enlarge Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

Heavy fog hugs the contours of Chairback Mountain as Staff Writer Tux Turkel follows a path near the summit earlier this month.

enlarge

enlarge Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

Rob Burbank, the Appalachian Mountain Club’s public affairs director, and Staff Writer Tux Turkel hike Chairback Mountain recently.

enlarge

See detailed hike route map Map source: Appalachian Mountain Club; Staff Graphic by Jeff Woodbury

ABOUT OUR REPORTER AND PHOTOGRAPHER TUX TURKEL is a staff writer who covers business issues, including tourism, energy and real estate. A graduate of Emerson College in Boston, he has won several state and regional awards for reporting and has worked at the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram for 27 years. In 1997, he and three other journalists reported the Forgotten Water series for the Maine Sunday Telegram, tracing the 130-mile Eastern Maine Canoe Trail from the New Brunswick border to the Penobscot River. DEREK DAVIS has worked in photojournalism for 10 years, the past three at the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. Previously he worked as a staff photographer for the Journal News in Westchester County, N.Y. He is a graduate of the University of New England in Biddeford.

HOW WE PREPARED THIS SERIES, AND WHY STAFF WRITER Tux Turkel and Staff Photographer Derek Davis spent four days exploring an area of the Maine woods that is undergoing important changes. THE APPALACHIAN MOUNTAIN CLUB is working to create a national destination for adventure tourism and recreation on 67,000 acres east of Greenville. The plan is in its infancy and will evolve over the course of the 21st century. THE TWO traveled by canoe across remote ponds and along a shallow river, pedaled a new 17-mile mountain bike trail, and followed the route of a proposed hiking path that would connect with the Appalachian Trail. They also slept at or visited four sporting camps along the route and met people working and staying at them. THE GOAL is to give readers a taste of the adventures they can find today in this changing region, and what the potential might be in the years ahead.

ABOUT THIS SERIES TODAY: A plan to follow a proposed hiking route off the Appalachian Trail becomes a bushwhacking challenge to get off a mountain before nightfall. THIS CONCLUDES our series about the Appalachian Mountain Club's effort to create a national destination for adventure tourism in the Maine Woods. THE COMPLETE series is available online at www.pressherald.com

Northern Exposure is a collaborative effort of the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, pressherald.com and News 8 WMTW.

Tonight on News 8 WMTW at 6, Steve Minich looks at the balance between logging and setting aside forestland as a preserve.

Also out there, somewhere in the clouds, was our destination -- Gorman Chairback Camps on Long Pond.

This was a lousy day for a mountain hike. But it was the only chance for me and photographer Derek Davis to explore the trail here. We even convinced Rob Burbank, public affairs director for the Appalachian Mountain Club, to lace up his hiking boots and join us.

Rather than retrace our steps seven miles down the Appalachian Trail to our car, I decided to try to return to camp on a shorter route, one that doesn't really exist yet.

Fourteen months ago, a trail designer at the AMC had strung orange survey tape through the woods to mark a future hiking path. I gambled that we could find where the ribbons crossed the Appalachian Trail and follow them for nearly two miles to a logging road.

I didn't have the best track record to hunt for an unbuilt trail.

A few days earlier, Davis and I couldn't find a critical campsite on a canoe trip. We had to push on in the late afternoon across a windy pond.

The day before, we missed a key turn on a new 17-mile mountain bike trail. We wound up way off course, tired and thirsty, and had to backtrack.

This time we faced the possibility of being stuck on a mountain ridge or lost in the woods, trying to get back to camp before dark and a heavy rain arrived.

So when we left the trailhead around 8 a.m, I was eager to get moving.

This stretch of the Appalachian Trail is one of the most popular in the 100-Mile Wilderness region. It ascends Chairback Mountain, an open, 2,219-foot peak known for its steep upper slope and outstanding views.

I wasn't counting on any views. But I was enjoying the foggy climb through open spruce-fir forest, over sawtooth shale carpeted with moss and lichens.

Soon we met a group of teenage boys from Camp Kieve in Nobleboro. They were on a 10-day trek to Mount Katahdin. They had just set off after a night filled with rain and lightning, from the lean-to at Chairback Gap, west of the summit.

The overnight rain made the soft shale slick underfoot. That slowed our progress. Despite care, we each slipped and fell at some point.

We were especially cautious on the final leg of the four-mile hike to the Chairback summit. Here the trail ascends a very steep talus slope, basically a pile of boulders at the base of a cliff. I made a mental note to thank the trail crews that built a intricate stone staircase into the route.

Hikers typically linger on a peak like Chairback, to have a snack and gaze at the view. But it's anti-climactic in fog, and we pushed on.

GPS UNIT TO THE RESCUE

On the far side of Chairback we met a young man hiking the entire 2,000-mile Appalachian Trail. He was an early end-to- ender, having left Springer Mountain in Georgia on March 1. By next month, through-hikers will be coming north in waves, racing to Mount Katahdin before the snow. The young man said he loved hiking the trail in Maine, except for falling on the wet shale.

By noon we had passed the Chairback Gap shelter and were climbing 2,236-foot Columbus Mountain. We met another group of northbound hikers. They didn't know what I was talking about when I asked if they noticed any orange tape crossing the trail.

That's not what I wanted to hear.

By 1:30 p.m., we were on top of Third Mountain. That's when I pushed the power button on the handheld GPS unit I had been carrying in my pack. I've used one of these gadgets on a boat, but never on a hiking trail. Now I was counting on it.

Here's the background: Some maps show an old path or tote road hitting the Appalachian Trail near...