you, don't call me Junior!"), we encountered a wonderful field of blueberries right off the trail. Despite the wind and clouds and cold temps, we couldn't resist stopping for a few minutes to pick and enjoy the gorgeous plump and very sweet blueberries. Yum!

We reached Poplar Ridge lean-to at 4:50, but ended up deciding to push past to get in a few more miles. Ghost had told us about a sweet campsite just past Orbeton Stream down in the valley. As we were cresting Poplar Ridge, we realized the clouds were lifting and we had a view down into the valley as the late afternoon light hit the trees. Very nice. The descent to the stream was steep and we ended the day with a swift, deep and cold ford of Orbeton Stream, followed by a quick nasty 100 foot climb up to the old railroad game where we found a great campsite, just as Ghost had promised.

Although we didn't arrive until 6:15, we had camp set up, water filtered, dinner made and eaten, food hung and chores done by 8:00pm. Then it was into the tent to snuggle in our warm sleeping bags and get a good night's sleep!

September 8, 2008 | Miles: 10.5 (plus 0.5 non-AT miles)
Start: Old woods road past Orbeton Stream
End: Caribou Valley Road

It was a cold morning, but the mellow climb up along Sluice Brook and to Perham Stream warmed us up. It was still windy, but there was a fair amount of blue sky above. It promised to be a good day. Our big climb of the morning was Lone Mountain, which Snowman remembered from last time as a climb that almost killed him. I think that this was a theme from our trip in 2000! :-) But seriously, that was 8 years ago and we have vastly improved upon not only our experience since then but also totally revamped our gear. It makes a huge difference. Anyway, up Lone we went. It didn't kill us. We continued on, down to Spaulding Mountain Lean-to and up Spaulding Mountain. Not much for views along this stretch, but the woods were nice. Deep and green, with hints of red from the bunchberries lining the trail. We stopped for lunch along the trail, and sat in the sun for a bit.

We ran into a few hikers as we hiked along, and chatted for a bit before continuing along. We came to the final 2 mile descent down to the river and the road. I remembered this descent from the last time around, remembering the rain and how steep and scary and horrible it was. Well, this time around we had some nice views down into the valley, but it was steep. It was basically a rock jumble at a 45 degree angle, which required some deft maneuvering at times and made for some slow going. Still, I moved along as best I could, and we eventually reached the river. Someone had nicely laid a plank across two rocks, which spanned one of the raging rapids below. It was a bit sketchy, but we made it across without having to ford, or falling in! Then a quick climb to the road and we were done by 2pm. Hurray!

Flora and fauna notes: Didn't see much at all in terms of fauna on Sunday. Only one bird flitting about in the wind atop Saddleback. Diapensia, sheep laurel and blueberries along the Saddleback ridgeline. Monday brought out a few more birds, with 2 Gray jays seen in the trees near Spaulding as well as several chickadees and juncos. Lots of red bunchberries, mushrooms and a few Indian pipe. Some of the hobblebush leaves are turning red and purple, and the birch and maple leaves are beginning to turn yellow and orange down low. As we drove along Caribou Valley Road we noticed lots of black (or brown) butterflies with yellow edging all along the wings. Very pretty. Don't know what kind they were.