The independent-reporter. [volume] (Skowhegan, Me.) 1909-1955, 1922-06-22
All Night on Bore>lone Mountain
nlY 1T paiinnl


There is in the township of Ellotts-
miles 10 The cast of Wilson stream, an
attractive emincnce called Borestone
Mountain Tho Canadian Pacific rail
way now follows down the valley of
the stream above mentioned. from
Greenyillc ON its way To BrownVillc,
and passes along the lower slopes of
this mountain. My hoyhood home was
in Mon on Early rccollections. per-
haps the very earliest, are of my
sleeping chamber which overlooked
an immense valley toward the east.
| have since stood at the same point
dhe house is long since gomez and
looked out ON that view. II is to mo
the most beautiful in all of beautiful
New England. In my boyhood days
II made no impress ion on me what
ever. Only on returning thefh in after
years have | realized what continu-
Gus feast my young eyes fed upon and
knew nothing of what they saw.
Prominent in this view. outlined
against the broader and higher form
Of Mount Barren and just beyond, is
Borestone Mountain above referred to-
In 1872 ! returned 10 Monsoon from
SkoWhogan to pass my summer va
cation. One Of my boyhood compan-
ions, Charles Emerson. was still liv-
ing there AND We Matched up a plan
to go TO Borestone Mountain and camp
over night on the aummit | was
eighteen and Emerson about twenty
Probably two young men less calcu-
lated To make this trip safely coald
have been found hut you may rest
assured we knew little enough about
it. We picked out u forenoon when
the weather looked propitious and
drove over from Monsoon To ElliOts-
vile, leaving our team at farm
house on the Bodish road, as near
the mountain al We could get. Our
equipment consisted Of "a very small
cheap shot gun. an axe. wooden
bucket with ii few supplies. a very
mcaEre shelter tent and two blank cts,
one of rubber and one of wool. GaZ-
ing to the east and upward we spot
ted Bald Mountain peak easily enough.
The whole thing seemed childishly
simple to us; we thought we had no
thing To do but plunge into the woods
and keep going in that direction. We
had n general idea also that all we
had to do was TO go up hill and that
proved to be Il fairly good guido.
After walking through the woods
what to us seemed interhinable hours,
at any rate period which we sup
posed would be ample to carry ns TO
the upper edge of the forest growth
we emerged all of sudden, at the
brow of IA cliff which looked down
some hundreds of feet. almost perpcn-
dicularly, into pond or rather into
valley whore there was a chain OF
small lakes one emptying into the 9TH
or. We afterwards learned that this
ridge was called Mount Shelby. Bald
Mountain was in plain sight across
these lakes a very impressive figure
We could not got down the face of the
cliff so we followed the ridge along
to the right until we found an OPP
portunity to descend into the valley
and get around the southern extre-
nifty of the most southorly pond.
From here we kept on our up hill
program. We felt it was getting late
and struggled on at desperate pace
for we had no wish to camp out in
those gloomy woods at the base of
on the earlier slopes of Borestone
Mountain. We were lusty Young chaps
and the walking proved 10 he surpris-
ingly good. As | remember 1t was
mostly through hard Wlod CROWN
with very little nnderhrush. Puifing
and perspiring We plunged ahead and