Isle au Haut, Acadia National Park, ME

Dates

Sep 16th - Sep 22nd 2012

Service Project

Trail maintenance & construction

Free Days

Hiking, swimming, ocean viewing, beach combing, birding, photography

Accommodations

Adirondack shelter camping

Trip Rating

Strenuous : Bending, lifting, digging, hauling, hiking

Leaders

Dennis McKane
Rick Russman

Equipment

Acadia National Park is located on Maine's rocky "downeast" coast. But the park isn't all located on the popular Mt. Desert Island. Isle au Haut is a three mile wide, six mile long island about five miles south of the town of Stonington. Isle au Haut is a relatively remote island outpost of Acadia National Park, with about half the island, or 2,700 acres, in park ownership. The rest consists of the community of Isle au Haut. The NPS has established visitor limits for park lands, to maintain a high quality island experience, and there is only mail boat transportation to and from the island; there are no roads to Isle au Haut. The geography of Acadia National Park ranges from meadows and marshes to dense evergreen forests. Everywhere the ocean makes its presence felt, whether by sight, sound or smell. Birding is excellent with over 273 species of birds identified within the park and adjacent waters.

Our service project is conducting trail maintenance and construction on the island's ten miles of trail network, which don't receive as much attention as trails on Mt. Desert Island. The project will include a variety of trail tasks including cutting back overgrown vegetation, ditch and fill, bench and slope, water erosion control and maybe even work on a "bog walk" or raised boardwalk. The park staff will train, supervise and work with us on this task, and there will be a wide variety of jobs for volunteers of all strength and ability levels.

We will camp in the park's Duck Harbor Campground in two lean-tos, aka Adirondack shelters. These are three-sided log structures with space to sleep each. Each shelter is equipped with a fire ring, picnic table and composting toilet. We'll make short hikes to our work site each day. Free day activities include hiking, swimming, fishing, ocean viewing, beach combing, sight seeing, and more!

This is the first week of two Acadia projects for WV in 2012. The other, a week later, is on the main Mt. Desert Island portion of the park. The middle photo below is Isle au Haut.

Check out more photos from last year's Acadia projects in our gallery.