We're finishing up Acadia national park by hiking the Jordan pond cliffs trail, South bubble and visiting Cadillac mountain!
I've wanted to hike the Jordan's Cliffs trail since I first heard about it 2 years prior. I was supposed to hike it last year but the weather really prevented that. So here I am a year later finally getting on this trail, surely nothing will go wrong.. right?
Located just below the Penobscot trail we did yesterday, this trail has similar views.
So why do this trail? Because of the cool ladders, rungs and features this trail offers. This is no precipice of beehive trail, and the first half of the trail is pretty nondescript, BUT the second half is full of amazing cliff side views of Jordan pond and plenty of things to climb on and over.
This wood stair case thing is certainly the most unique item you'll find on any trail in America. I have no idea who designed it but every blog and youtuber always talks about it. It's certainly much bigger in person.
I would not qualify this trail as family friendly, we saw kids but i would never personally bring any on here.
The flow of the trail should be taken from the direction of the pond house, north towards the top of the pond. The obstacles are tackled much more easily in that direction. There are sections of the trail that would be very difficult going in reverse. We did see one couple going the other way, I'm just not sure how or why!
When you arrive at this large metal rung ladder you know you are near the end. You can than descend to the pond, or the gravel carriage road, or even ascend up to Sargent Mountain if you need more of a work out.
Unfortunately for me I suddenly really had to go to the bathroom, so I had to jog back on the Carriage road all the way to the vault toilet! which means I had to hike all the way back here afterwards to start our next hike. Adding a good 2 miles to my overall mileage for the day!!
The South bubble trail is one of the most famous in the park, and for good reason. The views from the top of the pond might be the most stunning in the entire trail network here. There are several different ways to get here, but the easiest is from the bubbles divide parking lot. Note that there really isn't much parking here so securing a spot after early morning probably won't happen. We took the route from the top of the pond itself.
View from South Bubble
You'll find that this trail is steep and offers no views along the way. Just tons and tons of stone stairs to climb. Once you arrive at the top explore around, there are views everywhere and the main cliff is massive, providing plenty of room for the large crowds that gather here. The trail down to the pond from the south side is very short but I don't recommend it unless you are agile. There is also often a large crowd coming up so this can create quite the bottle neck.
Technically I'm cheating a little bit here. I had the pleasure of waking up on a third morning, so we did not fit this in on day 2. But I finally got my photo with the park sign located at the visitors center. More importantly I secured a spot to drive up Cadillac mountain. Disappointingly we awoke to find heavy cloud cover and rain so I didn't think we would get to see much other than the deer along the drive.
Cloudy view from Cadillac Mountain
Like some miracle the clouds parted and the rain stopped enough to enjoy the summit. We ran around the small trails here and located the summit medallion behind the facility located here. There is no sign and they don't really direct you to the true summit so good luck!
And with that, I finished everything in Acadia that I had originally set out to do. It's by no means every trail or thing of interest, it's just everything I was personally interested in. I'm sure I'll be back to this beautiful place in the future but I have a lot of other locations to explore for now. Look out for a full guide to the park in the future!
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