Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Digging out of Storm Juno!

I'll take storm Juno as an excuse to post some pictures!  You should know I go nuts prior to any snowstorm forecasted.  Maybe it's unreasonable, but I just get very excited.  Typically a snowstorm means I bring out the tractor the next day to clean up all the snow and ford a path to civilization.  As a tractor enthusiast, this is an enjoyable activity, even despite horrible weather conditions!  (It's not so bad when you know you have a warm woodstove to come in to.)

The snow lasted all day on the 27th, into the night, and dropped another 3 inches or so overnight.  Friday we are expecting more?  I am running out of places to put the snow.  Below are a selection of pictures I took to document this monstrosity of a storm.

Tuesday midday, Wombat sits patiently...
Quite blowy, so it left some patches bare and others
with about 2 feet.

Took the baby tractor out to snowblow some out of the way.

The weapon of choice.  44hp 4x4 POWER!
(Snowblower was having issues...went to the bucket method)


Wednesday morning, round 2 of clearing.
This is one of 7 piles!

I may have to make a quinzhee out of one of these piles.

[Insert some cheesy quote about walking into the distance.]

Our cabin.  Luckily there wasn't too much shoveling to
be done because TRACTOR.
Yay.  A clean driveway.  Ready for...more snow I suppose.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Tackling Tumbledown (sort of) in Winter

I've caught up to current events!  I am very excited to share that (spoiler alert) Eliot completes his first winter summit on this trip.  Okay y'all can stop reading now.  If nitty-gritty stuff bores you, that is.  As is my nature, this trip involved an enormous (possibly excessive) amount of planning. This time, Sid joined me and Eliot on our goal to conquer a mountain summit together in winter.  (I think the trick was to put me behind Sid so I can't hike too fast, but I can't be sure.)

To allow for a start earlier than ever seen before, we crashed the night before in Waldoboro.  Fine dining and extra bedrooms were to be had. And the Lord saw that it was good.  Precisely at 4 in the morning, we tried our best to get everything ready and be on the road by 5.  Hah.  I tried to make my family recipe of Swedish pancakes, and the first half of the batch wasn't even worthy of feeding to the chickens.  I managed to make a plate of cakes, although we were late getting out the door because I had issues packing it all down the gullet.  But they say to have a big breakfast before hiking in the cold, so a big breakfast I had.  (I'd show a picture but it's not worth your pain in looking.)

There was a concern that the road to Tumbledown mountain was not maintained in the winter.  Or gated...we weren't sure.  The Byron Town office was of no help in determining road conditions, considering their extremely limited hours.  Google Earth street view and outdated forums were all we had to go on, so we hoped for the best, and planned that if worst comes to worst, we could drive a bit further to Old Speck for the day.  With the help of a stupid GPS and some manual navigation, we found our way to the back roads of western Maine.

Nearing the mountain.
The hardest part of traveling with warm-blooded humans is their incessant need to turn the heat on all the time.  We discovered that I must not wear clothes, and my warm-blooded friends must wear many clothes, and the heat must be on.  As the day got brighter, we got silly, as seen below.

Life is not to be taken seriously.

We came upon the road to Tumbledown, and we became aware that it was not plowed.  There had been some traffic, presumably to the cemetery we had spotted on google maps, and evidence of a snowmobile or two.  Being the highfalutin crew that we are, we challenged the snow with much optimism from Wombat.  Roughly 3 miles of snow-covered road passed, though after the cemetery, we were breaking trail ourselves.  I will admit it was a very different kind of driving - the kind where traction is a mere concept and you must keep moving or get stuck.  Quite fun once you get used to it.  We made it to a clearing area on Morgan Rd, which would bring us to the Parker Ridge Trail which ascends the southeast side of Tumbledown.  Wombat got into the trailhead: we just had to hope he'd get back out later.

After a messy turning around, we layered up!

Forgetting our pre-hike "in-case-we-die" selfie, we snapped one a ways in:


We were breaking trail, which wasn't too bad because the snow was less than 6 inches deep and there were three of us.  Eliot and I chose to bring snowshoes, but Sid was brave and bare-booted it.  Turns out that was probably the better decision.  Regardless, the trail started off with a nice gentle incline.  The trail blazes seemed to each be a different shade of blue, which made them hard to find at times.  None too hard for us though!  We approached the steep incline to Parker Ridge.  Quite soon, we found some excellent outlooks along the way, and took the opportunity to stop, eat and drink.  The temperatures were not what you'd call warm, but they stayed between 0° and 10° along the whole trip.  Most importantly, there was hardly a breeze, making things oodles easier.

I found me a headdress.  The Birch Whisperer.

Despite foot warmers, my feet were cold.  No reason to be unhappy.
At this point, I decided to break out some hand warmers.  Having a reputation for hiking quickly, they left me to fend for myself.  Not much unlike what they do on Top Gear when something goes wrong on a journey.  Filled with rage at this point, I put the still cold hand warmers in my glove liners, clipped on the snowshoes, and powered up the hill. After some time, I heard some familiar noises of giggling in the distance, and the crunch of snowshoes.  As part of the herd again, we spotted an outlook again, along with some bunny tracks.  They were everywhere the higher we got on the mountain.  They looked an awful lot like boot prints...possibly to be explained later.

In the final ascend to Parker Ridge, the trail got quite slippery, which proved challenging for our snowshoe-less contestant.  Eliot stormed up ahead, exclaiming about the views of the surrounding area.  Exposed rocks in this area were glazed in ice.  Thankful for spikes on the snowshoes.  I had brought microspikes along in preparation for these conditions.  After some sliding on the ice in concave areas, I found a flat spot to switch over to the spikes and eat chocolate.  I left my snowshoes in the snow here to save weight for the summit run.  I wasn't worried about theft since we had the mountain to ourselves that day.

It was here that we discovered our true identities.  The one without snowshoes was indeed found to be producing the bunny tracks.  The one with the ice axe turned out to be linked to the moose tracks we had seem earlier.  Tropical moose tracks that is.  I became known as the Arctic Parrot, also called the Kea in some regions.

A rock with Webb Lake in the background.
Trying to imitate the Egyptian drawings?  Little Jackson in the background.
Once on Parker Ridge, we got our first view of Tumbledown Mountain and a beautiful tarn, Tumbledown Pond.  I was amazed how dramatic it was considering it's not really a huge mountain.  Just over 3000 feet, and there are all these sharp Alp-like features.  We had a discussion between us, and decided that we liked looking at Tumbledown so much that we wanted to summit Little Jackson instead, which is 3434 feet tall. Only problem...no trail from Parker Ridge to the summit.  A bushwhack was in order.  This is a relatively safe undertaking in the winter since you have tracks to guide you back to safety.  We also had Eliot's GPS tracking us the whole way as a precaution, or for entertainment if you prefer.

Tumbledown, and the pond.  Beautiful in winter.
I selfishly voted that I would find the route up to Little Jackson.  This was good for several reasons: it would tire me out quicker, thus making our hiking paces more similar; I love route-finding; and there were no objections.  There is a large talus/boulder field at the base of the final ascent to Little Jackson, and as we approached it, we discovered that with waist-deep snow drifts in places, getting stuck between large rocks was not what we wanted.  This required some sidewinding to find a safer place to start the ascent.  Eventually, I found a spot that looked safer, and up we went, switchbacking frequently because of the sheer steepness.

Partway up, and a new view of Tumbledown.  With Tropical Moose.
During our ascent, 22 wind turbines eventually came into sight.  I was certain these were the same ones I saw during my trips to Old Speck. Turns out they are all part of Record Hill Wind in Roxbury, ME.  It's so cool to see initiative in wind power relatively close to home.

Record Hill Wind.  50.6 MW system.
After several breaks, and the warmth seeming to oscillate from my left to right feet, but never in both, we could see the summit approaching.  With a domed summit, there were several false summits, which was the worst feeling.  Not nearly as bad as on Saddleback Mountain, which I hiked in summer of 2014.  There were a good five or six false summits there.

Nearly there.
We made it to the summit and didn't have too grand of a time because it was cold and we needed to eat something.  Eating something meant getting cold.  Circular problems you can see.  It was blustery up on top, hence the ski masks.  I have to say Eliot was very, very excited to have completed a winter summit of a substantial mountain.  I was excited not to have frozen feet, and to chug some buttery hot chocolate.  Not to downplay the summit at all, since I am rarely one to turn back, but sometimes winter decides you ain't gonna summit, and I was happy we persevered today.

Congrats to Eliot!
Successful summit.
With food/beverage in our stomachs, we started the descent.  There was talk of heading over to the tarn, but the prudent thing was to head down, in hopes of driving out on the snowy road before dark.  The rest of the "massif" will be conquered this coming summer, including a part on the Loop Trail called Fat Man's Misery.  I read this is a narrow fissure in the rock with iron rungs to assist climbing.  Sounds pretty fun to me, and it won't go unconquered for long.

It's amazing how fast the way down went.  Cold feet were rectified quickly due to constantly mashing our toes in our boots on every step down.  Icy spots provided the opportunity for some impromptu races. And with gravity on our side, breaks were not needed, except to admire the views again on the way down.  Yes, we sunk through the drifts:

Sid has an encounter with a snow drift.  And frosty hair.
I find the ultimate resting position.
The sky turned pinkish as we descended.  Occasional snow flurries made everything nice and cozy.  The view of Webb Lake disappeared behind the trees.  The ascent, including bushwhacking, took roughly 6 hours, and our route was 2.75 miles each way.  The descent was a blindingly fast 2 hours.  We made a dash for the car at the end and proceeded to be completely serious in our "we-didn't-die" photo:

We are an attractive bunch, that's for sure.
I leave you with one final photo, that exposes our true identities in full:

Photoshop may have been involved.
Google Earth track and elevation profile:


Hike Data
Miles hiked: 5.5
Time elapsed: 8 hours
Total ascent: 2300'