On the High Seas with Cousin Lester

A few years ago I was hiking on the Eyebrow Trail on Old Speck, a 4,000 footer quite close to the New Hampster border. Near the top we had to ease our way along a thin traverse and then head up a steep pitch. Iron handholds had been sunk into the rock easing the way along the ledge, and then a set of two or three wrought iron steps had likewise been affixed to the rock. At the top of the steps you gripped onto a wire rope threaded through a series of stantions drilled and fixed into the rock to help yourself up and across the steep ledge.

Think a minute, if you will, about the planning, skill and sheer effort involved in constructing all of this. I was exhausted just climbing to that point, and here obviously a party had lugged this stuff up a few thousand feet plus the rock drill and cement it must have required to install.

Back home a few hours later I called my Cousin Lester to tell him what I’d encountered. “I built that,” he said, then quickly amended that he had formed part of the Maine Conservation Corps crew that had pulled it off.

Here on the Mawson Lester has been working on a series of stories chosen from his long and, among mountain types, much celebrated career. For a Bates chem major (who, as he acknowledges with a chuckle, really majored in Outing Club), he does a nice job getting his thoughts down, but has appreciated having his English-major-turned-lawyer cousin punch up his prose a bit. It’s been fun turning his verbs from intransitive to transitive, and through the process I’ve had a rare opportunity to learn more about his work building and maintaining trails in Maine and across the US.

I first met Lester in the early 1960s. My parents had always wanted to sail our 32-foot ketch “Psyche” into the little harbor on Gotts Island about 3 miles off the coast south of Bass Harbor, Maine. My father’s cousin Northwood and his wife Rita maintained a house on the Island, and a fog-free day and workable tide conditions at last came together. I remember hiking around this remarkable pink granite island with Lester, just a year younger than me. We’d been cruising on the Psyche for weeks and we welcomed a day ashore.

Lester has been kind enough to invite me and mine out to the Island over the years and Leonard has joined us the last two times.

The Baxter Park Authority had the good sense to hire Lester in 1978 as its first Trail Supervisor with a commission to get the Park’s miles of trails into good shape. Here he is with one of the many trail crews he lead over the years getting ready to install a series of stepping stones to allow hikers to cross a muddy portion of a trail.

It wouldn’t make much sense for me to recapitulate his storied career – interested parties can Google him and get the full story, including the twenty-odd years he spent installing about 450 granite steps on the Hunt Trail. But here’s a few vignettes.

Inspired by an operation he saw in Alaska, Lester set up an apparatus for moving large, heavy rocks over significant distances using a wire rope, a grip hoist and tripods. No more rolling rocks over very sensitive high alpine plants to clear and build trails.

Often called upon by organizations throughout the US to consult on trail matters, Lester put together an informal catalogue of trail building/maintaining equipment to respond to frequent questions about where to get the right rock drill, etc. In 1993 he launched Trail Services LLC, has published a catalogue annually and runs his trail equipment sales business from his home in Bangor. Where else would you go for a grip hoist?

Towards the end of his 13-year tenure as President of the Maine Appalachian Trail Club (please, don’t get the MATC mixed up with the Appalachian Trail Conservancy) Lester spearheaded the effort to construct a proper permanent Trail Center to serve as a headquarters, training facility and gathering point for MATC trail crews. (I served on the Capital Campaign Committee.) Raising over $3 million about killed him, but I was pleased to attend the dedication of the Center, located near the midpoint of the Maine section of the AT in Skowhegan, in September of last year.

Lester kept careful records of his activities in Baxter so when he says he hiked Katahdin 200 times, he can back it up.

We arrive back in Dunedin in two days and then begin our tour of the south part of the South Island of NZ. I’ve been there and am excited about showing Lester and Leonard around.