Loop of a lifetime

Is this the perfect Maine mountain hike?

Western Maine continues to get a raw deal. Overshadowed by New Hampshire’s White Mountains to the east, the Maine Highlands to the north, and the littany of lobster huts and clam shacks that many visitors assume is the beginning and the end of the Pine Tree State, the western woodlands offer a grand buffet of forgotten beauty. In fact, whenever someone asks me for cool hike suggestions for Western Maine, my mind immediately races back in time, Proust-like, to one special pinnacle. A big, lumbering thing with multiple summits, sheer cliffs that scream into the sky at over 700 feet tall, and tucked away from sight, one of the finest high altitude swimming holes in New England. A titan among understated hills and ridgelines, it demands to be summitted.

And it might just be the most savory, multi-course mountain hike in all of Maine.