On Monday evening we went out to look for moose. Found one but later found a gorgeous sunset on Magalloway Road.
The first day we just set up camp and the second day we woke up to cold and rain so no kayaking. We have been exploring the BDR (Backcountry Discovery Routes) in both our Jeep in VT and our Ascent in NH and decided to drive part of the final stretch of the NEBR, or New England BDR. It ends at the northernmost point in NH you can reach by road, Rhubarb Pond aka East Inlet Swamp. It also goes to Boundary pond, which is a state-maintained fishing pond, which is helicoptered in! It was originally an old dam, but the dam was replaced by a modern dam in 2012. The purpose of visiting Boundary Pond was to kayak the Canadian border!
I was running Gaia GPS on my iPhone with Gaia vector maps preloaded. I had trouble getting Gaia to work with an old iPad3, it didn’t track well. So we had bought a Garmin bluetooth receiver and it also didn’t work with the iPad. So today I was testing my phone. It tracked perfectly, I’m not sure the GPS receiver was necessary.
On the way there we stopped and chatted with a couple of guys in a Ford Explorer. They said the road to Boundary Pond was open, but man, the rocks were big. They probably thought we were idiots and would hear about our rescue the next day. I must say, I have considerable off-road experience and would not recommend this route to any other Subaru driver who is new to off-roading. You need to know how to read the stones and choose a line.
The bottom line was a loud squeal at the bottom, two air dam scrapes, a brief episode of wheelspin, and just one time when the computer decided not to apply power to either wheel. I just reset and got another line and passed that fine.
It was actually one of the most fun off-road trips I’ve been on. We have two Jeeps, a JK Rubicon
and a built YJ
but I had to maintain spinning concentration for several hours. You see, the price of failure was high. We were breaking rule no. 1 of being out of the way. We were alone. There is virtually no traffic on this road, no cell service, and it would have been a 12 mile climb to the main road, which also had no cell service and virtually no traffic. So I went very carefully and had a blast.
At Boundary Pond we stumbled upon a locked gate. We had brought our own dinghy wheels and the gate was clearly marked on Gaia but I never noticed. I had no idea how long the shipping would take. (I later found out it was going to be about 1000 feet, so maybe we should have walked in. But there were deer flies!)
We had boiled some water at the camp site and put it in a thermos. It was now lunch time. We had been thinking of trying some of those freeze dried foods. The verdict is, well, they don’t absorb as much as we do even though they would, but, man, they fit!
After lunch we head home and thought, mmm, let’s just see the road to Rhubarb Pond. And we headed inside. The road was becoming difficult, not impossible, but worse, narrowing. That’s the only kick I have, but it just got stronger.
The problem with the strait is that we could run into an obstacle that we could pass and also not be able to turn around. Hanging the boats 3 feet back makes it even worse.
But we foolishly decided to go ahead and were glad we did. We made it to Rhubarb Pond!
You may wonder why we didn’t continue. Those two channels don’t look so bad, do they? Well, they were. The first obstacle had a rock right in the center of the road. I wouldn’t be able to put a tire on it without inserting one of the sides into the two channels along the road. The second had a series of 4 rocks in a line across the front. It’s easy to get through, but then you’ll come down to the water crossing. At this point, the bottom of the Climb would be on those rocks, causing bodily harm, stopping forward progress, and possibly damaging something important below it. I also had a report of trees a short way down the road. She was a few years ago last September and apparently someone cleaned them, but the BDR road is for adventure bikes, not cars. There was a good chance I’d find a narrow cleared path.
We thought we’d walk to the end, it would be about 1/2 mile one way. But the wind was picking up and it was cold and I wasn’t dressed for it. So we returned to a large “posing” rock and headed home.
We stopped by the “Wolf Pit” for a photo.
and came across this wonderful sight.
All in all it was a great trip. We will be back in October and can bring two cars, the Ascent to haul the boats and the Jeep to do that last half mile.
(This has been posted on both the Subaru Ascent Forum and the ExploringNH Forums)
