I shoulda stayed home. The thought of climbing Tumbledown Mountain should have flashed “danger, danger!!” The name itself … Tumbledown … should have been enough of a warning.
But I needed to exercise and I am tired of my usual routes on the flat in my neighborhood of Brunswick, ME. I had climbed Tumbledown a couple of years ago. Yes, I had sworn then not to try it again. But, but, I have recently lost nearly 40 pounds with diet and exercise … should make the hike up a lot easier, I thought to myself!
So, I drove west through Maine for a couple of hours, travel necessary to reach hills of any elevation. I arrived at the entrance to the Loop Trail (the harder of two routes up the mountain) on Tumbledown, a 3000-foot peak. The Loop Trail is named for Bernard Loop, a local boozer, most of whom was found at the foot of a rock-slide halfway up the mountain.
I put on my backpack, loaded with water bottles, Diet Coke, and a large BLT hoagie. The weather was perfect … sunny, not too hot, not too cold.
The first few hundred yards were not hard, mostly flat and crossing a couple of dried-up streams. (Maine has suffered through the worst drought in its weather history this summer.) Then the terrain starting heading upwards.
“O Lord, send me a sign,” kind of an inside joke in the Baughcum household. I should definitely have recognized the first upward slope as a sign. Many mountains in Maine, and Tumbledown is certainly one, fall into the category of “wilderness.” Unlike national parks, trails are not kept below a maximum grade, nor are they meticulously cared for. They are steep, filled with boulders and smaller stones, including loose stones. Trails may also be worn, scrubbed down by hikers’ boots to loose clay, or they may covered with slippery pine straw. Bottom line: the footing on these mountain trails is tricky and may require large moves upward where my walking sticks are an impediment rather than a help.
At this point let me tell you that I do not bring a lot of hiking or camping experience with me on these expeditions. I was briefly a Cub Scout as a kid but my family could not afford to buy Boy Scout uniforms so that ended that. My wife and I took up camping and hiking as adults but always in the company of friends who were actually knowledgeable and qualified.
A second sign that I might be attempting more than I should appeared as other hikers came along behind me. They were really young! High schoolers, plus folks in their twenties … I pretty much had a monopoly on the grey hair on the trail that day! And they all seemed to have legs that were at least eight feet long. The stones, large and small, that were causing my feet to slip and my balance to waver … they pretty much stepped up and over all the stuff causing my stubs to shuffle!
One of the problems with having to focus exclusively on where you place your feet is that you might miss the blazes, blue in this case, painted on trees to mark the trail. I had to remind myself to lift my eyes periodically and make sure I was still within sight of trail markers.
Thought I had done that, as I climbed upwards on what surely seemed to be a well-worn trail. And yet, it seemed that I had reached a place where, gosh, it was almost like the trail petered out in every direction I looked.
I was then distracted by the arrival of other hikers, again youngsters, just below me. They also looked around for blue blazes and found none. But, clearly, we were on the trail … it was a sure thing that lots of others had used this trail before us.
And so, after some investigation, it was decided to try a narrow, upward path leading around what seemed to be a very large chunk of the mountain. So, up we went, confident in the knowledge(?) that blue paint was sure to be found around the corner on the rocky face of the mountain.
Well, not so much. But clearly, we were on a trail … we could see where other hikers had carefully gone under branches onto steep and narrow footholds leading up and to the left. Confirming that we were heading aright was the presence of parachute rope stretched between two trees … clearly the hiker was supposed to grab those as a safety measure to prevent falling off what was now looking an awful lot like a cliff.
And, so, Chad and Val and Amanda and Zane (as I later learned were their names) went up. Zane was kind enough to take up my backpack and walking sticks and then to offer a much-needed hand so that I did not slide off the cliff as I clambered up the nearly vertical ?trail? … they scampered … I clambered, grabbing with the grip of death to whatever slight protuberances I could find on the rock. Made it, after some really scary moments … thank the Lord for Zane’s strong grip giving me a little hope and sufficient upward oomph to get my entire body up and stretched out on the pine needles of that ledge.
We had arrived … at a place that clearly had no blue blazes … or exits!
We discussed how to proceed. While the youngsters talked, I employed all my highly-developed technological skills. I tried “911” on my cellphone … no such luck … all was offline!
It became clear we were stuck … and there was no choice but to go back down the nearly-impossible route we had used to get into the predicament. I thought about crying, but no one else was crying yet … so that was out. I thought about moving my permanent residence to the ledge upon which we sat, but winter can be cruel in Maine … and there was absolutely no cable connection.
Therefore, and without the assistance of Depends, I watched the young folks (and their small dog, Winnie, … oh, I didn’t mention the miniature wiener dog??!!) leave me and go back down. They made it and it was my turn. Again, my God is a Mighty Deliverer (Psalms 18 and 50) … sent me Zane and his strong hand steadying me as I slipped and slid back down the cliffside, using that parachute rope and those trees and whatever the hell else I could reach to avoid going over headfirst.
Made it back to a safer place below the cliff-face!! Hallelujah!! I am not a minister of the gospel for nothing … made everybody stop and right there I offered up a prayer for thanksgiving for deliverance and a blessing on those four young people who had been so kind to me.
Zane asked me if I proposed to continue climbing … the peak was still quite some distance upwards and away. I assured him that I would be climbing back down that mountain, even if that meant sliding on my blue-jean-covered butt the entire way. He insisted on my entering his phone number onto my cellphone and making sure to call/text him when I got down … he seemed very concerned about my ability to make it down safely, and I was enormously grateful for his concern. (I later learned that Zane means “God is gracious!”)
We climbed down a short distance and re-discovered the trail. As my new friends turned and continued up the mountain, I found a flat spot to sit and eat and hydrate and take stock.
I was shaken by the experience. My legs were tired from the hike up and my arms strained from hugging that rockface. I was physically shaky. More importantly my confidence was shaken. All of a sudden, I was conscious, as never before, of my age, 72 … 73 next month. I felt every one of those years.
Normally I do not think very much about my age. Mostly I feel like I’m fifty. Although, clearly my risk-taking judgment puts me somewhere at the high school sophomore level.
No longer …. for the first time in my life, I felt old. Old, really old …
My small lunch and rest were sufficient to power me back to my parked car … took about an hour. As was true coming up, I was unsteady and I slid … although I actually fell down only once. And, yes, some of that downward movement came from sliding on my rear over and around those rocks.
So, my mountain hiking is going to be severely curtailed. I will limit myself to well-behaved mountains with well-groomed, moderately-graded trails. And I will definitely pay better attention to trail markings.
A couple of additional thoughts … yes, we were on a trail when we found ourselves on that isolated ledge. The problem is that the trail was almost certainly one used by rock climbers, perhaps free climbers. The parachute rope, a bolt we observed embedded in the rock face as we inched downwards to safety … all point to a trail used by very bold and strong climbers … but not one marked by blazes. When I (and we) did not see blazes, we should have gone back down to the last observed blaze, rather than assume that blazes would resume farther up the trail.
Finally, I do not care what the dry cleaner says, those blue-jean stains he cleaned were on the outside!
… Alan Baughcum … 9-15-20