As part of Canada Day long weekend, Maria and I decided to spend a night backpacking to one of the back country campsites on Mt. Carleton. The weather was calling for lots of rain, but being in the Maritimes, we were willing to take the chance and drive 4 hours to climb a mountain and sleep in the clouds.
We didn’t see any moose or any animals on our way along the chip sealed road, that wound through the Appalachian Mountain range in Northern New Brunswick. These Appalachians aren’t as glamorous as the range in the southern US, but they are ours, and they are beautiful.
We arrived to the Mt Carleton parking lot after driving through torrential downpours on the muddy one lane road that led us here. Once we parked though, it actually cleared off a little, enough that we didn’t need our rain gear.
We started the 4km trek up, stumbling over rocks and roots. Its a fairly nice hike, lots of green ferns and sweet forest smells thanks to the fresh washing of rain. There’s so much tree canopy, there were still some dry spots, even after all that rain!
The hike up the “left” side of Mt Carleton is more strenuous than the “right” side. The “right” side is the most popular, mostly because it’s easier. It actually follows one of the original roads to the top of the mountain. The “left” side is for the more adventurous hiker, and it’s where we will set up our tent at the campsite near the top.
When I hike long distances, I try to break up the long hike into sections. For example, the first “third” of this hike is down hill to the brook. You would think hiking up Mt Carleton you hike up, but in reality, this hike starts downhill.
The second “third” of this hike follows the brook uphill. There’s lots of slippery rocks, a few rocky climbs and a beautiful brook to your left.
The last “third” steers away from the brook to the right, and back towards the mountain. Its not too tough of a climb into the intersection that goes either left to the campsites or right to continue up the mountain 1.5 km away. We went left to set up camp.
There was another tent set up in the site before ours, they weren’t home though. We passed by and the privy that was just a short stumble along the path. We came to a huge downed tree that we had to climb over to get to the actual site. Ugh.
Once we arrived to the pad, it was a short tumble to the little fresh water ponds behind the site. There’s so much water in the mountain, all the fresh water springs are popping! Cool, clear, fresh water. We filtered and filled up, set up the tent, and started hiking up to the top of the Maritimes.
Once we arrived to the trail that follows a dangerous rocky ridge, the sun that had made a short appearance was starting to be covered by clouds and drizzle. We could see it rolling up through the valleys. The small mountain tops we could see to the horizon, started to disappear one by one in the fog. This open rocky ridge was not a great place to be in those conditions.
By the time we got above the tree line, it was miserable. Foggy, windy, creepy. It was getting close to sunset. We could hear others coming up the trail behind us. We scampered up the rigid rocks and got off trail due to the poor signage. It didn’t matter anyway, we couldn’t see anything more that 10 feet due to the fog.
Climbing across the Mt Carleton Ridge is no joke. One wrong move and its a helicopter ride to the bottom for a waiting ambulance. It was made worse by the fog and wind, and it was getting worse.
We were coming down one tricky rocky descent, and I stepped the wrong way. I heard 4 popping sounds followed by strikes of pain coming from my ankle. I thought this was it, Im getting my first helicopter ride. I believed for a split moment I had broken my ankle.
The relief I felt once I could move my ankle was overwhelming. I just had to walk it off. It did swell to the size of a softball, but it wasn’t broken.
The others were coming up quickly behind us. We made it to the fire wardens-lookout cabin sweaty but happy. The others joined us, they were young people who have never been to the top of Carleton. There wasn’t much to see. They quickly ate. They wanted to get going because the sun was setting. We recommended they take the well used trail back to the bottom instead of traversing back across the ridge again.
Maria and I had chilli mac and cheese and some snacks. It was after 8pm. Sunset was for 9:27pm, but we still had to make our way back to the campsite. It was only 1.5kms from here, but it was storming. The winds were steady, it was foggy and drizzly. It wasn’t going to get any brighter, in fact it was going to be darker, and it would get darker faster because of the thick clouds and fog. We didn’t feel confident in our safety traversing back across the treeless ridge in these conditions. You could hear the creepy wind howling through the anchor wires holding the cabin down.
We knew we had to hike down the safer trail back to the parking lot which is about 4km, and then climb the trail we originally hiked to the campsite, another 4km. It was going to be a long hike.
Heading down the mountain was fairly easy. The weather was calm, much different than up top. The trail was wide. Maria even tried her new head lamp! It was like a flood light at a prison! Animals would be blinded by it. Squirrels in mid jump from tree to tree caught a glimpse of that bright headlamp and they would crash into the tree they were jumping to!
We arrived back to the parking lot at 10pm, we were halfway. We also checked on the NY Mets game, they were up 5-1 over the Giants. Awesome. We could have stayed at the car, but that would mean an 8km hike to get the tent in the morning. No thanks.
We adventured back up the “left” side of the mountain. It was dark but really nice and no rain. It was a long hike as we were both exhausted from driving 4 hours to the park, then climbing to the top, then back down, and once again back up.
Yes, we climbed Mt Carleton twice in the same night.
We arrived to the tent at about 11:45pm. We actually walked through the other campsite so we wouldn’t have to climb over that downed tree again. We walked right past the other tent. We were terrible camping neighbours.
After washing up in the pond, having a bite to eat, we fell asleep just as the rain started to come down. We made it. We were dry, in our sleeping bags and sound asleep on Mount Carleton.