Great Hill Pond Overlook

After a mountain bike ride at Case Mtn. and a lunch at home, I decided to head to Portland to search out remnants of an old Civilian Conservation Corps Camp known as Camp Jenkins.

Off on a dirt road is a small parking area where the trail Shenipsit Trail begins. The blocked off abandoned road on the right was, I believe, the old road to Camp Jenkins.

After hiking a bit on remnants of the old road, I came across pavement!

And once I turned to the left, this clearing seemed to correspond to where the camp was. Unfortunately I didn't see any remnants of the old camp (probably it was constructed with wood - no stone foundations) but I will try to return in the wintertime to look again.

The Hike

I continued on upward and upward to connect with the main ridge trail (Shenipsit Trail) and check out the overlook.

The Shenipsit Trail was wider and obviously more traversed but it had rough sections as well.

Once I got to the overlook--it was gorgeous!

Although the trip back down was shorter--there were some pretty crazy rocky steep parts!

Up and Over Scabs - the Case Mtn Ride

It was a gorgeous day - not too hot and nice and sunny so I had big plans to ride a lot of Case Mtn.  

Although I was hoping to hit Perestroika and get down to the trails around the old Coop Road bridge (Khanada, etc.) this old man pooped out and high tailed it back via N95, Pandemic, etc instead. Still for me, it was pretty productive!

• Dingleberry
• Stolen Lunch Money (I walked the boulder-strewn descent ascent stream crossing)
• Covid-19
• Scabs (a couple of short stretches I walked :-(  )
• Cornholio
• Black Mamba (wow - what a freakin' great trail!)
• Scabs
• Scabs Fort (I ended up walking the first third of it :-( )
• Nutter Butter
• N95 (I bombed this super fast!)
• Pandemic 
• Little Dipper (a pleasant surprise - not too bad of an uphill!)
• Stolen Lunch Money
• Mountain Road (a bit rocky straight uphill but doable)

Highlights:

After lunch at home, I went to Great Hill Pond to hike!

Old Man rides Case Mtn

Today's goal was basically to ride down Joy 2019 which I rode up back on July 8th.

I parked at the lot on Birch Mountain Road and found out very quickly that it was still freakin' too humid and... 

...it was a wicked the descent into the first valley <sigh>.

Once I got on to Joy 2019 it was of course a blast as it was a not-stop descent where it felt like I almost never had to pedal! When I got to the big rock where I could see the parallel Fern Trail, I decided to check it out and head back up on the Fern Trail.

At times I felt like I was in Tolkien's Middle Earth as the lush vegetation and wild rock features seemed almost otherworldly! I rode up most of it but truth be told -- this old man walked a few of the steeper rock-feature sections.

Once to the summit, I decided to head back to the car the easy way via the powerline trail.

I must confess, at nearly 70 years old I am thinking about the advantages of an electric assist bike - if only I could afford one!