Cadillac Mountain is the highest summit on the island. There are a number of trails to the top, as well as an auto road, but we took the west face trail--the shortest route but by far the steepest.

Most of the trail consists of boulder fields and steeply pitched granite faces. This would have been less scary if the ledges hadn't, in places, been slick with snow melt.

These photographs look like pleasant forest pictures; what you can't see is the sheer drop in front of us.

One ought to be fully dressed when hiking this trail. Yet Paul found a pair of very large pants hanging neatly over a tree branch. They smelled strongly of Tide laundry detergent. Paul made Tom pose with them and then we hung them up again for the next person. You never know who might need a pair of large clean pants.

Here's Paul on the summit, patiently waiting for Tom to photograph lichen.

And here's the mountain and the Atlantic on a cloudy spring day.

 But today it is raining and we go home.