Around Jordan Pond

3.0 miles

On this hike I parked at the boat ramp parking area, walked around Jordan Pond to the outlet, north on the Jordan Pond West Side Trail to the north end, then south on the Jordan Pond East Side Trail back to the boat ramp. The Jordan Pond West Side Trail is raw and wild by comparison with the trail on the opposite side. Where the ground it passes over isn't wet it is rooty, and where it isn't rooty it is full of stones. The pond is ringed with boulders, Northern white cedars taking root in those on the west side, stabilizing them like a levee protecting the lower ground behind it. A long bogwalk made of split logs takes hikers over the wettest, rootiest ground. Where stretches of higher ground make the bogwalks unnecessary, the west side trail passes over the roots of shoreline trees, the roots doing the work of a bogwalk at considerable risk to themselves from wear and tear caused by thousands of boots treading on them.

Over halfway to the north end the west side trail turns inland and passes through spruce woods with tall poles rising sixty and seventy feet overhead, the ground around them thick with saplings. In short order the trail passes over a small stream which empties into the pond, its bed strewn with boulders fallen from the cliffs above. Then the trail skits the shore of Tumbledown Cove through a talus slope with boulders twelve feet tall, others half that size. Here the trail keeps within a few feet of the pond. Rock-cap fern, rock tripe, and a variety of crusty lichens add touches of color and texture, turning the Tumbledown into a rock garden au naturel. The cove opens onto a profile view of South bubble.

North of the Tumbledown, bluebead leaves were rising directly out of the soil, uncoiling as they rose. There the west side trail continues behind a screen of Northern white cedar until it crosses Deer Brook running out of the valley between Penobscot and Sargent mountains. Farther along, another stream comes in from the wetland between Sargent and North Bubble. This stream empties into the beaver lodge lagoon, then flows under the impressive Youth Conservation Corps bridge into the pond.

The trail continues along the south end of the pond, connecting the east and west side trails. This section looks across to the familiar aspect of the Bubbles in all their sensuous symmetry. The Jordan Pond East Side Trail provides solid footing for the most park, only occasionally passing over spots that hold water and get boggy after a rain.