I headed up north to hike again this weekend. We had a strong cold front move through our area last week and when I arrived at the trailhead the temps were in the 40's (quite a drastic difference from the record heat the rest of the country has been seeing as of late -- and cold even for Maine in August).
I brought my cold weather gear, but unfortunately the "partly cloudy" forecast looked more like "mostly cloudy with a chance of rain". I hate the weather man.
With the winds gusting to near 40 mph I decided to skip the higher summits which were buried in the clouds anyway.
I settled on Mt. Avalon I've been up this mountain several times, so rather than doing the usual stop-and-snap-a-picture-every-few-minutes routine, I decided to see how fast I could get from trailhead to summit. It took 1 hr, 6 mins to cover the 1550 ft of gain over 1.9 miles. Not too bad considering the last 1/2 mile of this trail is extremely steep and rough.
At the summit it was cold and windy. The presidentials were still buried deep in the low cloud cover. I snapped some pictures and began the hike back down. I took lots of pictures of the steep, rough trail on the way down from the summit. I also stopped at Pearl and Beecher cascades to get a picture of the waterfalls. At Beecher Cascade I continued down the stream rather than immediately returning to the trail. The stream crosses the trail a short distance down anyway, and it's a nice alternative to the main trail between the cascades. With the water levels fairly low it was easy to rock-hop down the stream.
Once back at the car I was amazed at how full the trailhead parking lot was. It spilled over onto the road. It seemed that everyone was out Sunday!
The weather was actually starting to clear a bit so I decided to cross the road and hike the Saco Lake trail, a short trail that follows the shore of this small lake. I actually live in Saco, ME which is where the Saco river empties into the Atlantic. The river's source is this small pond 90 miles away. It's amazing because the pond isn't even as wide as the river where I live. As it winds it's way south east it picks up numerous tributaries, eventually becoming a major river.
The lake trail is nice, with a small but interesting cliff halfway through the hike.
After the lake trail I walked down the road a short way and hiked up to the top of Elephant Head, a rock formation/cliff on the Webster-Jackson trail that resembles an Elephant's Head. By this time the weather had started clearing up (of course!).
Pictures here:
http://www.mcschell.com/gallery/Avalon807?page=1Weeee!
~Mike
