Carol's Vermont 251 + 4 Geocaching Challenge Finish

On a beautiful summer day Carol and I headed way up north to Avery's Gore in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom for her finish in the Vermont 251 + 4 Geocaching Challenge. This involves finding at least one geocache in each of Vermont's 251 towns and 4 "Gores," a project she has been working on for several years (after previously completing the Challenges in New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Rhode Island).

The target cache is located at the edge of Unknown Pond, a remote backcountry water body reached by hiking along the Unknown Pond Trail, Bluff Ridge Trail and a VAST snowmobile trail.

 

All of this hike is on private land under conservation easement. Thanks to the landowners! 

 

 

 

 

The Unknown Pond Trail starts out on a woods road passing by some maple sugaring lines.

The three stream crossings were easy with low water levels.

The current Unknown Pond Trail was opened around 2019 as part of the Kingdom Heritage Trails system developed by the Green Mountain Club, North Woods Stewardship Center and and VT Dept. of Parks, Forest and Recreation. Note that the trail does not actually go to Unknown Pond.

Unknown Pond Trail is a delightful meander with moderate grades and excellent footing.

Next up was a short segment on the Bluff Ridge Trail.

Another fine trail.

We had read reports of dreadful mud on the last segment along the VAST snowmobile trail. Thanks to recent dry weather, the trail was mostly dry and whatever mud we encountered was firm.

A neat meadow-like area with a glimpse of Middle Mountain.

After a brief search we found the geocache and a happy cacher completed her quest! Congratulations!!

There is a privately owned camp near the shore of the pond, presumably leased from Weyerhauser, the timber company landowner.

Unknown Pond is a serene, 19-acre backcountry beauty. Middle Mountain is seen across the water.

All was quiet here save for the rattlings of two Belted Kingfishers.

Enjoying the scene at Unknown Pond.

On the way out I made a quick side trip to a viewpoint a short distance north along the Middle Mountain Trail.

 

 

Here there was a wide view west to the northern Green Mountains, including the Jay Peaks to the right of center.

Looking SW to Bald Mountain, one of the highest peaks in the Kingdom. An excellent guide to the trails in this wonderful area is the "Northeast Kingdom Mountain Trail Guide," published by the North Woods Stewardship Center.

 

Return to Jobildunk Ravine

For the second time in three days I headed into Mount Moosilauke's Jobildunk Ravine for some off-trail exploration. One of my objectives was to find the remnants of the Dartmouth Outing Club's Jobildunk Cabin, which was built in 1931 but was effectively isolated by massive blowdowns in the ravine caused by the September 1938 hurricane. Much of the fallen timber was salvaged by the Parker-Young Company a few years later but eventually the cabin was abandoned and fell into disrepair.

 

I stumbled upon the collapsed remains of the cabin on my first trip into the ravine in 1990, but did not locate it on my visit earlier this week. After some additional research I headed in for another try. This 1934 DOC map (downloaded from the Rauner Library's "Granite State in Maps") shows Jobildunk Cabin and several other long-abandoned DOC cabins and shelters. 

This barrel, located beside the Asquam Ridge Trail, is a relic of the Parker-Young logging operation in the mid-1940s.

Bear sign along an open section of the old Asquamchumauke Trail, abandoned in 1973.

After some searching on the floor of the valley, I found the old cabin site.

A few artifacts were strewn about the area. (Note that the land in here and the artifacts thereon are the property of Dartmouth College. Also note that overnight camping and fires are not allowed.)

The D.O.C. column in the January 1932 issue of Dartmouth Alumni Magazine reported on the new cabin: "In Jobildunc Ravine on the side of Moosilauke where Baker River tumbles hecticly through a wild and wooded region, logs were cut for a cabin on the twenty-third of May. Work continued at odd times during the summer and at the present time the cabin is complete, and ready for use. A two hour's hike from the nearest road over the roughest kind of going this is the most isolated cabin of the chain. When one considers the fact that it lies in the midst of some of the wildest Outing Club country and was built entirely by student work, any of its shortcomings are immediately forgotten."

Another report from that era made note of a "swimming pool" on the Baker River.

In the December 1938 issue of Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, J. Willcox Brown, later to become a pre-eminent forest historian of Moosilauke, wrote: "Jobildunk Ravine was thought to have come through the cyclonic disturbance unscathed because only the protected eastern flank of the Ravine could be seen from the ridge of the Mountain by parties headed up to repair the damaged Summit Camp. The first survey party to Jobildunk Cabin learned a sadly different story when they attempted to reach the Cabin by the eerie light of a cloud-dimmed full moon. Beginning at Camp 3, most of the large trees were down. When the trail reached the area which had not been previously lumbered, it disappeared completely. Only by slow and arduous struggle up the treechoked river-bed could the cabin be reached. Behind the cabin the old look-out tree stands almost as a lone sentinel over a desolate waste of down-timber....The area around Jobildunk Cabin, including the Asquamchumauke River Trail will have to be abandoned until such time as this tract can be lumbered by the company which owns it."

Beyond the cabin site I bushwhacked north towards the southern of two beaver ponds/meadows on the broad upper floor of the ravine. I had visited the northern of these two days earlier.

I wandered through semi-open areas with standing dead trees; one spot offered a view up to Mount Blue.

The woods on the western side of the ravine provided better going than I had found on the eastern side on the previous trip.

 

I arrived at the meadow (this one is no longer a pond) under skies hazed over by wildfire smoke.

I found a dry spot to sit and take in the partial view of the ravine headwall and its rock slabs/slides.

 

Wide-angle view.

Towards the end of my stay the sun burned through the haze, and blue sky emerged.

The sun brought out the vivid greens of the meadow.

Heading back through fern-filled boreal forest.

Following one of several moose paths that I encountered.

Homeward bound on the Asquam Ridge Trail.

 

Jobildunk Ravine & Mount Jim

For my third Moosilauke ravine wander of the week, I headed into Jobildunk Ravine, the wild glacial cirque enclosed by the main summit, Mount Blue, Mount Jim and Mount Waternomee. The ravine has a steep headwall that rises to 4300 ft. and a broad forested floor at the3500/3600-ft. level, dotted with beaver ponds and meadows. The entire valley is owned by Dartmouth College and is maintained as a semi-wilderness area. The one trail that led through it - the Dartmouth Outing Club's Asquamchumauke Trail - was abandoned five decades ago. The DOC built a cabin on the ravine floor in 1931, but the area was devastated by the 1938 hurricane and the cabin fell into disuse and eventually collapsed. The ravine can be seen from few vantage points. The Beaver Brook Trail does provides a peek down into it.

 

I set off from parking on Ravine Lodge Rd. and headed north along the Baker River on the DOC's pleasant Asquam Ridge Trail, often called just the Ridge Trail.

I took a quick look for artifacts at Camp 3, used by Champlain Realty in the 1920s and Parker-Young Company in the 1940s.

 

A four-log bridge for the trail's second crossing over the Baker River.

In the lower valley, some parts of the old Asquamchumauke Trail, which followed logging roads in this section, are easy to follow. The trail was opened in 1949 following a huge logging operation in the ravine by Parker-Young Co under the direction of Sherman Adams, salvaging spruce felled by the 1938 hurricane. The trail was abandoned around 1973.

Blowdowns obstruct the old route in many places.

Moose sometimes use the old pathway.

Farther up the valley the trail disappears in blowdowns and swamps and bushwhacking is necessary.

 

 

 

I dropped down to the Baker River for a break.

 

Experienced bushwhackers can follow the trail on and off again for a while. After this river crossing on big rocks, it's gone in more blowdown and swamps..

My objective was the northern of two open beaver meadows out on the flat floor of the cirque. Getting there was a little rough in places.

 

 

There were some friendlier woods along the way, also.

Made it! Looking across at the East Peak of Moosilauke. 

 

The water level was up compared to a visit I made last September, but that was during a drought. I didn't see any signs of recent beaver activity. They were active when I first came through here back in 1990. 

An interesting story is told in  Moosilauke! After The Ice: The Moosilaukee Reader, Volume 4, edited by Robert W. Averill and Kris Pastoriza. According to his sons, Minnesota native and Dartmouth '29 grad Dick Sanders was involved with restocking beavers in New Hampshire, where they had been extirpated by 1900. Sanders was a DOC stalwart and a noted woodsman, and is memorialized with a plaque at the summit of Moosilauke.  In the late 1920s the governor of Minnesota gave Sanders two beavers to bring to the governor of New Hampshire while on his way back to college. Sanders maintained that these beavers were released in the Jobildunk Ravine area.

 

 

Great view of the rock-scarred headwall here.

Closer look. In the winter these become impressive icefalls. During the winter occupation of Moosilauke's summit in 1870, photographer Amos F. Clough made a madcap sliding and jumping descent over the headwall to obtain images of the "ice precipices." After taking his photos he made a two-hour climb through the woods back to the summit, concluding that Jobildunk was “one of the wildest places in New Hampshire, especially in winter.”

 

 

In wet weather, a sizeable cascade spills down the right side of this big slab. On my 1990 visit, I bushwhacked up the headwall to the right of that slab, ending up on Beaver Brook Trail. It's a route I will not be repeating.

These two rocky swaths have the look of old landslides. I visited the base of each of these last fall.

 

A channel feeding into the pond.

 

 

A single tiny white pine growing along the edge.

 

 

Looking over towards Mount Blue. An hour or so in the sun passed quickly at this wild spot. 

The bushwhack along the floor of the ravine had been tedious, so I decided to whack up the east side of the ravine to the Asquam Ridge Trail and descend by trail over Mount Jim. The climb started out on the rough side.

 

 

After a brief improvement, I entered an area of dense young conifers crammed under older trees. This looked like it would continue up the slope as far as I could see.

Here I invoked the "fifty-foot rule" of bushwhacking, which states that the woods might be completely different fifty feet in either direction. In this case, they were.

 

In this area I encountered a brief trace of the old Asquamchumauke Trail as it ascended out of the ravine.

And I spotted an old DOC blaze.

 

But the old trail is basically impossible to follow in these woods, which soon turned ugly.

The upper part of the climb, and the traverse across the flat saddle to the trail, took a long time to squeeze through.

 

I was very happy to see this.

 

 

Looking back at Mount Blue from a fir wave as the Ridge Trail ascends Mount Jim.

 

I'm glad I didn't try to come up through this.

 

 

A lovely section of trail heading up to Mount Jim.

View of the Kinsmans from a fir wave to the left of the trail.

 

And Franconia Ridge. If you look closely, you'll see the bright, thin slash of a small new slide just below and right of Mount Lincoln's summit. 

There's a good view of the new slide from the field at Lafayette Place. It may have fallen during a recent thunderstorm. It's way up there, not easily accessible.

DOC sign near the wooded summit of Mount Jim, a Trailwrights 4000-footer.

 

Fine boreal forest descending off Mount Jim.

 

Grades on the 4-mile length of Asquam Ridge Trail are easy to at most moderate the whole way, but above the first mile the footing has gotten significantly rockier over the years. Still, it is a lovely, quiet approach to Moosilauke.