Beachcroft Path

Beachcroft Path is a 2-mile out-and-back from ME Route 3 to Champlain Mountain’s 1,058-foot summit. Allow about 2–3 hours for the steep climb, careful descent, and a look around the top. This is a compact but strenuous route: most of its work is an ascent over stone steps, ledges, and open granite. Go for a historic path with real masonry underfoot and broad views over the Tarn, Dorr Mountain, Frenchman Bay, and the outer islands.

The marked start is across Route 3 from the small roadside parking area. The path begins with cut granite stairs and flat stone paving, then climbs through a brief wooded stretch. The grade soon steepens. Repeated stone steps and sharp turns take you up Huguenot Head’s slope, past a boulder field and bands of exposed rock. As trees thin, the Tarn and Dorr Mountain open below; a later opening looks south toward Otter Cove. The trail skirts Huguenot Head rather than climbing to its highest point.

After the Huguenot traverse, the path dips into a small wetland saddle before the final ascent. Champlain’s west face is a short, steep scramble up granite ledges, followed by broad expanses of smooth rock near the top. You gain about 950 feet on the climb, so the descent takes care too. In wet weather the smooth slabs can be slick; avoid the route then. At the 1,058-foot summit, Beachcroft meets other ridge trails. Return on Beachcroft for this out-and-back rather than continuing onto a different route by accident.

Built in 1915 as a memorial path, Beachcroft was funded by Anna Warren Ingersoll Smith in memory of her husband, Charles Morton Smith. The name came from the couple’s summer cottage in Bar Harbor. Smith later established a maintenance endowment in 1926 after objecting to the trail’s condition. The route’s cut steps, stone paving, walls, and carefully turned switchbacks still make that early trail-building ambition visible; this is not simply a dirt track to the summit.

The strongest views arrive around Huguenot Head and again on Champlain’s bare summit. From the higher rock, Frenchman Bay spreads out toward the wooded islands and the coast beyond; the Tarn and Dorr Mountain anchor the view back along the route. On a clear day, pause on stable granite and use the rock in the foreground to give the islands scale. The summit is exposed, so the open view is part of the effort, not a sheltered lookout.

Use the small roadside lot on ME Route 3 just south of Sieur de Monts, then cross the road carefully to the trail. From mid-June into October, the Island Explorer serves Sieur de Monts; the Wild Gardens Path connector adds about 0.6 mile round trip. Acadia requires an entrance pass year-round. Dogs are allowed on leashes no longer than six feet. The trail is not accessible, and there are no accessible restrooms at its trailhead.