Maine SIX-PACK PLUS Hikes Oct 2014:
Recently I spent four days in Maine attempting to finish as many of my remaining 8 New England Hundred Highest (NEHH) peaks as weather and my legs would permit. I drove up from Rhode Island Tuesday night Sept. 30th and returned Saturday Oct. 4th after completing 7 of the 8. I probably still had the time and legs to finish off my last peak, Baldpate, but I was pretty drenched after completing Elephant on Saturday morning in the morning drizzle and bushwhacking through dense wet spruce trees. So, I called it quits and left Baldpate for another trip. This trip leaves me with 11 peaks from the NEHH list (1 in Maine, 3 in NH, and 7 in VT.) None of these hikes were particularly long or physically challenging (even for me), mostly because of the dirt roads maintained by the logging industry that gets you up to a high starting elevation and the network of new and older logging roads and skid trails and ATV trails on the mountains. The most difficult part is sometimes finding the “trailheads”. None of them have maintained trails, per-se, and a few involve fairly tough, but short, bushwhacks. I still maintain that Scar Ridge (NH) and Menden (VT) are tougher bushwhacks then any of the Maine NEHH Peaks – at least the way I did them. I have yet to do Voss Spur (NH) which some say is the toughest. The Maine peak I left behind, Baldpate, does actually have a trail and is in fact along the Appalachian Trail. Note that although the dirt roads get you closer to the peaks, some are pretty tough on your vehicle. I had bolts on several exhaust joints and on my cab loosen up. High clearance and 4-wheel drive is highly recommended. The first six of these peaks are all in the same general area and are often called the Six-Pack. Elephant is much further south than the rest (as is Baldpate) but is often done with the six-pack. My report(s) of these hikes is in no-way intended as a guide line for doing these hikes (possibly a guide as to how not to do them). I mostly relied on reports from two previous similar trips:
Tim’s 2012 trip on View From The Top (VFTT) which includes a map of all seven peaks. and
Mat’s more recent July 2014 trip report from Hike-NH.Com
My trip reports and pictures for each day can be found at the links below:
To date, I have dumped all my pictures to these pages and added captions to the first few days but will still add captions to the last two and provide more trip details later.
Most of the above reports are just dumps of the pictures I took for now. The highlights of the trip might be the boundary swath pictures from Boundary Peak and the moving ground video and moose skeleton pictures in the Elephant Mt. report.
