Moosehead Magic: Full Film

[Music] as main mountains go mount kenyo isn't especially big or challenging it only takes about an hour for the average hiker to reach the summit but once you arrive and scale the steel fire tower you quickly see why the mountain the largest chunk of rhyolite stone in north america has retained an outsized status since the first humans laid eyes on it sometime between nine thousand and thirteen thousand years ago for forquinio sits nearly smack in the middle of moosehead lake maine's largest water body from atop the fire tower you can take in moosehead's shimmering expanse and the surrounding hills mountains and lowlands stretching away on a clear day as far as mount katahdin [Music] spread before you is a paradise for those who love the outdoors and seek wild places and wild things moose deer porcupine eagle beaver bear osprey grouse owl and numerous other creatures still inhabit the shaggy forests of spruce and pine maple and birch while the rivers lakes and ponds team with togue brook trout perch and salmon the moosehead region remains a place to forge new stories to experience a part of maine that continues to amaze and inspire and for some people a place to call home moosehead magic is brought to you by the main office of tourism and destination moosehead lake additional funding and support was provided by your new england ford dealers your local rei co-op rei believes a life outside is fundamental to a life well lived geico see how much you could save on more than just car insurance visit new england.com bangor savings bank and camping world at 41 miles long and covering over 118 square miles moosehead lake is the largest water body entirely located within new england and naturally serves as the centerpiece of the moosehead region like the american writer and philosopher henry david thoreau who explored the moosehead region in 1853 most visitors get their first glimpse of its blue expanse as they descend indian hill and enter the lakeside town of greenville population around 1600. greenville has served as the hub of the music region and an embarkation point for wilderness experiences since the early 1800s today it's home to a handful of shops several seaplane bases a supermarket outdoor outfitters a pharmacy and several motels and inns as well as the restored wooden vessel katahdin which still cruises the lake [Music] the town also has several restaurants including places where you can get a cup of coffee and a hearty breakfast at a reasonable price and if you're not shy about striking up a conversation with your waitress you might learn a few things about growing up in the moosehead region like many moosehead area residents llewellyn hughes wears many hats which change with the seasons she often helps out at her sister's restaurant but she's better known as a writer whose column on maine life has appeared in several newspapers as well as a book of short essays my ancestors migrated down to the greenville area for lumbering but my father was in the military but no matter where he was stationed across the world he always brought us home to moosehead for summers so that we would feel like we had roots and it worked there of six of us children five live in maine and we just grew up on the lake grew up on the water you know swimming we had to do one thing before we were allowed to go swimming first no we had to do two things actually we had to check the temperature on the thermometer that was on the front porch and it had to be i think 70 before we were allowed to go swimming and we had to say pledge allegiance to the flag that was also on the front porch and then if we did those two things and it was 70 degrees we were allowed to go swimming we had to pick 10 rocks out of the lake and put them up on the shore and so now our beach is just sand and none of the grandchildren are allowed to throw rocks in the lakes because our all the moms are like ah i pulled that rock out of there my connections to moosehead run deep as well i got to know the lake and its surrounding mountains when i was six years old and my family took its first camping trip to lily bay state park a tradition that endured for the next 12 summers i've returned many times since and the thrill of catching my first glimpse of the lake never fails to evoke those childhood feelings of excitement and imminent adventure of escaping to a world of woods and water a recent summer trip brought me back to lily bay midway on the lake's eastern shore with a camper in tow and i was overjoyed to see that the place had hardly changed a bit in the past 40 years we haven't changed at all we're still at 93 sites uh in the campground and we don't have any hookups it's 50 50 i'd say campers and tent sites here so we're sort of keeping it old school which i think a lot of people appreciate now a site like this you know you're right on the water you have the cove so there's a lot to do here on that front a wide variety of hiking trails nearby as well and i think the big the big give on this one is that you have such great water access on a lot of these sites especially in rao lily bay also features two launch facilities with dockage for campers who bring their own boats along with the picnic area playground and swimming beach we've really kept it the way it's been for many many years and i think in some way that's very special because a lot of other campgrounds are changing to kind of meet with the times and the different needs and try and attract new guests and i think um it's special that lily bay is sort of catering to that that old school mentality and keeping it real in that sense [Music] of course lily bay isn't the only camping option in the area there are several private facilities including northern pride lodge just a few miles up the road in the tiny town of cacajo on the banks of first roach pond now owned by wayne and barbara plummer northern pride offers tent and rv sites as well as rooms inside the main lodge and yes it's still popular among hunters and fishermen as well as snowmobilers and atv riders well our large guests come for a whole variety of reasons hunting we guide moose we got bear we got deer rough grouse coyote um fishing he has the drift boat he drifts from the middle of may right through well till you start bear season starts much of the forest surrounding moosehead is owned and managed by large timber companies although the public is welcome to use the roads as long as they yield right-of-way to logging trucks this is a prime habitat for moose which browse on the new growth and aquatic vegetation of the numerous bogs and ponds it's easy to get lost in the labyrinth of logging roads which is why moose seekers would be well advised to enlist the aid of a professional there he is right there i don't know what's not fascinating about a moose really though you know i mean you just got to take one look at the gumpy looking buggers and you know the long legs the big nose the dangly thing from their neck what the heck's that all about anyways you know i mean grow a set of antlers that big every summer and drop them off every fall i mean they're just an amazing animals you know they spend as much time in the water as the beaver or an otter you know that's where they go find their food you know a good portion of it at least so they're they're quite an amazing animal every time i see a moose is like the first time i've ever seen a moose i mean i get out there and i i had to keep buying different cameras with better steady shots in them because i got to take 45 pictures to get one because i'm shaking like a leaf every time i see one i can't believe i made people it's been the first time they see a moose lived here their whole lives me i don't like going a day without seeing one that's why i live here as soon as you get out of this vehicle you're just gonna scare him he's gonna run away and you're gonna cost him precious energy and time and that he needs to be feeding and that's you know everyone's first instinct get out see if you can get closer get a better pitcher and you know it's all you're doing is ruining that moose's day by doing that [Music] it's just it's just like a little kid in a candy store to me you know i'll never get tired of looking at them funny-looking buggers when he isn't searching for moose on the back roads of maine harold is on the water in his tricked-out fishing boat trolling for lake trout in the depths of moosehead lake trout also known as togue are native to moosehead and can reach weights of 30 pounds during the warmer months they tend to hold in extremely deep cold water and presenting a lure to them takes skill and knowledge how do you know they're biting time of day sun's out they bite a lot better when it's sunny these lures flash with sunlight you know i catch three times as many fish when that sun's out versus cloudy skies so we'll put some fish in the boat so tell me about it just go over the depth again like what depths you're looking for when you're fishing in the mid-summer months deep water yeah you know i mean like over 100 feet yeah i mean it's you know your water temp right now our surface temps are already 74 degrees you know so that's warm yeah the fish are just going to keep going deeper deeper and deeper you know they like it in the 50s you know lower 50s so and that's where all the smelts and the feed is going to end up too so and once these mayflies are done hatching that's kind of the last big hatch up here and they're all going to go deep then yep growing up in michigan i grew up fishing the great lakes you know so i was eight years old running down riggers my grandfather was a commercial fisherman on the great lakes so coming out here and fishing lake trout and salmon that's what i was raised doing and it just happens to be that a lot of equipment and a lot of things were developed on the great lakes and you know i do very well out here fishing to say the least and so it's it's worked out pretty good for me to be able to take a couple of my favorite hobbies and make a career out of it and so it's pretty easy to wake up every morning at four o'clock and you know go fishing or go look at moose so bye all right nice [Music] [Music] my half day fishing trip on moosehead with harold king proved to be a great success and harold sent me back to camp with several filets for dinner aside from lake trout landlocked salmon brook trout perch and smallmouth bass are also available in the region and can be found in many of the pristine ponds streams and rivers those who move to the moosehead region do so for a variety of reasons be it a love of moose trout or simply natural beauty but for dan and ruth mclaughlin it was the opportunity to revitalize a beautiful 19th century inn that brought them here before we bought the inn we had never been to moosehead lake we'd never heard of moosehead lake my husband had never been to maine we said yeah let's put in an offer and we did and when it was accepted we fell over i hadn't even been here we didn't know anything about the area so i flew out the next weekend with my husband and we checked out the schools for our children and you know the hospital and things like that and signed on the dotted line and here we are blair hill inn originally was a breeding farm for cattle sheep goats fancy roosters it was built by a man named lyman blair in 1891 and he came out here and vacationed with friends fell in love with the area bought the entire 2000 acre hillside and created the the breeding farm and lived here until his death in 1946 and then we purchased it in 1997. so this is our 23rd season and we've gutted the entire building and restored it and we created blair helen when we found this property and made an offer and realized that it was going to become ours and we quit our jobs and we sold our home and put it into this we started a restaurant the second year we were here it's grown in popularity to where i have a waiting list to get into the restaurant every single night its reputation is outstanding so we have the guest rooms we have full bar and beautiful cocktail lounge and a dinner full breakfast service and then of course our dinners we have a spa that we opened in one of the back barns that we were stored where we offer massages and facials i think what makes the moosehead lake region so special is it's like stepping back in time places like this don't exist in many parts of the world anymore and our guests see that and know that so there's that connection to raw nature but also the town has sort of stood still for a long time and people love that there's still a place you can go into town and they don't take credit cards or there's a sign on the door that says back in 10 minutes but you don't know when it was put there people help each other you know and people help guests and if those cars will stop for someone to cross the street and where people are from that doesn't happen it's more rude it's harder it's less helpful less kind and that still exists here and it just connects now more than ever really deeply with [Music] people [Music] finding a german-style umpa band in northern maine was one of many unexpected surprises i encountered on my fall return to the moosehead region but find one i did at turning page farm and brewery in the town of monson for owners joy and tim bushen fall is a time for celebration and inviting guests to partake in their annual oktoberfest ritual and i was happy to join in turning page farm uh first of all was named by my wife and i wanting to turn a page on a new chapter of our lives um so we both quit our corporate jobs that we worked for years and years and years more than we care to share and we wanted a different lifestyle we wanted something a little quieter a little where the decisions we made were right in front of us and we could see the ramifications good and bad and farming just hit that we love good food we love good drink and we thought let's do something like this so we originally started with a goat farm that was our first focus was a creamery a dairy making goat cheese and a little bit of soap as well and then the brewery came out of just wanting to add another enterprise to the farm with the new tasting room out here we're going to be open all year long so every saturday and sunday no matter how much snow is thrown at us we're going to stay open we love the outdoors we love nature we love the seasons so we love having snow we surprisingly we do love the cold um and to top that all off the people up here are just amazing just we we've absolutely loved all of the people that we've worked with in the community um the the local business association in this tiny little town is surprisingly strong and active so these are guernsey goats um this is a it's a fairly rare breed for the states we sort of well didn't discover them we found out about them when we were living in europe where they're a lot more common um and then we moved here and wanted guernseys and we realized oh nobody has guernseys there's a lot of interest in this breed and it's building every day they're a mid-sized breed as you can see they're really friendly yeah you don't there's no aggression in this herd at all they're more curious and they they have really good milk production for their size stories about people ditching the corporate city life for a fresh start are surprisingly common in the moosehead region just outside downtown greenville entrepreneur abby freithi is carving out her own niche at northwoods gourmet girl years ago i came to mdi to work as a private chef and fell in love with maine i felt this you know kindred spirit with maine at that point and then i felt like i wanted to settle and i landed here in greenville since launching northwoods gourmet girl with her popular preservative-free country catch-up abby has expanded the company's list of all-natural pantry supplies to include jams nuts relish and dessert sauces the store also offers a variety of cheeses coffee baked goods sandwiches and specialty beverages and will create custom picnic and gift baskets filled with all sorts of delicious and healthy items abby has also launched wicked maine pops a line of all natural popsicles in a variety of unique flavors several decades before abby settled in the region roger and sue currier owner operators of couriers flying service had also landed in greenville so how many planes do you own oh gosh we got probably six or seven um we don't use them all so we're in storage we got two down in new hampshire i'm the company grease monkey by trade well that's what you like right you like working on these engines yeah when i was a child i'd always look up at airplanes and was infatuated with airplanes so when i got out of college the air force had a good program i could go into the air force and pick my career fields which i pick aircraft mechanics which i like working on stuff so in 1967 i started my love affair with airplanes i woke up one morning in the late 70s and realized that the southern part of new hampshire had become another suburb of boston and i don't do well in city life finally we bailed out of the southern part of new hampshire came up here one time and never came went back and nobody really paid real close attention to high quality sightseeing tours so that's what i started to do it's as close as you can get to wilderness in the lower 48 people around boston they don't have to travel that far to see this sort of thing well overall my favorite thing to do is to show passengers like yourself the the scenery that we have in the region what god has done for us up here i get a lot of satisfaction out of that i get a lot of satisfaction out of flying the old vintage planes sometimes i just go out on my own and just enjoy flying one of them alone my seaplane ride with roger courier gave me a different perspective on moosehead but my next stop just a few miles west of greenville put me back at lake level or technically below lake level at the lake's east outlet i met up with scott snell owner of wilson's on moosehead lake a venerable sporting camp at the headwaters of the kennebec river so old man wilson back in 1865 freshly out of the civil war moved back home to massachusetts and when he got there he found it to be a little too crowded he was looking around for a job there was an opening here at the sawmill there's all these loggers around i need an inn i need a place to house these guys that are running wood down the river and almost immediately the sportsman started showing up despite the lousy weather scott mannered to put me on some action with the kennebeck's brook trout which were gathering to spawn in the section of river just below the east outlook brookies are stunningly beautiful fish with spawning colors seemingly sink to match the brilliant fall foliage along the banks catching one is always a thrill another important cold water game species in the kennebec is landlocked salmon which grow to over 26 inches indeed the upper kennebec is one of the best places in the world to catch landlocks although the fish we caught were on the small side a variety of flies work well on both trout and salmon although nymphs and streamers generally find favor in the fall the trick is to keep trying different patterns until you find the one the fish prefer on a given day the swift currents that support trout and salmon also make the moosa region a top destination for white water paddling and rafting rafting is big business in the area drawing thousands of people each year who come to experience the mightiest rapids in the northeast those who prefer their aquatic pursuits a bit less dramatic can always launch a canoe or kayak on one of the many small ponds that dot the landscape around moosehead at wilson pond cabins a few miles east of greenville i spent a peaceful fall morning paddling a canoe through big wilson pond my hosts rhonda and bob dalton are transplants from the bangor area who bought the venerable sporting camp sight unseen it was a story that had become strikingly familiar [Music] like many of the sporting camps and lodges in northern maine that once depended solely on hunters and fishermen wilson pond cabins has adapted to the changing times and now caters to families and those seeking a wide variety of outdoor activities what i've heard from most of the people when they get here first it's the best kept secret in moosehead lake they like the quietness they like that they're 3.1 miles from downtown but when they get here there's no noise the cabins are far enough apart that they really don't see or talk to anybody else so and they have their own docks and it's just they can do what they want to do [Music] these days atv riding has become a big deal in the area and groomed trails maintained by local clubs wind through the woods i learned a bit more about the local atv scene on a brief ride with jenny gray of moosehead motorsports a local power sports dealer and service center wow jenny this is uh this is a cool spot huh this is a really neat spot usually you can catch a couple moose hanging out in here now we're driving along what an old railroad bed yep this is the old railroad bed um they used to run everything back and forth here which makes it kind of nice for the atv club because now we take over that and and fill the holes in and and it's a good base so you're a member of a local atv club what's the name of that club um atv riders and you maintain stretches of the trails like that's up to you like your group yeah we're a group we get together once a month and then we have work we call them you know work days and picnics that we get together and work on the trails and do different things [Music] so you can from here though you can go i mean all over the place up to canada even right yep and then and down south parts if we kept going we could like we could go over to um moxie falls we could go down to um through munson abbott gill you know guilford we have a lot of people that they that's what they'll do they'll pack their bag they'll spend one night in jackman they'll come to greenville they'll go you know so it's kind of neat kind of a fun way to get outdoors and you know just zip around out in the woods right yep see then you see nature see you know you see animals and it's it's fun so and it's family so that's right you can take the whole family doing it right [Music] many atv riders as well as snowmobilers end up at the birch's resort on the western shore of moosehead the birches has provided lodging for visiting sportsmen since the 1930s today it comprises cozy cabins on the lake lodge rooms and large rental homes and is open year round it's also a popular place for lunch or dinner among locals and visitors alike the birches started in 1930 by a lager that retired he had french loggers from quebec that came here and hand cut and hand hewned all these logs and built these cabins and the main lodge the kitchen and whatnot he was open for people that came fishing and hunting mostly back then it's been remodeled and changed and to some degree you know we've added kitchens a lot of the cabins over the last 50 years trying to maintain the place in the traditional sporting camp decor guests at the birches are treated to stunning views of mount kineo just two miles to the east those interested in visiting the mountain can do so by taking the seasonal water shuttle from the rockwood town landing or by making the trip in a private boat the mountain itself makes for an easy half day hike and features a sheer cliff face on its eastern side that plunges some 700 feet to the lake surface it's part of the 800 acre mount kenyo state park which occupies two-thirds of the peninsula shared by the mount kineo golf course which is open to the public from the public dock it's a short walk along a former bridal path to two of the three trailheads leading to the summit according to wabanaki legend kineo was formed when the creator god luskaby killed a giant moose cow on the spot as the mountain is thought to resemble a recumbent moose in profile [Music] kineo also provided the wabanaki with a source of easily flaked rhyolite stone used for making tools and weapons as well as for trading so mount kenyo is is famous internationally not just for tourism but also because of its formation and what it's really known for is its uh kineo kineoriolite which is a very very particular kind of flint that's only found here and the native americans 10 000 years ago began coming here to fish and to hunt and to form tools to be used for hunting fishing and making huts out of kenya rhyolite and it wasn't just the wabanaki who were coming native americans were coming by great water routes from as far as pennsylvania the settlers of european descent who arrived in the moosehead region had little use for rhyolite but they did recognize the kenyo peninsula as a pretty sweet vacation spot the flat southern section is the former home of the magnificent kineo house resort which existed in various forms from 1848 to 1938 in 1893 or thereabouts they laid out the first version of the golf course so everything else is gone but the golf course is still here it is a nine hole course we have nine greens it's set up to play as eighteen the second time around you're playing a different set of tees so you have par changes distance changes it is a full length course it's over three thousand yards for nine holes our signatures here are our par fours they're longer than average uh we have very tight fairways we have posted stamp greens these are 1890s sized greens [Music] prior to the 1920s steamboats were the primary mode of aquatic transportation on moosehead and dozens of the big wooden vessels once plied the lake today only one remains the katahdin birthed adjacent to the moosehead marine museum in greenville built in 1914 the kate as she's affectionately called once varied guests to and from kenya and other lake resorts in later years she served a more utilitarian purpose by towing log booms across moosehead until 1975 when the last log drive took place i've lived here in greenville my whole life up till now so it the exposure to the woods and who said lake were right from the first things i remember when i got out of high school i started working on the on the log drive and the first couple years on that was just spent wading through the water picking wood off the shore like wow this is going to be a trip holy smokes what is this gonna you know turn into so from time to time when the boat would come over uh there'd be light a man you could ju i'd jump on i'd go i'll go with you guys i'd hook up with my normal crew in a day or two when i first started again in the in the late 60s there was no thoughts of it it was just a way of life you know it had been done for generations went to the closest running body running stream or body of water and put their wood in it and floated it to their mills things were changing so we were the last ones to go we held out until 75 here on moosehead 76 on the river below the forks wood coming down the rivers was over with it's one of those jobs i had if i had a chance to do it again i'd do it for nothing it was a lot of fun the kate remains the last of moosehead steamships still afloat but many more lie beneath the lake's surface one person who has been fascinated by these sunken vessels is filmmaker and diver ryan robbins whose documentary film sunken steamboats of moosehead lake sheds light on the history and fate of these once numerous and important vessels so a wooden vessel requires a huge amount of upkeep winter's here when the ice freezes that's not easy on a wooden vessel at a certain point the management and the maintenance of that vessel gets to a point where it's not worth continuing and they would strip the vessel usually of all of its useful metal parts and they would drag the remnants of that vessel out to wherever set it ablaze and watch it sink it really is kind of the great untold secret of moosehead lake that these boats lie on the bottom here and there um you know you can say to people when you're giving a tour the first katardan because this is the katahdin ii burned and sank off of sandbar island in 1913. you know that's one thing to say it but i don't know that anybody goes further and says well geez it must still be there with just one steam ship to share the water with recreational boaters pretty much have the lake to themselves but even then moosehead sees surprisingly little boat traffic moosehead marina in rockwood is one of the lake's few boat dealerships and service facilities and i got a personal tour of the waters with second generation owner mark gilbert jr you can go out on moosehead with a boat that can top 70 75 miles an hour and draw a straight line from the north end to the south end and not have to swerve for a boat on the busiest weekend of the year that's the major attraction most of your traffic i'd probably say 75 percent of it is from kineo south so even on your fourth of july weekend your labor day weekend your your first weekend in august when everybody wants to be at moosehead the second you break past quineo your boat traffic decreases significantly this is that you can go on the lake where as long as you're careful you'll never see another boat all day if you don't have your own boat to trailer to moosehead you can rent one from captain rogers pontoon boats in rockwood on the moose river these wide stable platforms hold a lot of gear which makes them ideal for accessing the lake's wilderness campsites the state of maine maintains about a dozen of these sites around moosehead many featuring picnic tables fire pits and nearby outhouses it's an incredible resource for boaters and paddlers and it's completely free for someone used to visiting moosehead lake during the warmer months winter can be something of a shock the lake normally a shimmering blue expanse is now a solid sheet of white from the top of indian hill all seems quiet but as you descend into downtown greenville you begin to hear and see snowmobiles zipping around the frozen surface of the lake now dotted by dozens of ice fishing shelters things are happening and if you venture west along route 6 to greenville junction on a select saturday when conditions are right you might be lucky enough to witness a uniquely main form of automotive competition well this it's uh west coast ice racing association um we've been uh we've been at this for over 30 years 30 years yeah i've only been doing it about seven or eight years but uh you know i moved up here and then one day i was snowmobiling across the lake and i saw some craziness going on over here lo and behold next year i had a car i have a full roll cage in there this is my co-pilot and actually does he have a name uh is this i don't know but it's the smartest person in the car and it gives me one extra horsepower we're very extremely weather dependent we have to have a minimum of 21 inches of ice and so depending on how the weather goes this has been a great year we've already done five races and um we probably have um i don't know between three and four feet of ice right now so we're doing pretty well in here every weekend we go through at least six inches sometimes eight inches of ice depending on wow so the corners keep getting banked out and if we have really cold weather then sometimes we can flood it you know we'll come out here if some some guy car is not working everybody will pitch in give them tools give them parts you know it's not it's not a cutthroat situation until we get on the track then it gets a little cutthroat we have a four-cylinder class and that's what's running right now and then after that we have the open class which anything goes [Music] [Applause] [Applause] hey bye [Music] a great spot to watch the ice races while enjoying a hearty meal or drink is kelly's landing which in warmer months serves as one of the lake's only dock and dine restaurants [Music] down the road a bit in the neighboring town of shirley mark and ashley patterson were preparing for a very different sort of race when i called on them the pattersons raised sled dogs a whole lot of them and compete in regional mushing competitions including the prestigious can-am crown in the 2020 race ashley placed fourth overall in the grueling cac 250 finishing the 247.5 mile course in 35 hours 29 minutes [Music] the way we go about selecting a team really starts from day one in the fall training once it gets hard that's when you start picking out the guys but they have to eat they have to have good manners you know all these things that you're crossing your fingers that they should have but what if they have an off day because just like a human sometimes people are tired sometimes they're sick there's a lot of things that come into play so yes you do pick certain dogs that will be ideal usually it's age to tell you the truth even though i've had dogs all my life you're always wondering if you made a mistake every musher goes through the same thing of what if and a lot of it can really just be based on if you like the dog that's really what it comes down to you got to like them that's what i always find interesting about racing everything's very you know overwhelming in the beginning and then you get out there in the woods where there's nobody but you and the dogs you're just out there in the middle of nowhere and you depend on the dogs and hey if they want to stop because you've entered a snowstorm we've actually had scenarios where you've actually gone through 18 inches of fresh snow and can you imagine doing that as just a person now put that into the dog's brains where everything gets really slow and boring so that's why you got to be really good at faking like you're happy and you know you're always good at changing the mood of the dogs along with even it affecting your own mood i guess i've always accepted that hey it's an animal not a machine it's more so an understanding it's a working dog but yes they they would just assume be with you all their life as i learned there's a lot more to sled dog racing and sled dog raising than meets the eye but then again that was becoming the underlying theme of my winter visit to the moosehead region [Music] despite its abundance of mountains the museed region doesn't hold many options for downhill skiing and snowboarding one exception is the ski area at big moose mountain just outside greenville junction first opened in 1963 with a base lodge four trails and a t-bar tow the ski area has long served as a community gathering spot where generations of moosehead residents have learned to ski and snowboard at an affordable price in 1967 ski operations were expanded a double lift providing access to the summit of the mountain was constructed along with a two-story hotel and upper base lodge after changing ownership several times over the next three decades and following a chairlift accident in 2004 ski operations on the upper mountain were closed followed two years later by the hotel the remaining lifts shut down in 2010 but that wasn't the end of the story in 2013 a non-profit group supported by volunteers and numerous state and local businesses stepped in to manage the lower half of the mountain and keep the trails base lodge and lifts open during the winter in addition to its downhill trails the ski area at big moose mountain also maintains cross-country ski and snowshoe trails that are open to the public but true enthusiasts of these winter activities will find nirvana a bit farther afield in the heart of the 100 mile wilderness east of moosehead the appalachian mountain club manages a large tract of critical forest and watershed over its 18 years of ownership amc has also acquired three former sporting camps that once catered mainly to fishermen and hunters the camps which comprise rustic cabins a communal bunk house a bath house and a main dining lodge are available for group family and individual stays they're open from late december through early march and from late may through mid-october the appalachian mountain club is the country's oldest conservation group we've been around since 1876 and we serviced the whole northeast up and down this the whole appalachian mountain region and amc from its inception has always been about by putting people in direct contact with nature uh you're able to develop a really intense commitment to stewardship environmental stewardship and an environmental ethic where you know that outdoor recreation component serves as the gateway so in 2003 amc took a ginormous leap and bought this tract the 37 000 acre canton ironworks track from international paper and then that that just that opened the gateway for us and we were able to acquire enough land so that today we're at 75 000 acres soon to be a hundred thousand acres with a with another addition that we're working on currently now this is uh the largest remaining contiguous forest left anywhere in the united states uh it's 10.4 million acres uh and you know i just growing up here the forest is it just defines everything that we do it's where we make our living and it's it's uh it's how our communities are are built and how their uh our our lives are structured so you know for me it was a it was a wonderful experience it still is to be able to run around on this land base hunting and fishing and canoeing and cross-country skiing and snowmobiling and just really enjoying unfettered public access which is so unique for a private network of lands that exist here in northern maine so little lyford is is just a classic main sporting camp that started out life as a logging camp and then once the logging in the area was done in the mid 19th century transitioned over into a sporting camp facility so you've got a lodge where folks take their meals you've got a bath house where folks use the use the shower facilities in the bathrooms and then we've got a whole series of original cabins some of them which date back to the 1890s 1910s and the amc has been committed to rebuilding and [Music] maintaining [Music] cross-country ski trails uh run the gamut from sort of classic new england trails that are you know that are narrow maybe track experiences to broader skate skiing lanes we also have 50 acres of glade skiing up on the side of of third mountain which is accessible by sort of at style touring skis up to the top and then ski back down through so it's it's a it's a broad mix that covers a tremendous amount of terrain our 90 miles of trail are groomed every day it's the largest free to the public network anywhere in new england so yeah so this is a this is a brown ash tree and and we've got two different species of ash in maine white ash and brown ash and for the wabanachi are the first nations the four tribes that still call maine home for twelve thousand years this is central to their place in this landscape so there there's a they all four tribes share the same element of their creation story where gluskabe the great spirit shot an arrow into the brown ash tree and when his arrow hit the brown ash tree it split open and people emerged the wabinaki people came out of the brown ash we've got a nice strange little yellow birch looks like it's been hit many times by ice right here on the riverbank and on one of the wounds on the side of the yellow birch we've got a chaga fungus which is a traditional medicinal fungus that has been used by the first nations here for centuries it's been used for medicinal purposes for thousands of years it's just and that's that's what's so great about these floodplain forests like this where the river is right there and this whole area floods several times throughout the year so it's a very rich environment you see this this really really old yellow birch tree it's probably three or four hundred years old and if you look around you can see all these late successional hardwood trees so we've got a big stand of really mature trees through here that this is what we're trying to develop the forest into through forest management so i won't live long enough to see the forest look like this but this is the hope that we'll have big old trees scattered throughout the forest and will continue to manage it and this is storing carbon and it's also providing a wide array of habitat types for a huge number of species here in northern maine while the main wilderness offers no shortage of natural wonders to see during the day a recent initiative by the amc and the international dark sky association hopes to preserve a phenomenon that can only be experienced after dark when you look at a map of the united states at night this is the last dark space on the map so it's us when people come and stay with us for the first time they're amazed at how bright and dense the stars are in the sky they're just not used to seeing that and the value that it contributes to their visit and to their well-being is just amazing amc's sort of focus on owning land here was to try to develop a new model of large land ownership where you combine purposefully forest management with landscape scale conservation and purpose-built outdoor recreation so you know when you come in and you experience this land base you're you're taking part in a massive 157 square mile conservation project and it's a pretty meaningful thing you know when folks show up and they and they experience this that you know you can more you can meld all these values into one economic engine that that is really bolstering the local economy here [Music] cross-country skiing is a fine way to get around the woods in winter but if you want to cover some ground quickly nothing beats a snowmobile or a seaplane for that matter john willard owner of the birch's resort on moosehead's western shore has both i met up with john shortly after my return from little lyford and he took me on a late afternoon ride to mount kineo two miles across the lake as you would expect snowmobiling is a big deal in the moosehead region and the sport attracts droves of passionate riders to the area each year many spend several days traversing the vast network of trails that provide access to remote corners of northern maine and southern canada stopping at cozy inns hotels camps and restaurants along the way the considerable work of maintaining and grooming these trails is carried out by local snowmobile clubs as well as many businesses that cater to snowmobilers with nearly three feet of ice under us moosehead was safe for just about any activity including floatplane flying a licensed pilot for 40 years john never needs an excuse to fly and he couldn't resist taking his 1947 piper super cruiser for a spin moosehead lake is big and so are many of the fish that swim below its frozen surface the lake holds landlocked salmon brook trout lake trout and smallmouth bass as well as perch and cusk all of them targets of ice fishermen in recent years brook trout some topping seven pounds have been providing historic action for ice anglers but it was lake trout or togue that were the target of scott dean and les harding on the day i joined them at their ice fishing outpost off rockwood moosehead produces some whopper lakers including a fish that nearly topped 30 pounds taken back in 2009 it's toge of that size that keeps ice fishermen coming back to moosehead year after year and competing in the annual derby that draws upwards of three thousand anglers fishing on moosehead's been great what they did was uh it worked so there was a lot of uh negative comments people didn't know if the biologists were doing the right thing but uh the proof's in the pudding vexilar is a it's what they call a flasher but it's kind of a fish locator you can tell if there's a fish down there and if it if there's a fish down there and he's not biting i'll work him a little bit and i work him up down water column a little bit if he still doesn't bite i switch out lures [Music] oh yeah baby awesome sweet fish now oh good all right we got our we got our lunch while we never bagged any record-sized togue the highlight was the on-ice fish fry presided over by dean harding i'd say that was a pretty good way to cap off my action-packed winter visit to a part of maine that knows how to have a good time no matter what the season as you've seen there really isn't a bad time to visit the moosehead region with each month offering its own unique set of attractions and diversions whether you like to hike paddle snowmobile fish ski camp or mountain bike you'll find a beautiful place to do it and along the way you're sure to meet a few people who have already figured that out and who themselves have become part of the moosehead experience life in northern maine isn't for everyone of course but isn't that sort of the point [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Explore New England

Views: 30,706

Keywords: Moosehead, Lake, Region, Maine, winter, summer, fall, boating, paddling, kayaking, Greenville, Monson, dogsledding, moose, nature, hiking, diving, steamships, Kineo, Roach River, Kokadjo, Blair Hill House, Kennebec, snowmobiling, ATV, trails, fish, lake trout, brook trout, seaplane, flying

Id: BHHfQ2SjrBY

Length: 56min 57sec (3417 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 14 2021