Traditionally, it was done from the summit of South Crocker. There is a herd path that starts near the summit of South Crocker but it tends to fade away before reaching the col and the ridge can be very dense especially on the Redington side; it seemed, in fact, to be denser in 1997 than on previous visits. Some find fairly good going to the west of the ridge; others have gone to the east side of the ridge and found good going. Luck seems to be involved.
There has been a lot of logging on the east slopes from the Caribou Valley Road. A road that leaves the Caribou Valley Road near the pond, a considerable distance beyond the AT crossing, climbs to about 3250' on the ridge leading to the saddle between Redington and South Crocker. After that, fairly clear skidder roads lead from the formerly drivable road to the saddle. For a few years at least there will be fairly easy routes from that direction; in fact, what was once one of the three or four most difficult Hundred Highests became almost trivial for several years and may never reclaim the fairly daunting reputation it once had.
Current easiest route: A few years ago a work road was constructed roughly along the upper part of this route to service an experimental wind-gauge tower, and hikers were surprised and disgusted to find there were now lounge chairs (and lots of trash) on the summit (now removed-the chairs and tower, not the summit, that is).
The Caribou Valley road is followed to a road junction, where the road to the left crosses the outlet of Caribou Pond on a bridge. As of June 1999, ordinary cars could go in on the Caribou Valley Rd. to a bridge at about 5.5 mi. from ME 27 and 1.1 mi. past the AT crossing. The next 1.4 mi. to Caribou Pond is rough but may be passable for cars with good clearance. Take the road to the right here (on foot if you don't have four-wheel drive), climbing up a small rise and into the large cut-over bowl at the foot of Redington, and continue to a point about 7.7 mi. from ME 27 where a badly washed road climbs up to the right. Follow the washed road up toward the ridgecrest, but just below the ridgecrest turn left onto a rough but obvious road that runs mostly on contour or slightly downhill. Eventually it crosses a small brook with a rocky, mossy bed and makes a right-angle turn to the left; at a fork about 100 yards past this stream the route continues straight on a road with a small, easily-missed cairn, still on contour at this point, as a recently-bulldozed road turns right uphill heading for the Redington-South Crocker col. After climbing through a clear-cut area, the route turns sharp right off this road (turn well marked with flagging) and becomes a well-cleared trail all the way to the summit. It is also possible, of course, to continue on the bulldozed road to the col and bushwhack up to the summit, but we found this route fairly thick going, and found no herd path (which doesn't mean there isn't one, of course).
Since Redington has been recognized as a 4000-Footer, we will probably attempt to keep this route open and marked. However, the logging in the Caribou Valley has probably come to an end (perhaps for several decades) and recent reports suggest that several of the bridges on the Caribou Valley road are near the point of critical decrepitude, and may well be impassable after the next heavy flow of water, whether it be a spring thaw, a dying hurricane or whatever. (And if not then, after the next flood, or the next one...) Prior to the most recent round of intensive logging, which started about 1982, the Caribou Valley road was notorious for its infernally automobilicidal washouts. I have heard reports of signs of a possible intent to repair this road, but since I do not know of any good business reason why S. D. Warren or Scott Paper or Kimberly-Clark or SAPPI or whoever owns the land this week would do this nor why anyone else would, I remain skeptical about the future of the Caribou Valley road. Therefore, in the very near future the Caribou Valley routes may require long road walks, possibly even for those with four-wheel-drive vehicles.
Although the traditional route to Redington was to follow the ridge from South Crocker to Redington and back to South Crocker, some folks conceived the idea of trying to bushwhack back from Redington to the Caribou Valley road near the AT crossing. There is a SE ridge of South Crocker that lies between Redington and that part of the Caribou Valley Road (the road that the route described above starts on climbs to the crest of this ridge and apparently descends for some distance on the other side). If one wishes to return from the top of Redington directly to the Caribou Valley Road at the AT crossing (rather than using the roads to circle around it to the south near Caribou Pond, which would be much longer) one must cross this ridge. In olden days, hikers frequently resisted the effort of crossing the ridge and eventually found themselves in the vicinity of Caribou Pond, in spite of themselves, so one should navigate carefully. At the present time, the best route would probably be to follow the trail back to the ridgecrest area and down the other side as far as possible, then bushwhack from there.
Hikers in this region should be aware of the presence of the Navy base where pilots receive winter survival training (this is where the road leads that is shown on the maps running to the north of Redington Pond); the area south of Black Nubble and west of the Redington Pond Range, down to the old RR grade that passes Redington Pond, is leased by the Navy and is considered a restricted area, although signing is virtually non-existent and enforcement is extremely erratic. one group encountered armed servicemen who questioned them and ordered them off the base, but two other hikers who visited the main building in order to regain their bearings were served milk and cookies by a lonely cook.
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