It didn’t turn out quite as we’d expected, though.
We parked at Sand Beach. We found the trail head to the Bowl Trail by walking to the Park Loop Road, turning right, and walking a short distance. The trail marker was on the left side of the road.
The Bowl trail has several different “flavors” along its course. It begins as a rock-to-rock climb up a relatively steep grade. The rocks give way to rock shelf and then gravel near the Beehive Precipice trail. The walking is easy for a while, and the woods are lovely with groves of white birch and Aspen. We arrived at the Gorham Mountain trail and decided to go on ahead to see the Bowl (a glacial cirque, or lake, nestled in the mountains) first, then backtrack to Gorham.
View Bowl Trail to South Ridge Champlain in a larger map
The trail gets rather steep and rocky again, with another intersection with a trail that runs up the Beehive (but not via the cliffs). The trail climbs to a high point, which is marked on our map as the peak of “Halfway Mountain”. The kids were getting pretty tired and hungry at this point, but we encouraged them to keep going, with promises of a picnic on the Bowl as a reward for their efforts.
We finally reached the Bowl, after passing a second intersection for the Gorham Mountain trail. The Bowl was beautiful! Bo’s attempts at swimming provided the kids with great entertainment as we munched on our sandwiches on a little boardwalk on the water. We noticed that there was yet a third way up the Beehive, accessible by going partway around the Bowl. We also saw a sign for the Champlain South Ridge trail. We were optimistic that the clouds would be gone by the time we got to where we were going. We pondered our choices, Beehive, Gorham, or Champlain, as we finished our meal. Finally, we decided to just let Andrew choose (why not) since all three choices seemed equally attractive.
Andrew chose Champlain! He enjoyed the section of trail that wrapped around the Bowl, which was all boardwalk and very pleasant. After a somewhat awkward crossing at a stream (which was quite lively after a few days of rain), the trail veers upwards, but not too steeply. We enjoyed a lovely walk up the south ridge, which is mostly rocky shelf, until we began to get near the cliffs leading to the top of the ridge (the summit lies beyond by a ways). We turned to admire the lovely view of the Bowl from on high, then turned to look at Dorr, and realized that we could no longer see Dorr through all the clouds and fog. We continued our climb, hoping that the clouds would stay on Dorr and leave Champlain alone, but that didn’t happen. By the time we got to the part of the trail that is a scramble up a cliff, the cliff was in the clouds. The kids thought it was cool to be in a cloud, but we grownups were concerned at having to eventually come back DOWN the cliffs, which were getting quite wet and windy. We considered taking the Orange and Black trail down, but weren’t really able to ascertain how easy it would be with the four little ones.
We took a look around but all we really could see was vague shapes in the clouds, and decided that there was little point in fighting to a summit where we couldn’t enjoy the views, especially with the slippery rocks and tired children. So we turned around and began carefully picking our way down the cliffs. The trail at the cliffs is excellent, very easy to follow. There were a few scrambles in both directions, but overall, I’d say this is an extremely pleasant trail up Champlain.
The way down was relatively uneventful. Sean was looking for ripe blueberries but they seem to be ripening late this year. There are blueberry and strawberry bushes all over the rock ledges. Poor Bo was getting quite tired at this point. As we turned off the south ridge to go back to the Bowl, Bo apparently heard the sounds of the traffic on a road below and REALLY wanted to find a shortcut. Andrew was crying, we’re not sure exactly why, and even Annika got a little whiney. We made it back to the Bowl, and sat on our little boardwalk section to eat another snack and give Bo another chance at a swim. The fog was beginning to creep over the Bowl, and we couldn’t even see Champlain in the fog.
The rest of the hike back was slow going over wet rocks, but we eventually made it back down. We saw a deer in the woods on our way down, and a lovely bearded iris growing in a little bog.
The hike took about 5 hours. After we fed Bo, we all enjoyed the fantastic pizza at Rosalie’s in Bar Harbor, and some ice cream at Udder Heaven.
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