First Tracks Northeast Snow Show—The Exhibits We’re Most Excited to Check Out
July 31, 2026
Roughly the size of one and a half Acadia National Parks, this ecosystem is paramount for brook trout and migratory birds and signals Maine’s dedication to conservation.
It’s the last weekend of September. The morning frost is biting on the heels of summer while the forecasted high for the day is supposed to reach about 65 degrees. For some, including myself, this is the best time of year to be in Maine. I’m in Rangeley celebrating a tradition called cast’n’blast weekend, where the last few days of trout season and the first few days of ruffed grouse season overlap. My adventure partners and I focus our efforts on staying close to water while we cruise roads looking for forest chickens. There are few better places to combine those passions than the Magalloway watershed. A working forest provides habitat for grouse, moose, deer and other species, while its clean water hosts Maine’s revered cold-water game fish, brook trout.
We drive up Parmacheene Road, careful not to hunt or fish on the New Hampshire side, and spend our weekend exploring the roads and rivers within the region. We have a little success, catching a few brook trout and laying eyes on a few grouse. Without much rain, things look a little low and dry. We’re able to walk out on the lake bed of Azizcohos Lake and breathe in a vast landscape that Maine’s notoriously tight boreal forests rarely yield. Not something to celebrate, of course, but an experience I cherish nonetheless.
Now, just under a year later, this area and the surrounding 78,000 acres are conserved in perpetuity. Thanks to the Rangeley Lakes Heritage Trust, New England Wilderness Trust, Forest Society of Maine, and the Nature Conservancy, recreation and logging industry access will remain viable pursuits. In late July 2026, the parties closed on the property.
Management will continue to prioritize working forests and logging while remaining a recreational beacon for hunters, anglers, hikers, paddlers, birders, snowmobilers, and more.
Read more about the project on their website.
