Hiking in Maine

Bald Bluff Mountain (1,011 ft) is located within the beautiful Amherst Mountains Community Forest, a Public Land reserve of almost 5,000 acres, located east of Bangor in rural Hancock County off Route 9 (the Airline) on the way to better-known Downeast destinations. The day after hiking the Partridge Pond and Ducktail Pond Loop in mid-August, I again took Pig the dog up Bald Bluff Mountain, a lollipop loop of about 2.25 miles which we did in about an hour and fifteen minutes. As usual, I used AllTrails to navigate, and there is a thorough description and map in Dog-Friendly Hikes in Maine (pets under control are allowed). The state of Maine has a comprehensive map and guide to the Amherst Mountains Community Forest, including campsites and the Partridge and Ducktail Ponds hike, here. Again, the turn off Route 9 onto Ducktail Pond Road (22-00-0 road), marked by a blue Amherst Public Lands sign, is a tricky hairpin off a busy road from either direction.

The road is a typical logging road, dirt and gravel with some washouts and protruding rocks, and when I used the road this day, there was someone using heavy equipment to grade it, which made the ungraded portion a bit like the surface of the moon. It would be slow going in a low-clearance vehicle. The Bald Bluff parking area is about 6 miles from Route 9 – Google Maps will likely take you in from the north (from the direction of Sunkhaze Meadows NWR in Milford and/or Stud Mill Road) on the 22-00-0 road, which is another access point. I made some errors at the beginning of our hike, by following a grassy, overgrown woods road/biting insect nursery north of the parking area. The actual trail is just south (downhill) of the parking area, marked by a small brown “Trail Head” sign on a tree. This required me to do some bushwhacking to get back on track, and is reflected in the mileage. We were not the only ones to use this route, as evidenced by some of the comments on the Maine Trailfinder site, and generous piles of moose droppings on the disused road.

The actual trail is marked by blue blazes, and I took its lollipop loop counterclockwise (follow the sign for “Overlook,” leading uphill through some very brightly-colored and diverse mushroom and fungus growth to a rocky perch. This ledge had great views over the treetops of Downeast forests and mountains, including a bird’s eye of the nearby pond/marsh we had driven by on the way in. This piney portion of the loop was open to breezes, and felt much less claustrophobic than the initial trail, which had been more of a “green tunnel,” made swampy and humid by constant rains. The calls of red squirrels, golden-crowned kinglets, chickadees, and crows rang through the air.

The trail skirted the edge of a ridge, with periodic views of Downeast hills in the distance, and its southeast point, just shy of the summit, had views in many directions. The summit itself is wooded, but sunny and pleasant and surrounded by lots of blueberries and scrub pine. We startled a mourning dove near the summit, and Pig stopped to graze on clumps of blueberries. Just below the summit area, a series of blue jay feathers were strewn across the path, indicating that it might have met an unfortunate at the hands of a raptor, or other predator.

The trail continued to work downwards through a more mixed forest and got a little soggy at one point, running concurrently with a stream. We picked up the lollipop part of the loop and returned to the parking area. As with the Partridge Pond hike, if you are hungry or thirsty after the hike and time it right (Thurs -Sun, check the hours), Airline Brewing Company, marked by a sign with a saw blade, is just east on Route 9, with seating and outdoor picnic tables.

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