Two Snows in Maine

What we call “companionship hikes” are those where our guests want to hike a specific hike, and are quite capable of doing so, but for safety or perhaps other reasons they just don’t want to go it alone. Or, we find, they don’t want to bother dealing with the logistics, research, and planning sometimes necessary — they may be on vacation in some cases. For these guests, hiring a guide makes a lot of sense. We offer these companionship hikes to many of our guests — and all of our guides are awesome companions — providing safety, knowledge, a rich history of experience, and a nice set of judgement skills just thrown in for good measure.

Offering these very services this past weekend to a returning private guest were Redline Guides Ken Hodges and Cindy Zhou. Their mission was to reach as many of the New England Hundred Highest (NEHH) summits in the Rangely, Maine, area as possible within a two day window. Their specific goal was to try for three mountains, but things changed. As it turned out, roads that were thought to be open were in fact washed out. Ken described a lot of driving, learning the hard way what was accessible and what was not. They did eventually hike, though, snagging first Cupsuptic Snow at 3784-feet, and then the 3960-foot Snow Mountain (Chain of Ponds) before heading back home.

These mountains have no official trails, but they do have “herd paths” — trails made over time by visitor foot traffic — and that is how our team made it to these peaks. No real bushwhacking required. The weather wasn’t the greatest offering one good day and one not-so-good day, but they did report having an excellent time. Cindy learned a lot, Ken taking her under his wing, so to speak. And our guest also enjoyed the experience leaving us for now, already, with a plan to return for the others, though. That’s good. A quick search of our blog for “NEHH” will show we lead a number of these hikes and we want to do more.

To get a sense for the experience, check out these photos by Ken.

Well done and congratulations on the summits, team. Fine lead Ken and Cindy!