Mount Cadillac, Acadia National Park

Extracted from Fieldtrip 14E of the QMIII Project, to Downeast Maine, August 18-22, 2014.

August 20, 2014. It’s another beautiful day. I ate a breakfast of egg and cheese sandwiches, with coffee. I then packed up and headed to Acadia National Park, in order to see some of the volcanic rocks of “coastal arc” affinity, formed during the collision of the Avalon micro-continent with ancestral North America during the Devonian Period, four hundred million years ago.

I stopped briefly to admire Graham Lake at the point where Route 179 runs along its shore. It’s a large lake with several picturesque islands and with purple wildflowers blooming along its shore.

Acadia National Park was a zoo! I parked by the Visor’s Center, off of Route 3 and stood a long while in a queue to pay my twenty-dollar parking fee. I then waited more for a crowded bus to arrive and take me to the Cadillac Mountain North Ridge Trailhead (blazed in blue, as are all the other trails I encountered). I started my hike at 11:30 AM, way later than I had hoped. However, my patience was rewarded, for my hike to the summit of Cadillac Mountain was astoundingly beautiful. The mountain is composed of tan granite that has weathered into a dome, with smooth pavement, much of which is bare and the rest vegetated with short Pitch Pines. The views of Frenchman Bay are great. Its blue waters are punctuated by many small but high islands, including Bar Island (from which the nearby town of Bar Harbor draws it name) and Bald Porcupine Island (ironically, wooded, not bald) with its long jetty. The hike was strenuous in places, for the trail was steep. However, the mountain itself is only 1,528 feet high, so the hike up to the summit took but an hour or so. The Loop Road also runs to the summit, so I encountered many more people there than had everyone had to huff up on foot. The summit itself is a rocky knob, accessed by a short paved walkway from the parking lot. I sat on a rock near it and ate my lunch, a couple of Pop Tarts washed down by water, while gazing off into the distance. I also looked around for glacial features. I found of few erratic boulders of a lighter colored plutonic rock than the granite of the mountain and a very few patches of granite ledge where glacial scratches were preserved. I also found several small dikes, darker in color than the granite, yet probably not dark enough to be basalt.

Cadillac Mountain reminds me of Bear Mountain, back in New York. They are about the same height. Both have rocky granitic summits that offer great views of the surrounding countryside. And both have both hiking and automobile access to their respective summits.

I decided to take the Gorge Path back. It runs in the valley between Cadillac Mountain and the adjacent and lower Dorr Mountain, to the east. Although I found the trailhead at the parking lot, I spent quite a long time searching for the trail itself, for the summit area is a confusing tangle for informal trails. Finally, I encountered a blue blaze on path that steeply descended down from the summit. It dives down into the impressive gorge, with vertical cliffs on both sides, that separates the two mountains. The climb down is strenuous but not frightening, and offers many beautiful views of the gorge. Upon reaching the bottom, I discovered to my chagrin that the rest of the Gorge Path was closed for repairs and that I had to ascend neighboring Dorr Mountain in order to continue. I thought at first that this was bad luck, but the hike up the Dorr side of the gorge proved much shorter than I had feared, though very steep. I realized that the closure was good luck when I discovered that the views from the top were equally beautiful to the ones on Cadillac. I paid a quick visit the summit, which hosts and large cairn, and then began my descent of the Dorr Mountain North Ridge Trail. It crosses numerous granite ledges, winds between groves of Pitch Pines and has great views of the bay.

I switched to the Hemlock Trail once off the main part of the ridge, and took it west to rejoin the Gorge Path. I had been wondering how these mountains drained during heavy rain, for the granite is impermeable and the vegetation too sparse to hold much water. I was answered when I crossed the stream that must originate up in the gorge. It had but little water in it today, but must be a raging torrent in a heavy rain, for it was full of large rounded boulders a foot or more across. I soon reached the Loop Road at a place where the stream flows under it, via a high arched bridge. Stalactites were hanging from the bottom of the arc.

Rather than to wait for a bus, I walked the Loop Road back to the Visitor’s Center. I had imagined that it would be all downhill, but actually, it has uphill sections, as well, and thus proved tougher than I had hoped. The road is lined with pretty trees and large cut stones and commands some nice view of Bar Harbor. I passed the contact between the granite, above, and a very fractured sedimentary rock, below. I reached my car at about 4:30 PM, so the entire hike had taken about five hours.

I drove straight to Lewiston Maine, for I had reservations at the Motel 6. After checking in, I drove over to Sam’s Italian Foods in the nearby town of Auburn for dinner. I had an anchovy and mushroom pizza.