For our second day in Maine, we started out at the Sugarloaf golf course. There is a short walk through the course to a bushwhack that takes you to Caribou Valley Road. At the start of the bushwhack, we found no trace of any recent use. The bushwhack is pretty straightforward through open woods following the edge of a ravine, without dropping into the ravine. Caribou Valley Road was packed down from snowmobile traffic and was a mindless walk past the summer parking area to the AT crossing.
When we reached the AT, there had been no recent tracks to the Crockers. The opposite direction towards Sugarloaf did have a packed out track. We began breaking trail to South Crocker. The trail starts out mellow enough, wandering through the woods for a while before it starts climbing steeply. The steep sections were challenging, since the snow was light and fluffy, and wasn't packing down well. Every few steps seemed to be followed by snow giving out under foot and sliding back down a bit.
Breaking trail up South Crocker
A view of Sugarloaf from the side of South Crocker
Looking at South Crocker from the side of North Crocker
After reaching South Crocker, conditions getting to North Crocker were a little easier, and we enjoyed the view for a bit before returning to South Crocker.
Looking at Mt Abraham from North Crocker
We had to dig down to find the summit sign on North Crocker
There is a herd path from South Crocker to Reddington, but we didn't couldn't find any trace of it. Leaving the summit, we fought through a lot of thick spruce to make our way off of the mountain. The trees opened up after a while, and we enjoyed descending through open woods towards the col. As we neared the col, we again found thick spruce with no obvious openings. We knew that we were close to a snowmobile trail that passes through the col, and serves as the route for a short distance, so we struggled through the trees to get there.
Crossing the snowmobile trail in the col between South Crocker and Reddington
The route up Reddington was easy to spot from the snowmobile trail, and was easier to follow as well. When we reached the summit, it had taken us over two hours to cover the 1.2 miles from South Crocker to Reddington. We discussed our options - retrace our tracks, re-climbing and then descending South Crocker on the AT, or following snowmobile trails back to Caribou Valley Road. The snowmobile trail would be two miles longer, but would have little to no elevation gain, and be packed down.
We chose to take the snowmobile trail, figuring that our faster speed on a wide packed trail would make up for the extra distance. We reached the bushwhack from Caribou Valley Road to the golf course at about the time that we needed headlamps. Day two was another success, but was once again more effort than we were expecting.