Poking Around in Maine

A Walk on Great Pond Mountain
by Craig Mains

One of my favorite walks in Maine was Great Pond Mountain near East Orland, Maine. The map above, from Alltrails, shows that the summit is 1029 feet. The trailhead is at about 330 feet so there is about 700 feet of elevation gain. However, if you looked at the mountain in cross section from west to east it would look somewhat wedge-shaped. The hike out is completely uphill but, after a short steep section at the beginning, it's almost an entirely gentle grade the rest of the way to the top, making it an easy hike. It was a little less than three miles out and back, not counting side excursions to overlooks.

The 4.500 acre area is owned by the Great Pond Mountain Conservation Trust, which manages the area for wildlife habitat and light recreation. They have some additional conservation holdings elsewhere in the Hancock County area.

Not too far into the walk I ran into a couple of openings that looked like this. A sign explained that this was an experiment to eliminate beech trees that are infected with Beech Bark Disease. From the Ohio State University Extension Service: "Beech bark disease (BBD) is a devastating disease of American beech (Fagus grandifolia Ehrl.) caused by a combination of damage to the bark and vascular tissue by the beech scale insect (Cryptococcus fagisuga), followed by infection with several fungal species (Neonectria faginata, Neonectria ditissima, and Bionectria ochroleuca). Beech scale was introduced into Nova Scotia from Europe in the 1890s and has been slowly progressing through the range of American beech since then." It has been found throughout New England, New York, and parts of Ontario, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. It was detected in some West Virginia counties between 2010 and 2015.

In the clearing above, forest managers from the conservation trust are trying to clear small diseased trees using a technique called "high stumping." If the trees are cut off near ground level they continue to send up unwanted sprouts year after year. With high stumping the trees sprout around the top of the stump the first year but not in subsequent years. This prevents, it is hoped, large sections of the forest from turning into a dense thicket of infected beech saplings that will never mature.

This photo shows some beech trees with the cankers or lesions typical of Beech Bark Disease. Unfortunately, it seems widespread in Maine. I noticed trees that looked like this when I hiked on Chick Hill but, at the time, didn't know what I was looking at.

It would be a major loss if Maine lost all their beech trees. It is estimated that beech trees make up about 30 percent of the forest on the Great Pond Wildlands. Beech trees provide mast for white-tailed deer, turkeys, grouse, squirrels, chipmunks, and bear. In the past, those years in which beech trees produced a large crop of nuts were closely associated with with a greater number of bear cubs the following year. That is no longer true, since bears now have to depend on other sources of food. On a dry weight basis, beech nuts have been determined to have about twice the nutritional value of acorns.

The lower slopes were completely wooded but like almost every place I've hiked in Maine there were granite outcrops present. The trail takes advantage of a gap between two giant slabs of granite.

It didn't take too long before the forest thinned out and there were bigger expanses of granite bedrock and occasional boulders, which had likely been sitting in the same spot since the glaciers receded.

Looking toward the summit, it seemed like one gigantic granite knob.

This view is roughly to the southwest. The nearer body of water is Alamoosook Lake. The water in the far distance is Penobscot Bay, which opens onto the Gulf of Maine.

Fall colors were in near full display.

There was a spur trail that led to an overlook facing south. The mountains on the distant horizon are on Mt. Desert Island.

Another view looking south.

At the summit there was a short loop trail that was mostly forested in contrast with most of the top of the mountain, which had big open areas.

In between the patches of vegetation there was something of a maze of bare granite. I think it would have been hard to get truly lost but it probably wouldn't have been that hard to lose track of where the designated trail was. A faint blue spot is visible in the lower right corner marking the trail.

This view is looking roughly west. The water in the foreground is part of Alamoosook Lake. The bridge in the distance is the Penobscot Narrows bridge.

The family and I had stopped by the Penobscot Narrows bridge in June as part of a one-day road trip. The bridge is classified as a "cable-stayed bridge, in which the cables run directly from the towers to the deck." This differentiates it from a typical suspension bridge in which a main cable runs between the towers and the deck is supported by cables suspended vertically from the main cable.

The Penobscot Narrows bridge, which opened in 2016 has become a well-known landmark in Maine, similar to the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia.

The bridge is one of three in the US in which the cables run completely through the towers and are fastened at both ends only on the bridge deck. On most bridges of this type they are anchored at one end to the towers. The bridge managers have occasionally had trouble with ice freezing on the cables and then later dropping onto the bridge deck when it warms up, resulting in bridge closures.

The bridge features an observation deck at the top of the west tower, which we visited. I found it to be temporarily vertigo-inducing since the elevator opens directly onto a floor-to-ceiling glass wall that is 420 feet above the ground surface. The elevator to the observation floor is touted as the fastest elevator in Maine. One has to wonder how much competition exists for that honor.

 

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