Around Mountain

 

Waterfall, Around Mountain Carriage Road, Acadia National Park

9 June 2021

While Central Jersey was sweltering on Saturday, Mount Desert Island was starting to heat up too. I went for a short ride on the only section of carriage roads I could get to that I hadn't been on before. Some of it I'd covered two days ago, so this time I chose the opposite direction.

The Around Mountain carriage road loop does go around a handful of mountains, and it's plenty hilly. It's only about 11 miles. I mapped it one way, then reversed it, so that I'd go in the direction that puts the biggest climbs first. When I set out, I forgot I'd made the switch, and started up the wrong side of the trail. I doubled back, turned off the video camera, and reset the GPS at the head of the trail.

I crossed a bridge by a waterfall early in the ride. It's probably the headwaters for Hadlock Brook. 

In the ravine was a wooden bridge over the stream.

I got to the spot where I'd made the hairpin turns in the opposite direction two days before. It was prettier in this direction, and the weather was better.

The descent around the hairpin turns on the other side was not fun. I took them at what Plain Jim calls a "funereal pace," trying to keep my rear wheel from sliding out in the loose gravel.

I warned a few cyclists who were heading up the hill. 

The rest of the route was a constant rolling up and down, mostly in the woods. There was a clearing, with scree on the right and Jordan Pond on the left, that looked enough like a spot along the Eagle Lake trail that I was momentarily confused. The difference was the elevation, and I couldn't have gotten the whole scene in a photo. I didn't stop.

Some rainy day this fall, I'll put the video up on Rouvy. For now, here's a low-quality snippet of scree. There's a glimpse of Jordan Pond on the left: