Maine
Counties crossed: Piscataquis County → Somerset County → Franklin County → Oxford County
The Appalachian Trail Conservancy (or ATC) believes the 281.4 miles (452.9 km) of the trail in Maine are particularly difficult. The western section includes a mile-long (1.6 km) stretch of boulders at Mahoosuc Notch, often called the trail's hardest mile. The central Maine section crosses of the Kennebec River at a point where it is 200 feet (65 m) wide, the widest unbridged stream along the trail. The last and most isolated portion in the state (and arguably on the entire trail) is known as the "100-Mile Wilderness." This section heads east-northeast from the town of Monson and ends outside Baxter State Park just south of Abol Bridge. More moose are seen by hikers in this state than any other on the trail. The northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail is on Katahdin's Baxter Peak in Baxter State Park.
Baxter State Park closes the summer rules overnight camping season from October 15 to May 15 each year. Park management strongly discourages thru-hiking within the park before May 31 or after October 15. The AMC maintains the AT from the New Hampshire border to Grafton Notch, with the Maine Appalachian Trail Club responsible for maintaining the remaining miles to Katahdin.
Beginning in the late 1980s, The NPS and ATC challenged the Saddleback Mountain resort in Maine over development of private land that crossed the AT. The dispute continued a decade later, and after a June 1996 meeting between the two sides, NPS and ATC relented from some of their previous positions and reduced their proposed land-acquisition corridor by 70 percent. Even so, they remained opposed to any ski trails crossing the Trail in the alpine area. Saddleback responded that further negotiations were unnecessary and the NPS began appraising if the area was feasible for development.
Read more about this topic: Appalachian Trail By State
Famous quotes containing the word maine:
“I heard the dog-day locust here, and afterward on the carries, a sound which I had associated only with more open, if not settled countries. The area for locusts must be small in the Maine Woods.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“These were such houses as the lumberers of Maine spend the winter in, in the wilderness ... the camps and the hovels for the cattle, hardly distinguishable, except that the latter had no chimney.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It was a Maine lobster town—
each morning boatloads of hands
pushed off for granite
quarries on the islands.”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)