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Hiking Beech Mountain in Acadia National Park

Southwest Harbor

My Dad was visiting from Florida, and we’d already had a pretty full day!We’d taken a tour by air – a plane tour of Mount Desert Island in the morning, a tour by sea – a schooner tour of Frenchman’s Bay in the afternoon, and we needed to take a tour by land, in order to have done a air, sea and land day. We only had about an hour, and Acadia National Park was crazy.. so I knew just the place to go to get the vistas and the elevation to give my 69 year old father the adventurous experience he was looking for!

Beech Mountain is a little over a mile, start to finish, but there’s a BIG elevation gain if you go the way we did (to the left!) and head up to the fire tower first, then hit the water views on the way down. If you only have  a short period of time, you can take the right side up, but you’ll miss the heart rate elevation, and what’s the point of hiking, if you’re not burning calories 🙂

Trail Stats:

Parking: To find the parking lot, head to Somesville.

We drove by the parking lot once, and had to turn around. The sign for the parking lot is literally lateral to the turn and the turn is around the bend. Once you find the parking lot, after you pass a farm and a camp, you’ll park wherever, then head to the right, by the bathrooms, and head into the woods! There are other trails, the cliffs, etc. which I have yet to do, but look for the following sign!

Distance: 1.2 miles

Elevation Gain: 347 feet

Trails: Head to the left to get the hard stuff out of the way first, then check out the views on the way down.

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Entrance sign to the trail loop
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Dad wasn’t sure about the rock face

 

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Rock face, a nice elevation gain in a short period of time. cell phone pic

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We went for a brief detour to check out the views and Dad took us up a detour. Where we met a nice ranger who told us we could eat the berries.

 

 

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Dad’s feeling good! He’s 69!
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Photo from the second level of the fire tower. You can only access the second level, the top is blocked off.
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Such amazing views.
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Looking at Dad from the second story
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Black and white
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Dad and I with the fire tower in the background
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Summit – 839 feet

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A very cool root
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Descent
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Heading down the rock face
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Dad’s doing great – we passed a few people on the way down
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ahhhmazing views.
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Views of Long Pond
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On the way back to the parking lot, a little over an hour passed.

 

FMI: check out some of my favorite resources

Act out with Aislinn – resource

Acadia Magic – resource

Maine Trailfinder

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DD

Florida born, Maine living. Outdoor life is for me. I love adventures - hiking -photography - running - camping - reading - creating - learning - traveling - deep eddy vodka - cats and living, basically. Follow me on social - @DanielleDorrie