“God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone,
but also on trees,
and in the flowers and clouds and stars.”
Martin Luther
Mt. Osceola (4340)
Trail: Osceola Tr.
Date: April 9 1999
Attending: Gabe, Simone, & John Chicoine
Miles: 7 Round tripTime: 3hrs up, 5hrs. Total
AMC huts, / shelters / camping site: none
Weather: Partly, mid 50’s at base, 40’ish on summit no wind, hot sun
A Mothers Day present to Simone. We hiked the Osceola Trail from Tripoli Road, (open from May 1’st to November 1’st). We risked a potentially rainy day, and were blessed with a beautiful partly cloudy day! What a wonderful day for a hike. We saw lots of spring wild flowers and a trail troll chicken bird that yielded us passage to the summit only after rudely strutting down the trail towards us, (forcing us to step off the trail and let him pass) and inspecting our worthy-ness to continue.
The trail had 6″ of snow on the last 1/4 mile, and a lot of springs running over the trail, in sections. Just before the summit there is a large clearing just off the trail side that has obviously been used for lots of overnighters, but I question the legality of the site. The summit of Osceola is mostly wooded with a fantastic set of cliffs facing the Tripiramids. The views are great; the hike is easy to moderate. On the way down the trail, our trail troll visited us again, with a challenging display of his tail feathers that he kept puffing up at us in a quick audible flash. It was as though he was taunting Gabe to “have it out with him”. We later found out that the bird is a Spruce Grouse. I wonder how he did with the rest of the visitors we met on the way down. Many of them had dogs and none of the dogs were leashed. Temps were in the high 60’s. We met one couple just leaving the summit as we were approaching it, that warned us away from trying to hike to East Osceola. The sun had not melted much of the snow on this section jet, and at some places it was soft for postholling, and 4 ft deep. We had almost thought that these were going to be the only people we would run into, but we were quite wrong. On our way down we counted a steady stream of people heading up, some very ill-prepared for hiking; one young couple looked as though they had just gotten up from Mothers Day dinner, and decided to go for a walk in their new jogging sneakers. We noticed their shoes, because the girl commented about our hiking boots. This was big fun! It’s easy, has a great top, and it’s one of the closest mountains to home. We will do this one again.
