Borestone Mountain Audubon Sanctuary

Welcome!

Encompassing more than 1,600 acres in western Maine, Borestone Mountain Audubon Sanctuar offers a spectacular array of natural features, including rare older forest, three crystalline ponds, exposed mountain rocks, and sweeping views.

A seasonal trailside Visitor Center on the shore of Sunrise Pond includes interactive displays and information about the area’s natural and human history.

Accessible only by boat or on foot, Borestone Sanctuary’s historic Adirondack-style lodges on Sunset Pond accommodate rentals for groups as well as public nature programs.

Trails from the sanctuary entrance offer a popular,
family-friendly hike to Borestone Mountain’s two highest peaks.

Wildlife and Habitat

• Borestone Mountain Audubon Sanctuary is near the southern end of Maine’s “100-Mile Wilderness” forest.
• Uncut for more than a century, its forest is unlike much of the region’s spruce-fir and northern hardwood forest, which has been cut for timber every 50-70 years.
• Lack of mature forest habitat in Maine makes
  Borestone a special sanctuary for wildlife. Goshawks wing through deciduous stands of trees to prey on grouse. Pine martens seek nesting red squirrels. Canada lynx, following snowshoe hare, leave tracks visible in snow. Raccoons, owls, woodpeckers, and other species nest in tree cavities.
• Particularly in early summer, birders can look for yellow- bellied sapsucker, red-breasted nuthatch, boreal chickadee, several vireos, winter wren, hermit thrush, white-throated sparrow, and eight to ten warbler species
  (including Blackburnian, Cape May, and bay-breasted).
• Common ravens and turkey vultures regularly soar above the mountain’s exposed granite summit, while peregrine falcons appear along the cliff faces.
• Borestone’s three clear and deep, spring-fed alpine ponds are fishless, offering unique habitat for invertebrates and amphibians, including beavers and the dragonflies that eat mosquitos and black flies. Although fish-eating birds are uncommon at the ponds, Borestone visitors sometimes hear loons calling from nearby Lake Onawa.
• Visitors also can see and hear bullfrogs, leopard frogs, gray tree frogs, and red-spotted newts.
• Lining Borestone’s trails are blueberry and hobble bushes, as well as wildflowers ranging from earlyblooming dog-tooth violet to late-flowering whitewood aster. Mushrooms proliferate in early fall. A variety of mosses and lichens grow in wet areas and on rocks throughout the sanctuary.

Trails

Among Maine’s most popular hiking destinations, Borestone Mountain offers a moderately strenuous
climb that culminates with spectacular 360-degree views from two peaks at nearly 2,000 feet. With binoculars, hikers sometimes see moose feeding below.

Connected trails are marked with blazes and lead 2.5
miles from the sanctuary entrance on Bodfish Road to
the top of the mountain.

Base Trail—This 0.8-mile trail begins from the
shale-covered access road, at the first kiosk to the left. It winds through mature forest and back to the access road, which continues another 0.2 mile to the Visitor Center at Sunrise Pond.

Hikers may also walk up the access road 1.3 miles from the sanctuary entrance to the Visitor Center. An overlook easily approached from the Base Trail and access road offers an expansive view of Greenwood Pond.

Summit Trail—From the Visitor Center, the 1.0-mile Summit Trail follows Sunrise Pond’s shore before climbing steeply through spruce and, in its final stage, over exposed rock. Hikers emerge after 0.7 mile onto the summit of the mountain’s West Peak, with the highly recommended choice of continuing another 0.3 mile to the East Peak.

Thanks to the Maine Conservation Corps, 130 stone steps help hikers ascend. There also are two steel
hand/footholds set in rock.

View or download trail information here. (PDF)

Hiking fees help Maine Audubon maintain the trails at Borestone.

• Maine Audubon members as well as children under six hike free
• $4/nonmember adults
• $2/nonmember students, seniors, and each participant from school and other groups

History

In the early 1900s Robert T. Moore managed a fox ranch on what is now Borestone Mountain Audubon Sanctuary. Aided by the Canadian Pacific railway station on the edge of his land, he sold award-winning pelts to auctions in New York.

In 1909 Moore hired noted Bangor architect Wilfred E. Mansur to design the Adirondack-style lodges on Sunset Pond. Lodge guests today can still savor quiet evenings in front of a stone hearth or on porches overlooking ponds.

Moore bequeathed Borestone to the National
Audubon Society in 1958, and gifts by his son and
daughter and other donors enlarged the sanctuary
to its present 1,639 acres. In 2000, the National
Audubon Society transferred Borestone Sanctuary
to Maine Audubon.

Today, beautiful Borestone Mountain is the center piece of Maine Audubon’s only North Woods Sanctuary. Thanks to Maine Audubon and the surrounding community's support and involvement, more than 4,000 hikers every year have access to this treasured mountain.