2024-10-04 - last updated 2024-10-09 (changelog)
This year was not a good year for outdoor activities for me, but when summer ended and I realized I had done little hiking and no backpacking, I started to get the itch for at least one trip! The plan was to drive up to car camp at Trout Brook Farm right after work, and then hike in first thing Friday and hike out Sunday. On Saturday I could do a day hike up to Barrell Ridge if I felt like, or just spend the day around camp. Usually I prefer to do loop trails instead of hiking in and out on the same trail (more interesting), but since I have not done much hiking this year I was a little worried about my fitness for this trip, so I decided to take the Fowler Brook Trail in and out which is a little shorter than the Five Ponds Loop. It would turn out that playing ice/roller hockey once a week for the past year (a new hobby) was apparently good training for this because I felt even better than last year! I was hiking faster (not pushing myself, but my comfortable pace was faster) and didn’t really feel sore until I got home (last year I was feeling it in my legs after the hike in and the whole rest of the trip).
I also wanted to try fly fishing this year. The original motivation for this was that I thought I was going to spend at least one night at Lower Fowler Pond, which is fly-fishing only, and learning the new skill seemed interesting. I got an inexpensive but reasonably well-reviewed Sougayilang set, and took it out once to the St George River in the spring (didn’t catch anything), fully intending to get more practice over the summer. I ended up not spending any time on Lower Fowler this time, but brought the fly fishing gear in addition to my usual fishing gear so I could get some more time trying it out.
The hike in and out was on Fowler Brook Trail. This was a very nice trail, a lot less muddy than the Five Ponds Loop - not just because it was drier this year, but there only a few small spots that looked like they got very muddy with rain. The beginning of the trail is very well worn but the further you go, the more remote if feels.
The trail allows several nice views of Fowler Brook and Lower Fowler Pond along the way:
If I hiked all the way to my campsite, I would have walked almost right past the canoe storage area about a half a mile before my campsite, so instead I got the canoe on the way and paddled the last half mile. The campsites are made to be found from the trail and they’re not very obvious from the water, but I was able to find it without too much trouble (OpenStreetMaps has very accurate maps of the trails and campsites that you can use offline, I use the app called OsmAnd for this. It’s also helpful for navigating to Baxter State Park since Google Maps offline abilities stink now (it used to let you select a route to download for offline use, now it tries to be smart about what maps you need offline often fails at it)).
I was glad I got their earlier than I would have if I’d driven up that morning, because right after I got camp set up there was a brief downpour! I spent an hour or so hanging out in the tent until it stopped raining, and then went out fishing.
The one downside to Middle Fowler Pond is that even filtered so it’s safe to drink, the water tastes terrible (worse than any other lake I’ve stayed one). The outlet stream is not any better, but I eventually figured out that there are streams near this campsite that that taste a lot better.
Here’s what the lake looks like from the north end where I picked up the canoe:
Here’s what it looks like from the campsite on the south end:
And here’s a really nice shot I got while fishing that first evening:
And here’s a photo that shows how creepy these woods are at night (this is really what it looked like walking the 200 feet or so to where I hung my food to keep it away from critters (and bears)):
Shortly after I got camp set up on Friday and went out fishing, probably around 5:00pm or so, I started to get serenaded by a lonely-sounding cow moose! She’d make these calls every 5-10 minutes for 4 or 5 hours. I managed to record a couple of them. The sound was coming from the woods right across from my campsite. In the first 23 seconds of this video I think she was at the water because I could hear her splashing, but unfortunately it was pitch black so I could not see her.
This is audio only because most of it was recorded in the dark anyway. You might have to turn your volume up to hear it, this was the best I could do:
While I was hearing the moose and trying to fish, I was also getting harassed by a beaver! I’m not sure why, I was pretty far from the beaver’s lodge and mostly just drifting, but the beaver kept coming up from under water within 20-50 feet from me, swimming for 10 seconds then slapping its tail and going back under, only to come up somewhere else and do it again. When I realized it was being so predictable I managed to get it on video once. I think it did this 6-8 times:
One cool thing you cannot hear in that video is that it’s tail slaps were loud enough to echo off Billfish Mountain, which sounded pretty cool.
Here is its lodge I think (this was from the paddle home while I was following that shore, but I was at least 300-500 feet from it when the beaver was mad at me:
The fishing on Middle Fowler was similar to how I remembered it last year, on the south end of the lake there were all kinds of rises in the area of the two inlet streams all day, but even more when it starts to get dark. I caught a few of these very light colored fish that I thought might be Landlocked Salmon at first (even though I didn’t think there were any in this lake), but looking at the pictures now I think they are just light-colored Brook Trout? I didn’t keep any to eat on Friday because it was getting late and it had just poured rained so getting the fire going would have been annoying. I also tried a few casts with the fly rod but didn’t catch anything. I’m still not very good at casting a fly rod and I’m not sure I never had a good enough cast that it didn’t immediately scare everything away that evening.
After hiking back from Barrell Ridge, I took the canoe out for more fishing. I decided that since I had succesfully caught a few on my regular rod, this time I’d focus on the fly rod. After a few tries I finally got a really smooth cast that went where I was aiming and I said out loud, “hey that was pretty good”, and within 5 seconds I’d hooked one, then landed it! This is my first fish every caught while fly fishing:
I continued to fish until maybe 4pm when I decided it would be nice if I was going to eat any, to get them cooked and cleaned up before dark, so I kept a decent sized one and had it for a pre-dinner snack. I did not take any pictures of this, except this one where the fish has been cleaned and is in the pan you can barely see in front of the fire:
My optional planned activity for this trip was a hike up to Barrell Ridge. It’s not a long hike at 1.4 miles or so, but was very steep at 1,100 feet of elevation gain. I stopped at one of the inlet streams that the trail crosses over to filter water on both the way up and down, which tasted a lot better than the lake water.
The main challenge of this trail is just seeing it. From the stream mentioned above to about half way up, the trail is not very well marked and it doesn’t look heavily traveled. I found myself stopping every 5 minutes or so and carefully looking around to make sure that I was definitely following the trail. There were at least a half dozen times when I had to stop, look around, and couldn’t see any trail markers in either direction, so I’d pick out some landmarks to make sure I could backtrack if necessary and carefully make my way forward until finally seeing a trial marker a few hundred yards later so I knew I was still on the trail. The trail was also pretty wet from earlier rain which made it slippery in some places, and with it being so little traveled there are a lot of places with small bushes crowding the trail, getting my legs wet when I pushed through them. The last 1/3 of a mile is along bare ledge which was very steep but at least there it was dry and good footing.
Here’s an example (heading back out) of what I mean. In this picture there’s an obvious trail marker but they were few and far between in some places:
Some of the trail markers on not very visible either, I don’t think they redo them on this trail very often. Can you see the one in this picture?
Over all it was a very pleasant hike and even though this is not the tallest peak in the area, the view at the top was quite worth it (even though pictures never do it justice of course):
This is North Traveler Mountain partially obscured by clouds, about 300 feet higher up than Barrell Ridge:
From a slightly different angle, North Traveler Mountain on the right, The Traveler mostly obscured behind it, and Bald Mountain on the left. In the distance I believe are Lunksoos and Deasey Mountains among others in the Katahdin Woods and Waterways National Monument:
In this picture you see Billfish mountain in the foreground (that cliff mostly blocked by trees is the same one that’s visible right across Middle Fowler Pond from my campsite), and in the background I think are Hay Brook Mountain and Roberts Mountain (not sure if they’re significant anyway, I just like to try to figure these things out):
Another view over Billfish where you can see a part of Grand Lake Matagamon. I’m not sure what mountains are in the background, but they are somewhere northeast in Aroostook County I’m sure:
Not sure what is in the picture here, but this is looking pretty much straight north:
This year I brought more store-bought freeze-dried meals and didn’t make as many of my own dehydrated meals. In the picture above I have my food for Friday (except breakfast which I ate at the car) on the far right, and Sunday (except supper which I had on the road on the way home) on the far left.
For Friday I took tortillas, nut butter, and honey for lunch during the hike to avoid cooking before camp. This is a convenient combo and I always have a couple tortillas and some honey left over that I can add to other meals if I want. The Knorr rice and pasta side that I had for supper Friday was pretty bland, and I forgot that the bag they come in isn’t great for rehydrating so it was a bit of a pain to eat, but it got the job done. Following the package instructions about water resulted in it being a little too soupy, I think these things assume more evaporation if you’re cooking it on a stove.
For breakfast on Saturday I had my usual oatmeal mixture, made with some ghee (clarified butter that is shelf-stable for quite a bit longer than regular butter), plus that container has plenty more ghee that I can use for cooking over the fire when I want. That other little container is salt for cooking over the fire with. For lunch I dehydrated one spaghetti and meatballs meal by cutting up the meatballs into small bits, and the pasta was dehydrated after cooking it because it rehydrates better that way, and I broke it into smaller bits to make it easier to eat with a spoon. Overall this came out very good, though the tomato sauce lost a lot of its brightness and did take a step back in flavor when rehydrating (it was a very good sauce that I made from my garden tomatoes, so it was still pretty good). I brought this and my cook set up to Barrell Ridge, so this was the meal I had while enjoying the view:
For supper on Saturday I had the Mountain House Chicken Fried Rice, which was also very bland.
For breakfast Sunday I had the Good To-Go Mushroom Risotto, which is one of my favorite dehydrated meals of all time. The Good To-Go Cucumber Chaat Salad was one I’d never hard before, it is cold-soaked for just 5 minutes and it’s ready to eat, which made it perfect for having while hiking out. This was pretty good, even though the vegetables was a lot different than they would be fresh, and they aren’t very pretty, the texture still worked pretty well and it tasted good. This has a little heat to it even though the package does not indicate that it is spicy that I could see (mild, but definitely some spice there). Also it was more filling than something that has cucumber as the headline ingredient might imply. This was quite good for lunch overall.
And of course I had about 100g per day of peanut M&Ms. Dark chocolate peanut M&Ms are the best but I couldn’t find them this year.
I think this is probably going to be the last trip where I use these alcohol stoves that I made from Fancy Feast cat food cans. I really liked making and experimenting with them and never had any major issues with them, but they take just a little bit more planning and preparation than a canister stove, and they are a little more unpredictable being much more affected by the wind, ambient temperature, and the ground they are sitting on. The normal procedure for lighting the alcohol stove is to fill it with fuel, light it, and wait for a minute or three for it to warm up and really get going before putting the pot of water on. Lighting it can be a little difficult when you don’t have it totally full of fuel when you just want to heat a little water for coffee or something. In my backward tests and on most other trips I can typically go from dead cold to boiling one cup of water in under 10 minutes, and boiling 2 cups in just over 15. This is a lot slower than a canister stove but not enough to bother me, but for some reason on this trip it took way longer than normal to warm up (5+ minutes), and then was even slower to bring water to the boil. I’m guessing this is because it was cold and very wet. On top of this the fuel is easier to spill and a little harder to pack, and on this trip I stepped on the stove while I left it out to cool, which took a few minutes to repair. So even though I’ve cooked dozens of meals on these, and I will miss the “uniqueness” of these stoves, I think I am going to be upgrading to a good canister stove in the near future.
Below is the complete cook kit, minus the fuel which I kept in a 20oz soda bottle. For a trip this length that is maybe 50% more than I actually need, but it is good to have extra in case something spills. Pictured below in the green container is my instant coffee, so I can have coffee whenever I want just by grabbing this kit and the fuel. I filled up this 2oz container which was about twice as much as I really needed for this trip. This whole set does pack down nicely with a collapsible cup and folding spoon!
I didn’t do anything usual for gear, and I pack my bag in a pretty typical way for backpacking and strap my fishing stuff to the outside of the bag. I didn’t realize how bulky the case for my fly rod is until I strapped on the bag, I think I am going to have to find something more compact, but unlike my spinning rod I think the fly rod is too delicate to just strap on without some kind of case.
This is my second trip with this tent, but the first where I got any rain, and it held up well. It is a Featherstone Backbone 1P, a trekking pole tent, which means it uses your trekking poles instead of tent poles. This makes it a lot lighter and smaller, but also a little more challenging to set up. This is a one person tent, and with a regular 20x72” rectangle sleeping pad you’re only left with a couple inches on either side and less than a foot lengthwise, but there are two decent sized vestibules and two doors. It is not totally double-walled, and while condensation buildup doesn’t seem to be worse than a fully double-walled tent, it is possible to kick the roof panel with your feet and get your feet wet. There is a tie-out point you can use to raise the end and help with this a little bit, and if I sleep closer to the wall on the head end that helps too. Overall the weight reduction of this minimalist tent is totally worth it, though it might be a tough sell for someone bigger or taller (I’m 5’6”).
Compared to my other backpacking tent it is about half the size and weight. My other tent is a Featherstone UL Peridot 2P, which is just about the smallest and lightest 2 person tent with poles you can get without spending 4x the money:
I also got a new sleeping pad for this trip, a Nemo Tensor All-Season. Last year in Baxter State Park at this time, and when I camped out in northern Maine in April to see the eclipse, my cheap sleeping pad was definitely the weak link in terms of keeping warm, and I find that a comfortable pad makes a pretty big different to how I sleep, so I decided it was worth investing in a good comfortable and warm one and it is now the most expensive piece of gear I own (even so I never sleep very well out in the woods with nothing put a very thing piece of fabric between you and whatever is out there in the night). The sleeping bag is a Hyke and Byke Katahdin 0 degree bag, which I bought for the eclipse and was just right for 20-degree windy weather we got that day, but on this trip turned out to be way warmer than necessary (I don’t think it ever got below 40 at this time and there was no wind at all). Fortunately by wearing few clothes and leaving the bag unzipped, I was not too hot.
The funny thing about using a trekking pole tent is that I wanted to use the trekking poles on my hike to Barrell Ridge, which meant leaving the tent seemingly deflated. Fortunately it is pretty easy to get the poles in and out. I put all my gear in the tent and closed it up first because it seemed like rain was possible.
Another new thing was this backpack, which folds down very small so I could bring it to use on my day hike up Barrell Ridge. I think someone gave this to either me or Fiona as a gift, but I can’t remember who, so if it was you thanks! It is definitely bare-bones (no pockets, no padding in the shoulder straps, but it is surprisingly comfortable for what it is, and it’s nice that it takes up so little space when not in use:
This picture actually makes it look a little bigger than it really is when packed down. It’s impressively compact.
The hike out and drive home were not very eventful. Here’s one last picture of the canoe after I put it away and locked it back up. There are normally three canoes stored here, but four other guys took the other two just a few minutes before I got here. Lifejackets are in the wooden cabinet, and the paddles are leaning up against the tree. The canoes are chained and padlocked to nearby trees, you get the key from the attendant at the Matagamon Gate and pay $1/hour or $8/day.
Here is a grouse showing up at Trout Brook Farm Campground first thing Friday morning:
These are all either taken of or from the Middle Fowler South campsite where I stayed.
These are taken from the trail to/from Barrell Ridge or the from the top. I really like the view from the top so there are a lot of pictures from up there:
This sign post may have broken but someone laid the signs out so they still pointed in the right directions:
These were taken as I hiked past Lower Fowler Pond on Friday and Sunday:
