Category Archives: Mt Katahdin Information

Complete information about Mount Katahdin in Millinocket, Maine, USA.

There are non-national park options that make everybody a winner

Maine Forestry Products.
The are other options than a National Park in our area. Read the opinion of James L. Robbins. Former president and owner of Robbins Lumber in Searsmont. photo: Tim Pasanen

By Jim Robbins, Special to the BDN

In 2000, Robbins Lumber put a conservation easement on the 20,767 acres surrounding Nicatous and West Lakes to protect the land forever. In addition, the state acquired 76 islands and 243 acres connecting to the Duck Lake Public Reserve Unit.

I told Roxanne Quimby about this project in 2011 at a meeting of the Maine Forest Products Council because I wanted her to know she had other options — options that would unite Mainers, not divide them. Her answer was, “There is no plan B. It is a national park or nothing. There are no other options.”

I oppose her park and national recreation area because she only owns 87,500 acres of the 150,000 acres she promises to donate. The other 63,500 acres are owned by many individual landowners — many of the parcels have been in these landowners’ families for generations. How would you like it if someone promised to give your land away? Threatened? You bet.

Maine's working forests around Mt Katahdin are still working for the economy.
Maine’s working forests around Mt Katahdin are still working for the economy.

She has tried to win over the people of the Katahdin region with the prospect of jobs based on the theory that her park would attract 15 percent, or 375,000, of Acadia’s visitors each year, leading to the creation of 450 jobs. But her park would never attract six times as many visitors as Baxter State Park. Baxter has 200,000 acres, including Mt. Katahdin, compared to the proposed 150,000 acres of the national park. Baxter employs only 21 full-time and 40 part-time workers.

National parks and monuments are built in areas of spectacular beauty or historical significance. The proposed park is mostly cut-over timberland and has very little to attract tourists. The only exceptional beauty in the area already is included and protected in Baxter State Park. The park proponents always show pictures of Katahdin, which won’t be in the proposed park, in their videos and advertisements, which is very misleading to the public.

National parks don’t allow timber harvesting, so they soon become full of over-mature, insect-infested and diseased trees. A National Park Service publication on forest management in Yellowstone National Park states that large fires are mandatory in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in order to maintain it in a natural manner. Since the 1970s, park officials have allowed some 300 natural fires to burn themselves out. In recent decades, 1,250 square miles burned in Yellowstone, 402 square miles burned in Yosemite and many square miles burn virtually every year in Glacier National Park.

Have we already forgotten the devastating forest fires out West last summer? Do we want that policy to exist in our beautiful managed forests in Maine? I think not. Forest fires don’t respect boundary lines, so all lands surrounding the park will be threatened.

An average acre of woodland in Maine produces 0.35 cords of wood per year and is worth $1,280 with value added. Some 150,000 acres of forest should, therefore, produce 52,500 cords per year, which works out to an annual loss to the Maine GDP of more than $67 million. At a recent conference on Maine’s paper industry, speakers stated that one reason paper mills are having a hard time surviving is because of the high cost of wood. Taking the equivalent of six townships out of production certainly isn’t going to help. Even though the paper mills in the Millinocket region are gone, that wood is needed by other mills in the state, as Maine is still a net importer of wood.

Our family has operated a sawmill in Searsmont for five generations. I know we need to manage all of our productive woodlands wisely to supply wood products for the earth’s ever-growing population, which is expanding at a rate of 80 million people per year. The United States already has 266 million acres of national parks, wilderness areas and preserves where no wood can be cut. That’s about 13 times the size of the entire size of the state of Maine. How much more do we need?

If a national park is established, there will always be the danger of it expanding. Acadia National Park is constantly expanding and just recently added 1,400 acres on Schoodic Peninsula despite a 1986 law that the park service would never expand beyond then-agreed-upon boundaries.

I urge Quimby to establish a conservation easement such as Nicatous Lake. It would be available for recreation, it would remain in the tax base, wildlife and other resources would be protected and the wood would still be available. Everyone comes out a winner.

James L. Robbins is former president and owner of Robbins Lumber in Searsmont.

source:  BDN

PA Police Captain to Hike Appalachian Trail on Retirement

Peters Township Council has hired a new deputy police chief to replace Capt. Michael Yanchak, who will retire at the end of the year.

When Pennsylvania Police Captain Michael Yanchak of the Peters Township police department retires Jan. 6, the 33-year department veteran will be anything but idle.

He plans on hiking the Appalachian Trail, the 2,200-mile marked trail that stretches north from Mount Katahdin in northern Maine south to Springer Mountain in Georgia.

“Being able to walk through a piece of history intrigues me,” said Yanchak, 64.

Besides Maine and Georgia, the trail goes through parts of New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. It is also in close proximity to major battlefield sites such as Antietam and Gettysburg and Washington, D.C.

“The United States is very large and I have gotten to see it in bits and pieces,” said Yanchak, an avid hiker. “But, I feel like I’ve missed a lot.”

Mount Katahdin and Baxter State Park.
The northern end of the Appalachian Trail is Baxter State Park and Mt Katahdin. photo: Tim Pasanen

Yanchak has been busy prepping for the excursion at his Canonsburg home. For months, he has been dehydrating food, pouring over maps, reading and talking with people who have hiked the trail for tips. He said his wife Melody, their daughters, Meredith, 33, a theater teacher in Texas and Melissa, 35, a keyboardist in Arkansas, and their son Michael, 36, a one-man vocal band who lives in Pittsburgh, have been extremely supportive. In fact, Meredith plans on hiking with him in June, when she is on summer vacation.

“My kids have all back packed since they have been 4 or 5,” he said. “They have all been hounding me for my daily itinerary.”

Yanchak said he will begin his hike somewhere in southern New England in May and walk 15 to 20 miles a day. To prepare for his journey, Yanchak said he will begin taking progressively longer hikes with a 35-pound backpack to make sure he is in shape.

“Bears won’t bother me,” he said.

Besides fulfilling his goal, Yanchak said he views the upcoming trip, which should last six to 10 months, as cathartic. He said he doesn’t know whether he will miss police work, despite being a police officer half his life. He also doesn’t know whether he will go back to work, or remain retired.

“When I come off the trail, everything should be clearer,” he said.

Yanchak started out his law enforcement career as a state corrections officer in Montgomery County. After three years, he left that position and enlisted the military and became a military police officer. Following a three-year stint in the service, he returned to work as a corrections officer, but when an opening on the Peters Township police was posted, he applied and got the job. It also gave him an opportunity to return home to Western Pennsylvania.

“I believe we all have to give something back to society,” Yanchak said. “Me being a police officer is my way of giving back.”

Yanchak said he has been on a number of interesting calls over the years as a police officer, including one on a hot Memorial Day weekend several years ago. He was called to administer CPR on a man who was having a heart attack. Yanchak said he saved the man’s life. But a month later, the man shows up at the police department.

“He wanted to complain to the chief I broke his ribs,” said Yanchak, who was the only person in the station at the time. He said man did not recognize him. “I took his name and said I would leave a message for the chief and I did.”

source:  thealmanac.net

Story of thru-hiking the AT | Appalachian Trail

Excerpt from “Transformed on the Trail” ~ By Jim T. Ryan

View of Mount Katahdin across South Twin Lake.
View of Mount Katahdin across South Twin Lake.

Here is an account from a hiker who completed his thru-hike on the AT.  It is very well written and quite emotional.  The story, that ends in Maine, of course, is accompanied by some great photos from many stops along the hike from Georgia to Maine.  Read the excepts below and then click thru to the entire article, if you like.  Feel free to leave a comment, below!

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“The day is cold, yet the Maine sun beats down on your neck. You’ve been walking for hours, the last of it over and around boulders the size of dump trucks at times. The sweat beads down, running under the moss-like months of beard growth.

Six months of walking and so much landscape has passed underfoot, brushed past your face, torn at your clothes, bogged your socks and boots. You’re on your third pair of hiking shoes, the predecessors stripped of their usefulness by the mountains of Tennessee, shredded by the rocky remains of the last ice age in Pennsylvania.”

from Harrisburg Magazine

“You’re exhausted, yet you climb the peak in front of you. You can’t wait to be done with this meandering existence. But you dread its end. What next? Where do you go from here?

You just keep walking. There it is. Baxter Peak, the pinnacle of Mount Katahdin. You can see the sign. Adrenaline kicks in, and you begin sprinting the final football field only to stop to wait for the companions behind you. You made them a promise to finish together. You’ll keep it. You’ll finish the 2,186 miles of the Appalachian Trail (AT) together.”

“For anyone with a bit of wilderness in their blood, thru-hiking the AT is the first long-distance notch in the hiking stick. But finishing the trail is a remote accomplishment. Only about 20 percent of those who set out ever actually finish the hike in a single year. Many quit before they’re out of the first state.”

“My favorite area – the most beautiful area – is probably Tennessee. In Hampton, Tenn., there’s a stretch where you hike along a stream. It’s just absolutely beautiful. The trail is right next to the stream, and it’s flowing. You start at a waterfall. It was a place where I wish I just could’ve camped for a week,” Reardon says.

“He chokes-up with emotion, reliving the final day of his trek. Summitting Katahdin isn’t just a story. He relives it.”

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More from Harrisburg Magazine

Sasquatch Sightings | Bigfoot / Pomoola | Mt Katahdin Maine

Sasquatch / Pomoola Sightings in Maine

Photo of pomoola or injun devil in Maine. Is this a squatch?
Photo of a Maine Bigfoot from summer of 2013 – Grant Brook Road. photo: copyright TPasanen 2013

The local Native Americans (the Abenaki) called Bigfoot, Pomoola, long before the white man came to mid-Maine. It is often described as a “large, manlike creature with red fur.”

(all photos subject to copyright)

Summer/Autumn 2013: My brother lives in Medway, Maine and spends a great deal of time in the north Maine woods. Hunting, fishing and working; he spends a majority of his time in the broad wilderness area around Mount Katahdin. He was driving along the Grant Brook Road (map below) and saw this… Bigfoot or Pomoola or Sasquatch or… Whatever it is. Unfortunately, he didn’t have his camera so this was only taken with his phone.

He said, “It ran off.  I’m sure it wasn’t a stump but, not exactly sure what it was.  All I know is it looked like bigfoot to me.”

Three close-ups of the shot:                 The Finding Bigfoot Shop

Mid-Maine Sasquatch or Injun Devil. Photo of a squatch in Maine.
Close up of the Maine Bigfoot or Pomoola on Grant Brook Road. photo: Tim Pasanen

Pomoola zoomed photograph.  Do you think it is a squatch?
Depixelated close up of Sasquatch in Maine – pic from Grant Brook Road – 2013

Maine Injun Devil or Pomoola is the local Sasquatch.  On the hunt for a squatch!
Picasa “Heatmap” version of the Maine Bigfoot photographed by Tim Pasanen.

This was shot northwest of Millinocket, Maine in the Debsconeag Lakes Wilderness area. Just a bit south of Baxter State Park.

Is this bigfoot in Maine?
Zoomed in version of Tim Pasanen’s photograph of Bigfoot in Maine. Can it be a squatch, tho?

It sure looks like, something. And, I did a bit of research with the links, below and found that the “wild men” of Maine were very often described as having red hair, which this one obviously does.

My brother’s boss and avid Maine outdoorsman , Jim Stanley, says, “I know it was a squatch.  I’ve see two together within a mile from where this pic was taken.   We are currently working with game cams.”

Here are some other photos from the area taken by Stanley.

Location of recent Maine Bigfoot sighting:

Pomoola or Injun Devil - Maine's Sasquatch.
Sasquatch sightings in Maine. Historic bigfoot or Pomoola encounters.

If you have photos, videos, stories about the Maine Bigfoot or “Pomoola” please email info@mt-katahdin.com.

Pomoola sounds slightly reminiscent of the word Pamola which is known to have been a legendary bird spirit that appeared in local Abenaki mythology. This spirit causes cold weather and was believed to be the local “God of Thunder.”  The word, Pamola, is still quite prevalent in the area of Millinocket and Katahdin.  The next peak along the knife’s edge from Mount Katahdin’s summit is “Pamola Peak.”  There is the Pamola Motor Lodge in town.  And let’s not forget Pamola Xtra Pale Ale from the Baxter Brewing Co. in Lewiston, Maine.  Obviously, quite a powerful word from the native tongue to have survived with such common usage to this day.

We, also, came across this great article online at the Bigfoot Encounters website.  We didn’t know there were so many documented cases!  The Native Americans called Bigfoot, Pomoola, long before the white man came to mid-Maine. Read from the website…

“The first sightings of the 1800’s that were reported and documented in the State of Maine occurred in and around the Mt. Katahdin area, what is now Piscataquis County, Maine and is located north-northwest nearby communities of Millinocket and Moosehead Lake region. The famous Appalachian Trail ends in beautiful Baxter Park at the highest elevation of just over 5200 ft., atop of Mount Katahdin.
The source of these reports came from a book titled “Camping Out” The book was published in 1873 and was authored by C.A. Stevens, published by The John C. Winston Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The original copy of this ancient book is owned by Chris and Amy Julian who have graciously shared the information in their book.

There are at least 6 stories of encounters with large man-like creatures, which the Indians called “Pomoola.”  It was also known as “Injun Devil.”

The book mentions the death of a trapper years before. He had been ripped apart and at the time it was thought to be a mountain lion. Who knows? The point that got the Julian’s attention was the fact that the body had been beaten against a tree trunk. Chris Julian went on to say, “I have heard mention that the book was fiction. I am not sure I agree considering the detail and the year it was written. I have checked many facts and to me these are factual accounts, -it’s a diary.””

Here is the complete Maine Sasquatch Sightings list!

Maine Bigfoot Society on Facebook

Walking to Katahdin – Appalachian Trail video

Video – Walking to Katahdin

Experience Mount Katahdin and the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. 2181 miles, 14 states. Great video!

More about Mount Katahdin and the Appalachian Trail

Mount Katahdin (pronounced: kah-Tah-din) is the tallest mountain in Maine at 5,269 feet (1,606 m or just shy of a mile). The mountain was named ‘Katahdin’ by the Penobscot Indians.  The term means “The Greatest Mountain” in their language. Katahdin is the centerpiece of Baxter State Park: a steep, tall mountain formed from a granite intrusion weathered to the surface above the treeline. The flora and fauna on the mountain are those typically found in other regions in northern New England. Katahdin has been known since time immemorial to the Native Americans in the region, and has been known to Europeans since, at least, 1689. Or, possibly, long before.  It has inspired hikers, climbers, journal narratives, paintings, local hit songs and a piano sonata. The area around the peak was protected by Governor Percival Baxter starting in the 1930s and is now known as Baxter State Park. Katahdin is the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, and is located near a stretch known as the Hundred-Mile Wilderness.