Mullen Mt - second attempt

our only view - looking SE across Wassataquoik valley - and we are less than 30 minutes into the excursion

Wednesday July 18, 2018

We wanted to be up about 5 a.m. but it was 5:30 when we climbed out on a dreary low gray cloud warm humid morning. I asked Jim what to do – “let’s go check out Mullen Mountain as we planned.” We were going to try an approach different from that of going up the old Mullen Pond Tote Road.

After breakfast we paddled a mile down the lake to the outlet, hiked the two miles of trail to Russell Pond, and then took the Northwest Basin Trail which we planned to depart from at about the 1.35 mile mark from Turner Brook or .4 miles from the North Peaks Trail. We estimated distance based walking time and that we wanted to leave the trail at that point where the Northwest Basin Trail swung back close to Wassataquiok Stream. We set the walking time at no more than 40 minutes beyond the North Peaks Trail; we stopped between 30 and 35 minutes where the stream was 200 feet away.

Our strategy was to take a compass bearing (305 degrees) from this point for about .65 miles. This would take us across the broad east end of Mullen at the base of the steep pitch. At about .65 mile we would turn up the contour (SW) and make our way to the ridgeline that we would follow on the north side to the peak. We thought this might be doable based on google earth views of the forest compared to nearby areas we traversed at other times.

Before we left the trial we ate and drank while we took off clothes and put on rain gear. The forest was open and easy walking as we left on our bearing, but then we hit a steep section and the forest thickened. We stuck to our bearing even though it felt like we were heading up the steep section that should not exist yet. The higher we got the thicker it got; pretty typical. In about 40 minutes we found ourselves on a nub and the contour lines suggested we were at the SE corner of the Mullen ridge. Map check time. Pretty quickly we agreed we were on the nub on the SE corner below Mullen’s main ridge. We shifted our bearing to 20 degrees which took us up and across the contour lines toward the main ridge line. The way became brutally dense, defined as arms having to move apart one inch diameter trees to get through.

We reached the east end of the Mullen ridge where the steep mountain side noticeably flattens and continued on albeit slowly. No break in the dense forest encouraged us to go higher as our bearing began taking us downhill. At some point we abandoned the bearing, went generally northerly but down the contour to see if we could find easier traveling which we did. We were still above the steepest pitch that is like a ribbon that wraps around the base of the mountain, but we still saw no major change in the woods to go up through to the north side of the ridge line. Not wanting to end up on the north slopes of the mountain we set another bearing, east. The only way down the steep ribbon was straight down weaving among tree covered rock outcrops. At one point we had to work around a cliff. To climb this would be slow going.

At the bottom of the ribbon the terrain is flat in open woods. Here we took another bearing (170 degrees) and walked a flat course back under the steep ribbon to the Northwest Basin Trail. We hit the trail 10 minutes below where we had left the trail five hours earlier. The steep descent is probably the section we had planned to climb up to reach the definitive portion of Mullen ridge’s east end knob.

In hindsight and based on what we saw, this approach has more ifs. If the ridge is not negotiable, side hilling it would be exceedingly difficult even in relatively open woods. It would be interesting to see if the open woods at the foot of the ribbon wraps around into Mullen valley and how far up it the open woods extend.

Mullen turned me away once again. In 2014 Jim Logan and I approached it from the NW, but only got as far as the saddle above Mullen Pond. I’d still like to see the virgin forest that exists on the north side of Mullen.

As we retreated on the trail back to Russell Pond we began to see some blue sky. Our heads had been nearly in the clouds on the side of Mullen at one point. At Russell Pond we had a late lunch on the dock and peeled off our wet clothing to let it dry in now much drier air. We then walked over to the backside of the pond to get a look at Mullen, now out of the clouds. The view was not great, but we did get some good peeks at it and the ridge from the trail back to the canoe and could detect where we had been by virtue of the type of tree growth.