Young’s Mountain - the hard way

This morning Rich awoke with more pain, after a really good day yesterday. He wanted to take it easy but wanted me to continue to explore, so we tossed around a few different options. I liked his idea of hiking the Friends Path area again, but I was still most intrigued by the thought of exploring the southern section of Breakneck Road and trying to follow at least one of the paths I had discovered in that area two years ago. I suspected that at least one of them led up to Young’s Mountain.

Our breakfast was simple: just a muffin and a banana, and then we headed out. I was concerned that Rich wouldn’t have a comfortable or safe place to sit and rest, but he said he was content to pull off Eagle Lake Road near the intersection with the southern end of Breakneck Road, where I was planning to begin my hike.

Like everything else this year, Breakneck Road was completely under water. I mean far more water than I ever could have expected. The entire length of the southern section was a running river.

At first I took my time, picking my way along and trying not to get too wet. I mostly succeeded in doing this while I hiked on Breakneck Road. But when I turned west onto the path toward Young’s Mountain and came close again to the northern Breakneck Pond, there was simply no way around getting wet. I was wearing sandals anyway, so I just went for it and got soaked. The water felt pleasantly warm, actually; the only real unpleasantness was the squish-squish of my feet in wet socks. So before long, I channeled my inner Foresty Forest and just took the socks off, hanging them from my pack and hiking in just the sandals.

In spite of the rivers running everywhere, for quite a while the trail was easy enough for an experienced abandoned-trail-finder to follow. But when things started to get “poky” (pine woods with lots of snags everywhere) and steep, I lost the trail. I remember a local blogger reporting that he had lost the trail in this area too.

My research had yielded a few waypoints to use, so while targeting those points I slowly and carefully picked my way toward the summit of Young’s Mountain, where at some point I picked up the trail again. The summit actually offers some views, which I wasn’t expecting, so that was a nice treat. The ledges up here were slippery, as expected, but what was a surprise to me was how slippery the reindeer lichen was (I noticed this somewhere else a few days ago, too). Normally, when dry, this can offer some traction on the steep ledges (not that I try to step on it, but sometimes it’s unavoidable) but when wet apparently a muddy layer forms underneath that is slicker than ice. I almost went down about five times just from inadvertently stepping on a piece of the reindeer lichen.

I (unbelievably) had a cell signal at the summit, so I called Rich to tell him that I had reached the top of Young’s Mountain and that I was planning to walk the carriage road back, as long as I could cross between the Breakneck Ponds to reach it.

I descended the mountain pretty much the way I had come up, although it was a bit easier to pick my way through this time knowing a little bit more about the area (and it was much easier, cardio-wise).

The area between the Breakneck Ponds was inundated as expected, but my feet and shoes were soaked anyway, so I didn’t mind a little wading. The rocky road bed, although submerged over a foot deep, wasn’t slippery and I was able to make my way across easily after rolling up my pant legs. The water actually felt very refreshing!

The walk back on the carriage road was peaceful and quiet, not very exciting, but I’d had enough excitement already and at this point I just wanted to get back to the car quickly so Rich didn’t have to wait any longer.

My thoughts on the route will have to wait until I’ve examined the tracklog, but I suspect that I should have either taken the left/straight path at the first fork, or maybe even taken the more southerly route that I found last time. I think that one of those paths (at least one, if not both) would have taken me up McFarland Mountain, but there is supposed to be a much easier route across the col and ridge from McFarland to Young’s that probably would have been a more straightforward hike. I may try that next time.

I returned to the car just a little later than the two hours I had estimated, so the timing worked out well. We had plenty of time left in the afternoon for some more adventures. Rich wanted to check out the Pretty Marsh Picnic Area, since we’ve never been there before and we thought it might be another good place for him to hang out while I explored.

We took a wrong turn on the way, and ended up at Bartlett’s Landing, which was a neat serene little pier area. Always finding new things each time we come!

The picnic area, once we finally reached it, was absolutely beautiful! Heavily wooded, tall canopy, views of Pretty Marsh Harbor and Mt. Desert Narrows beyond. We only drove through the parking lot so I don’t know what the short trail or picnic areas are like, but we are likely to come back to check it out. While there aren’t any abandoned trails near here for me to explore, there is the Long Pond Fire Road just across the street that makes for a nice walk or run, and also gives access to some of the trails over by Long Pond such as the Great Notch trail.

While we were driving through this area, I realized that we were very close (within .2 mile) to a benchmark we had tried but failed to find in 2018. A surveyor located and reported it less than two weeks after our attempt, so I was very curious to see if we could find it using his coordinates (and I really was expecting that we would). But somehow, we still haven’t found it! (Will this be another case similar to the nearby Q 145, which took us three tries???)

The coordinates put me in a wooded section of a lot just a few feet from a garage and nearby house, so I felt very uncomfortable poking around there, particularly since there was a car in the driveway. I approached the house to see if anyone was home, but other than a small dog, no one came to the door.

This gave me a little leeway to look around for a few more minutes, but I still thought it was likely that the person wouldn’t be gone long with the dog left at home. It also seemed likely that a neighbor might pass by and wonder what was going on. It was just too exposed of a spot, but even so, I did look around quite thoroughly, and could not find the mark. (I did flip over a large piece of bark and found a salamander underneath! The snake count for this year’s trip is still 0, but at least this was a herp, and there have been millions of frogs around.)

I was reminded of Beech Hill Farm while we were in the area, and we took a drive up Beech Hill Road to see if the farm stand was open today. It was, and they have actually built a new farm stand since we last visited! The produce inside was beautiful and the scent of basil was everywhere.

The front case featured a “creamy vanilla cake with pistachios and rose petals” that looked amazing; only wish I had room for a slice! We did purchase a few interesting teas: tulsi, a blend of tulsi with lavender and rose petals, and a pu-erh.

We had been considering the Thai restaurant in Bar Harbor for supper, but we ended up going back to CIAO instead! It was a shorter walk, and their menu looked very enticing when we checked it online ahead of time. We were first in the door as usual, and actually we were the only ones in the restaurant for quite a while.

We had the “Of Corse” cocktail like last time, and then the Sardinian tuna fregola salad with a light curry dressing and the marinated olives like last time, because they were just so good and we had to get them again. We also ordered the swordfish and scallops—amazing. And we had a little room left so we tried the octopus tacos—outstanding! And then we still had a little room left, so we tried the amaretto-ricotta pot de creme—also excellent, a nice light refreshing dessert. The flavors and portions were perfect.