Dorr Mountain - Great Views, Challenging Hike in Acadia

We hiked Dorr Mountain on a beautiful early spring day - before the black fly season. The sun was warm but the breezes were still brisk. It is not the first time I hiked up this mountain but the first time I've made it to the top with my six year old. The incredible stone steps makes for a tough hike but the views are incredible all the way along this hike which often criss crosses across cliff faces. We saw a lot of wildlife - falcons, bald eagles and even a snake but no other people except when we looked up at the top of Cadillac Mountain and saw all of the tourist looking down at us. -- ed



From http://www.acadiavisitor.com/autumn_05/1_10-05.shtml
Dorr Mountain is Perfect Foliage Hike

By Grace Olson

One of the most notable wonders of Acadia National Park are the mountains and trees tumbling down to meet the sea. Its woods are thick, lush, teeming with life and unlike most temperate forests on the East Coast are sharply cut off by a rugged, granite coastline. Each accents the other’s beauty.


From Dorr Mountain, you also look up to Cadillac Mountain.


The views from Dorr Mountain are always spectacular.

staff photos by grace olson

Yet sometimes this accent is difficult to see. Roads rarely are cut directly along the coast and many trails and carriage roads meander through a curtain of foliage that makes it difficult to see the sky, let alone anything below it.

This is why the Dorr Mountain-Tarn Loop Trail, rising up from Sieur de Monts spring to summit the 1,270-foot peak, retains a uniqueness out of all the park’s hikes. The views, from nearly the first step, show Acadia in all its sweeping glory.

Be prepared to work for it.

The trail begins with an innocent little bridge next to the Nature Center in the Sieur de Monts area. Leave your car in the parking lot and follow the winding dirt path through the woods — but don’t be fooled. Just out of sight beyond a gentle curve begin flight after flight of granite steps, switch-backing up the mountain like some kind of cruel joke.

Yet unlike hours of grueling effort on a stuffy piece of exercise equipment, this workout rewards you around nearly every corner. First the Porcupine Islands come into view, sometimes shrouded in a creeping fog, or sometimes clear as day upon the giant blue surface of Frenchman Bay. As you climb, Great Meadow appears below, a stream running through the middle of it like a “dangerous curves ahead” arrow pointing (vaguely) toward Bar Harbor.

Continue following signs to Dorr Mountain. After a little over one mile, the conifers open up to sheer slabs of granite, stretching up toward the summit. Keep a close eye on the cairns (piles of rocks that mark the trail) and blue blazes as some are difficult to spot. This section is steep. When wet it would be difficult to pass without clinging to an unlucky Pitch Pine for support.

Hiking to the summit should take between one and two hours, depending on whether you are in it to play tourist or train for your next 10-miler. But once there, reasons don’t even matter. To one side, on a clear day, you can see across Frenchman Bay to the Schoodic Peninsula. Turn around and Cadillac Mountain dominates the western view.

“It’s beautiful,” said Denise Schubert, on vacation from Tucson, Ariz. “This is just as beautiful as anywhere in Yosemite or Yellowstone.”

She and her partner, Randy Miller, though living in the hiking Mecca that is the Southwest, have been coming to Acadia National Park for years, staying with family just outside of Bar Harbor. On a recent hike they lingered on the top of Dorr in full appreciation of its views.

“This is a treasure for Maine,” said Miller, lifting his shades for a less-obstructed view. “The coastline is just fabulous.”

Before they left the summit, Miller and Schubert turned toward nearby Cadillac Mountain and amused themselves for a few minutes, watching the crowds.

The highest mountain in Acadia National Park, looming 460 feet above Dorr Mountain, boasts a parking lot and gift shop, routinely drawing more tourists than any other feature in the national park. From Dorr, 10 of these camera-toting people can fit in a fingernail’s space on an outstretched hand, bringing home the scale of Acadia’s mountains.

The two then decided to make their descent via the Tarn Loop Trail (or Dorr Mountain South Ridge Trail). The southerly route takes hikers through similar Pitch Pine and granite as the ascent, with views of the town of Otter Creek ahead. And again, keep an eye on those cairns and blue blazes. They’re sneaky.

Continue following the trail to loop back around the base of Dorr Mountain through a path shaded by deciduous forest. This eventually opens up on the Tarn, a swampy stretch of water with fallen granite from Dorr Mountain on one side and Route 3 on the other. Cross the boulders to find the Sieur De Monts parking lot on the other side.

Dorr Mountain is appropriately named after the founder of Acadia, George B. Dorr. Its trails let hikers sample everything that inspired the rusticator, from sweeping views of Frenchman Bay and the Porcupine Islands to the towering bulk of Cadillac Mountain, keeping vigil over the island.

As Miller put it, the views from Dorr Mountain are certainly “a treasure for Maine.”