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Published August 5, 2011 by PAUL M. PROVENCHER

The Team in the Wilderness	The Locomotives in the Wilderness - Note the GPS in hand...	Marking the Location of the Jeeps before our Hike...
Carl next to Eagle Lake	near the locomtives

Prologue

While looking for some exploring to do while I was home in Massachusetts in the winter of 2002, I checked out the New England clubs online. On one of the ride boards, someone was trying to get interest in a trip to Maine. Some folks in Maine had made a winter trek to a pair of abandoned locomotives in the Allagash Wilderness. This is ghost town stuff. I have never really had the western ghost town experience so the thought of two huge locomotives in the remote wilderness might be the closest I would get to anything like that.

Naturally, this meant that I would spend hours trying to pinpoint the location of the locomotives on a map so that I could determine whether or not a trip of some sort was feasible. I put all my research skills to bear and soon had located the locomotives, at least in theory, on the map. In a way it mocked me for all the research I had done, but at the same time the location was so far away from anything I could have seen without doing the research that I was pleased to find it marked in this way, and pleased that I had done the hard work that made me familiar with the surrounding area through which we would travel.

The research pointed me to our stepping off point, Greenville Maine. It lies at the southern end of the great Moosehead Lake. This by itself is a worthy destination, and no doubt my interest will probably be tempted by this landmark which is but a stopping point on our trip. One surprise that came from my research was the rediscovery of Henry David Thoreau's writings about The Maine Woods. I had done a search on North Maine Woods to get information about our access to the wilderness area and his book came up. I got distracted by it and soon had read the account he wrote of all three trips. I was a lost cause. While his stories are over 150 years old, the beauty and mystery of the region that he described made me more committed than ever to go see this place where some remnants of the wild might still remain. Thoreau's accounts also provided great insight into the landmarks, conditions, and even the feelings of this place. I would read all three stories two or three times over while following his trips in my maps. It was almost mystical to see him chart his course and see it on a map that shows our destination for this trip. It reminds me a little of reading the J.R.R. Tolkein's Trilogy of the Rings and following Bilbo and Frodo's travels in the little map provided in the books.

I have no illusions that much of Thoreau's Maine has fallen to modern times. And I am somewhat resigned to the fact that much of the wilderness that remains is heavily regulated, probably to the benefit of people who wish to see something of it in an unspoiled condition. I am perversely pleased that the area we want to travel to is so remote that we must bring extra fuel with us. For what would an expedition be if frequent gas stations along the way prevented us from truly reaching the wilderness? It makes clear that in modern terms, the stakes are a couple notches higher than a trip to the local forest where, though we might walk a half-day to get out, we would never be far from "civilization". Not so here. The trip will require a measure of self-reliance that will be softened by modern technology and convenience, space-age navigation, and good homework. But Murphy's law applies to everyone, so remains some excitement that the unexpected could bring a new dimension to the trip.

A full nine months of planning has gone into the trip. I purposefully limited the knowledge of the trip to a close circle of people with whom I have had repeated positive outdoor experiences. I was unwilling to share this with anyone who would become a dependent or a liability, anyone who did not respect the wilderness and her power. I was unwilling to share this with anyone who did not perform on their word, for surely if things go wrong, trust becomes the most important item in our bag. And so it was that I invited people with these qualities and strengths. Over the course of the planning period, most of 2003, several people signed on and later signed off. For the most part the problem with a trip like this is that the planning is far in advance of the event, and requires a commitment of a weeks time for the trip. This by no means was easy for me. I found it difficult to choose a week that worked for everyone, and in the end selected a week that provided the opportunity for good weather, great scenery, and that fit into the calendar of those who were at that time signed on. In future this week may well prove to be the best time, but in any case, the date will be set very much earlier so a wider audience can be invited early in the planning.

I learned a great deal about Maine in the months that I spent planning for the trip. It was amazing to look at the maps and see that the Native American names of many places had stayed in place and were still preferred. It was interesting to see how the paper industry still controls one of the largest privately held pieces of land in our country. I never thought of Maine as a land of lakes, having spent my life enjoying the coast and the every eastern portion of the state. Now I see better the mystique attached to anyone who holds the distinction of "Maine Guide".

So with plans put in place for outfitting vehicles and people, and with a date set, we locked down our plans and staged for departure. Our road trip will take us to Massachusetts where we will pick up my father, New Hampshire, where Carl will spend the night with his brother, then to Ellsworth where we will pick up Carl's father. The last leg of our road trip will land us in Greenville, Maine where we will step off into the wilderness and travel up the western side of Moosehead Lake, into the North Maine Woods at the 20 Mile Check Point. We may make a brief stop at Pittston Farm. Then we will work our way up to the area around Allagash Lake where we will make camp and explore the vicinity for a day or two. After a visit to the trains, and perhaps to the Ice Cave on Allagash Lake, we will explore as we go, no doubt with the self-encouraged delusion that we are the first to come to these places...

Navigation

Plans being what they are, and me being who I am, it would not be enough to put five or ten waypoints into the GPS and leave the rest to chance. After studying the maps for almost ten months, I became familiar with the places surrounding the trains. There is a labyrinth of roads and trails. On some maps, they are shown better than others. I studied two different series of USGS topo maps, the Maine Atlas and Gazetteer, and MapSource Topo maps on CD. It is very valuable to have as many sources as possible. One might be tempted to think that a map is a map is a map. That is not the case, and any one of the maps I used had shortcomings that were made up for by the others.

Once I had determined where we were going, how long we were staying, I spoke with the Allagash Wilderness Waterway ranger and got some local insight. I learned things that I couldn't possibly see on the map, for instances which roads would provide us with the most driving challenges, where we could not park, and the nature of the woods near where we wanted to hike. With all this information, I began the very tedious process of recording waypoints, naming them with a scheme that would cross-reference them to the paper Atlas that we'll be using, entering them into the GPS, creating routes, and finally verifying each and every one to confirm that it was recorded and entered correctly. In all there are nearly 100 points that will be used in our navigation. When I got to the validation step, I found that there were about six marks that had been entered incorrectly. As it turned out, three of them were critical marks as they represented the location of camp sites for which we have fire permits. I am happy to report that the errors were easy to spot and correct. The final review of the waypoint plot compared to my annotated DeLorme's confirms that there are no more errors. This certainly is taking something to the extreme, but when it comes to knowing where we are in a place like this, I just can't see any other way.

Provisions

We started out with the food planning at the beginning. The process accelerated when I refined the itinerary and thus determined the number of days we would be in the woods. From there, I just took the approach of seeking food that would be nourishing, tasty, light-weight and compact, packaged in individual servings, packaged in paper, and things that were ready to eat, or mixed with water. This enables us to conserve weight and burn our trash. It allows us to have some individual flexibility as to what we are going to eat for each meal, and minimizes the possibility of leftovers. Our noon meals are designed to be eaten on the trail so do no require cooking. The large proportion of these provisions for four days of meals for five people fits in one of my trunks. This approach also significantly reduces and possibly eliminates the need for refrigeration.

Trip

We set out for Maine and after a day and a half, guided by our Garmin, we literally stuck it with a perfect navigation to our campsite. Over the next week we explored the Maine wilderness, found the trains, and lots of other landmarks. Without the GPS would have been very difficult or impossible to locate. This was a trip of a lifetime that included my father, and two friends. It would not have been possible without the GPS, or perhaps possible but considerably more difficult!

Paul M. Provencher

Category: OFFROADING Views: 2227

Website: 4x4icon.com/offroad/dwmexpedition/index.htm

Place: Deepwoods Maine

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