It has been written that the Park Service once had their living quarters located up on Young's Mountain, but on exploring the area I found no such evidence of this. But in later research I learned that the Park Service had a number of one room log cabins, very small, that served as shelters for Rangers to get in out of bad weather should a storm come along. One of those cabins was located on Young's Mountain.
The trail up is not that hard to locate, and is well worn for some stretch, but than as it begins to make its way up the mountain side, vanishes. We were able to make out way up the mountain side with little trouble, and soon got lucky and picked the trail back up again. Common sense tells you in these cases that if you lose the trail, simply head upward for the summit.
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| YOUNG'S MOUNTAIN TRAIL - Acadia National Park |
We did reach the Youngs Mountain Summit, and found a trail marked with rock piles leading down one side of the mountain towards Mcfarland Mountain. I had expected to see this as Mcfarland mountain also has an abandoned trail leading up to its summit. I have read that its trail is in rough shape.
A quick look around the summit and we located another trail, this one well worn, heading in the direction of Lake wood, something we did not expect to find. The day was getting late, so we decided to hurry down this trail as far as we could, hoping to make the Lake wood area, or even Fawn Pond. We had flashlights, so gave it a shot.
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| YOUNG'S MOUNTAIN - Acadia National Park |
We got some ways down the back side of Youngs Mountain and Lake Wood was getting much closer, but so was the close of daylight, and having never been in that area before we decided to turn around and make our way back up Youngs Mountain. As we approached the summit we did so by flashlight. We were not alone, half way down one side of the mountain side we spotted a couple flashlights of someone making their way down, as we were about to do. We knew the direction of the Breakneck Ponds and moved downward in that direction. By the time we reached the Breakneck Road those other flashlights were nowhere in sight.
This is just a guess, but I would say had we been able to follow that trail toward Lake Wood, it most likely would of connected to the Fawn Pond trail, perhaps closer to Fawn Pond than Lake Wood. I checked a few old maps and could not find that trail on them, so it may well be a true Phantom trail, where some one blazed their own trail up the mountain. It was well worn, so clearly a number of people hike it regularly.
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| OLD CAR FENDER |
So to locate the Youngs Mountain Trail, you need to be at Breakneck Ponds, at the place where the Breakneck road crosses between the two bodies of water. Once across, the road enters the woods and turns a sharp left, at that point you want to take a right and follow a worn path. I have had several people contact me and let me know either rangers or Ridge Runners have been in this area and placed branches and a tree across the start of the path, making it harder to spot.
As I recall, there was a less worn path that ran to the right and ended up at a dead end. We also saw several old rusting car parts along the trail, old fenders, a car hood, and such.
The main trail went on for a ways before coming to an end as the trail started up the Mountain side.
The summit is marked by a rock pile and the Lake Wood trail we found begins there.
McFarlands Mountain has a rock pile to mark the summit. Youngs does not. From Breakneck Road, the old abandoned trail you started out on used to fork...left for McFarlands, quite a bit right for Youngs. Sounds like you may have headed towards McFarlands. To get to Youngs, you start at the tree in your photo with the rusty part against it. You head along a downed tree to your right, crossing it mid-length. The trailbed becomes more evident as it heads further right through cloud lichen, continuing uphill. As you get to the summit, there are two small boulders leaning against each other, a mountain cranberry bog, & views towards MacQuinns gravel pit. Hope that helps.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the info. We did find a trail which ran down the back side of Young's toward lake Wood and Fawn pond, wish we had time that day to follow it through. I found getting to the summit of mcfarland mountain to be much easier than Youngs.
ReplyDeleteYoungs is indeed the more challenging to get to, though the Park's recent clearing of the trailbed & adding yellow flagging tape to the wooded section that lacks treading to follow makes for an easier hike. The Park is also creating a new path along the back of the further of the Breakneck Ponds... one that heads towards Lakewood, at the elevation of the pond, not summit level. One short section passes by several old, rusted metal barrels. There's an old road off Breakneck Road past the pond juncture that is sadly not really passable anymore. You can no longer cross over a beaver dam between banks & there's poison ivy all through there. Used to be it was a very secluded, long walk with other old intersecting paths/roads. They're not shown on most old maps because they weren't Park trails, but bridle paths. I miss being able to hike there... it was a favorite of mine while accessible.
ReplyDeleteI recently hiked that old road you refer to, I did a blog on it - another abandoned trail located. I always knew there was an old road in that area, but the beaver dam pretty much was impossible to cross. This past summer has been very dry and we were finally able to cross the dam and once across the old road is pretty much easy to follow, however it does start out with a section of brush you have to cross through. Worth noting is the large growing pen along the road, I believe the Park Service used it at one time, now it is abandoned. We came to an intersection with the more worn trail heading toward Old Norway Drive and decided to follow it, which after some time ended at four no trespassing signs. The lesser worn path would of taken us up to Lake Wood. Worth noting, after crossing the beaver dam a few times we began to look for an easier way to get to the other side of the water and found one. Just before you come to the water look for a faint path leading through brush on the right, once you get past the brush a well worn path leads through the woods a short ways and turns left toward the brook where there is an old set of stone steps that lead down to the brook and stepping stones that help get you across the brook. The steps are old and most have slipped out of place some so they are crooked, the steps appear to have once been a part of the old Fawn Trail, they match up perfectly with old maps of the trail. Once across the brook you simply have to move to the left a short ways to the well worn path leading to the old road.
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