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.
Hiking in Maine 