Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Maine Week Travelog #29
Dunn Notch, ME - Sunday, 20 Jun 2021, 2:30pm.

So far this trip the Maine waterfalls book we've been using the past few days has not led us astray. The descriptions have been accurate, the pictures have been helpful for choosing pretty sights, and perhaps most importantly the driving directions to some of these remote trailheads have been correct— even if we doubted them at times when Google Maps suggested alternate, unpaved routes. This trek, to Dunn Falls, left us frustrated with the book. The trail description was off, like the author forgot a section of the trail when transcribing her trail notes to manuscript. We're pretty sure we didn't find Dunn Falls, at least not the one pictured in the book... though we did see several other falls that made this a still totally worthwhile hike.

The trail started where the Appalachian Trail crossed a country road miles from any town. It's marked on maps as the Dunn Trailhead. We quickly forked off the AT onto a side trail marked "Cascade Trail", knowing we'd rejoin the AT later on to loop back to the road on it.



The Cascade Trail is aptly named. It follows a fork of Ellis Creek downstream past numerous small cascades. It was a beautiful trail through a riparian habitat, with only the chattering of the brook and birds breaking the silence. Plus, it was all downhill— easy, right? Well, what one goes down one must come back up. At least if one wants to get back home eventually.

Near where the side creek flowed into the main stream the trail climbed steeply over a ridge. This was one of the least fun parts of the trek. Why go so high up from the water just to have to drop back down to it? Alas, this would not be the last time this hike we climbed step rises just to go back down again.

Past the confluence of creeks a spur trail promised to take us to Dunn Falls. "This is the only way to see the main part of Dunn Falls," the book advised us. Except after a short distance the spur trail along the creek disappeared. Likely heavy flows in the creek had washed rocks, branches, and logs across the path badly enough that it was no longer passable, except to the very spry and very determined. We were not quite enough of either so we returned to the main trail.



The main trail climbed, climbed, climbed. We felt like we were repaying all that easy downhill hiking we started with. Then a small view opened up to a falls below us. If the book is accurate this is the less awesome upper part of Dunn Falls. But we're not sure the book is accurate about that.

The reason we doubt its accuracy is that it tells us to rejoin the Appalachian Trail just above this and return home. Sure enough there's a junction with the AT not far beyond this... but shortly after that there's a sign along the AT for a spur trail marked "Falls". More waterfalls? Sure, sign us up!



Another short spur trail led us to a small waterfalls that dropped into a broad, shallow pool. Maybe this was Dunn Falls? According to maps maybe it is, according to the book it's not. Who knows. But it was definitely peaceful. And through the notch in the rock we could see what looked like a taller falls behind it. We saw a very crude trail up a steep slope far to the right and up we went.



We were well rewarded for our trail-finding (the route had clearly suffered a slide as skilled enough hikers we picked a route through it) by enjoying an up-close view of a fair tall waterfalls. Was this Dunn Falls? Maybe. A rose by any other name....

From here we picked our way back down to the Appalachian Trail and then followed it back to the car. Easy, right? Well, easy in concept, but this segment of the AT had 3 steep climbs followed immediately by steep drops. That's kind of a thing that happens in places with trails like the AT. The people who routed it and built it did so to get from some Point A to Point B they selected, even when that means going straight up one side of a ridge and down the other. That's particularly true of parts of the trail constructed in the 1910s and 20s. Parts built or rebuilt in the 1930s, under the aegis of the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) and the WPA (Works Progress Act) more often tend to contour nicely around hills instead of going hard up and down them. Credit the enormous public investment in infrastructure of the WPA and the hard work of the thousands of young people employed the CCC during the Great Depression to build these things we of their great-grandchildren's generation still enjoy.

Maine Week Travelog #19
Baxter State Park, ME - Friday, 18 Jun 2021, 3:30pm.

Visiting Toll Dam on the Appalachian Trial (see previous blog) wasn't the end of the line for us. It wasn't even a planned stop! We were hiking to Little & Big Niagara Falls further downstream. "Downstream" is a good news/bad news proposition. Good news: the hike is mostly downhill on the way in. Bad news: it's uphill on the way out.



We arrived first at Little Niagara Falls. As its first name implies, it's not terribly big. The falls drops maybe 30' over a series of cascades.

We hiked out on the granite ridge visible in the right of the picture above. There were nice views of the whole area up there. Then I scrambled down a dry falls on the granite and made it to the bottom of the basin where I took this picture.

The fact that this was Little Niagara Falls increased our expectation for Big Niagara Falls further downstream. Alas...



...While Big Niagara Falls was definitely bigger than Little Niagara Falls, neither of them were comparable to their famous namesake, Niagara Falls. But they were nice as destinations for a walk in the woods.



The big falls, like its little sibling, is composed of several drops in a row. Unlike at the little falls there was no safe way down the rocks from the top at big falls so we continued further on the Appalachian Trail to try climbing up from the bottom. Further down we did see some of the lower cascades (pic above) but it was too hard to wade/scramble upstream to get back to the bigger falls.

We turned around here and made our way back to the trailhead. It was uphill but not steep except for two brief stretches.

Maine Week Travelog #17
Baxter State Park, ME - Friday, 18 Jun 2021, 12pm.

Ahh, back into the time warp. Back to a time before our trip turned into a mess trying to get home. Back to when we were standing at the base of Mt. Katahdin (pronounced Kataaaahdin by locals) and lacing up our boots to hike to some waterfalls.

The trail was easy at first, a literal walk in the woods. The air felt closer than the modest 75° temperature (24° C) indicated. It was probably the humidity. And the insects. Mosquitoes were so thick they practically bounced off us.

The trail rose steadily for a while then crossed a fork in the stream and climbed steeply. We knew we were getting to the good stuff! We picked our way over rocks and back down a bit to a perch with a good view of Katahdin Falls.



While we'd had the trail mostly to ourselves on the hike up, seeing only one other small group going in the opposite direction, here at the falls there were 2-3 other couples or solo hikers enjoying the views with us. It was a crowd! But a crowd by remote Maine standards— not Acadia National Park standards, where it was like a conga line climbing the face of the Beehive.



One of the hikers offered to take our picture. As we chatted we learned he was on his way back down from The Owl, one of the peaks in the area. It's not as tall as Katahdin (the highest in the Maine) but is still an ascent of over 2,000' from the trailhead. If we were in better shape we'd have done that, too.



We spent at least half an hour near the falls. We climbed further up the steep slope and picked our way out on various rocks and ledges for different views. The third picture (above) shows a close-up of the top tier of the falls.

Soon enough it was time to go. As beautiful as the falls are, there are other falls in the park, too. We'd mapped out three hiking trails we hoped we could get to. Coming down from Katahdin Falls we knew we'd have energy for at least one of them... would we make it to all three? Stay tuned.