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2023-04-14
Redington and the Crockers
Posted by pdittman on June 17th, 2017 in Hiking/Trekking

#57 and #58

Day 2 of our multi-day peakbagging week in the Carrabassett Valley region.  For today’s adventure, we targeted the three peaks – Redington, Crocker South, and Crocker, a closely-spaced group of three 4000 footers, accessed by a relatively short section on the Appalachian Trail.

Today was a day where we were reminded that circumstances and safety always take priority over goals and plans.

Access to the trail head was 4.4 miles off Rt. 27 on Caribou Valley Road (also called Caribou Pond Road by Google) – just slightly north of the Sugarloaf access road.  Unmarked, we initially missed the turnoff, but eventually found it roughly 50 yards from the transfer station entrance on the opposite side of the street.  The road seemed good, though less than 1/2 mile in, was a small paper sign saying the bridges on the road were under repair between the 8th and 16th of June (just our luck!), and if you enter, you might not be able to exit!  Spotting a worker in a large 18-wheeler, we confirmed the inaccessibility, so parked the car and decided to walk the extra 3 miles to the trail head.

Track from Caribou Pond Road, showing South Crocker and Redington
Track from Caribou Pond Road, showing South Crocker and Redington

Caribou Pond road was wide, with a gradual grade – indeed they’d finished one of the wooden bridges, working on the second.  At about 2.5 miles in, we came to a steel gate across the road, creating a small parking area, just ahead of a very tired looking metal grate bridge (weight limit: one ton).    Crossing the metal bridge, it was another 1/2 mile to the section where the AT cross the now smaller Caribou Pond ‘path’.    Turning right onto the AT, the grade was gradual for the first mile, then markedly steeper afterward – with some rock scrambling along the way.

The day was again hot, 80s+ with some humidity, so the going was slow.  Soon enough though, we reached the South Crocker summit.  Completely in the trees, it was good to have a bit of shade after the steep climb.

South Crocker Summit - in the woods
South Crocker Summit – in the woods

And here’s where the fun really started.  As with the day before, we had a choice – either North Crocker, about a mile, or head southward for 1.2 miles to Redington – which has the unique distinction of being one of two 4000 footers without a maintained path to the summit.    We decided on Redington – perhaps a good choice (get the tough one out of the way), but tough it was!!

Thankfully, there is a bit of a herd path to the summit, though it was hard to find the head.  Fortunately, we had a photo from one of the other 4000 footer websites where we could find certain rock formations.

Redington herd path.
Redington herd path. On the left is the outlook, the herd path breaks off to the right

And VERY thankfully, someone had tied orange ribbon to trees along the way – that and a waypoint on our GPS helped get us to the Summit.  The path was rough, with an elevation loss of over 600 feet, before climbing again.

Reaching the summit, there was a bit of a clearing – an old fire tower?   And we found the canister marking the summit, though didn’t leave any notes.    A bit of lunch, then return the way we came back to South Crocker, returning to the junction after 1pm.

Canister atop Redington
Canister atop Redington

A combination of factors – the heat, the difficulty in the herd path, the additional distance because of the closed road, and the recognition that the car was still 6 miles away (downhill is always harder!), we decided to leave North Crocker for another day and head down.    As we’d learned in our AMC training over the past weekend, it was 1) Safety, 2) fun, and 3) goals.  Today, we left one of our goals in the woods – for another time.

We did pass a few AT through hikers while descending – recall, this section of the AT passes from Rt 27, over North Crocker, down to Caribou Pond Road, then up to Spaulding/Sugarloaf.    We were surprised to hear of some “Nobos” – one had left Georgia in January, another in February – likely way ahead of “the bulge”…

Returning to Caribou Pond Road, we began the trek back to the car, and just in time – we’d both ran out of water on the way down the hill.   The second bridge had been finished by the time we passed through, though they were doing some cleanup on the culverts with the backhoe.  So it was just us, and the bugs on the road back to the car.

Two more 4000 footers to our list, though less than what we’d planned, but still a good day.  Read about our next day, hiking Saddleback and the Horns.

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