WYMAN TOWNSHIP (AP) — It’s an arduous climb up a steep and rocky trail to The Horns Pond, set between a pair of 3,800-foot peaks in western Maine’s spectacular Bigelow Range.

The four-mile hike is even tougher when you’re toting 33 pounds of sloshing water on your back.

For Chris Short, the trek is anything but drudgery. He looks forward to his chance to deliver 200 tiny brook trout.

“That’s why we do this,” Short said as he loosened his tank pack, wiped his brow and gazed at West Peak rising majestically over the verdant forest. “There was always something magical about this area.”

This is the time of year when Short, who supervises fish breeding at a state Inland Fisheries and Wildlife hatchery, packs the custom-made tanks and heads for the hills to stock some of Maine’s most remote ponds.

With the 6-gallon tanks on their backs, Short and his volunteer fish-packers balance their way across narrow log bridges, hop along rocks to cross rushing mountain brooks and fend off voracious black flies on the trails to Horns Pond and other isolated fishing sites.

Their mission is to carry the “brookies” to sites that fish-stocking trucks cannot reach, and where it’s too risky to attempt the job with state planes that swoop down and drop fish from barrel-shaped tanks.

The hike to the 5-acre Horns Pond is the longest and most demanding of six treks Short and his rugged associates make to backwoods ponds in late spring each year.

All of the hiking must be done within a two-week period, when the brook trout raised from eggs in state hatcheries have reached a stage where they can be released in the wild.

“I look forward to it,” said Short, 41, a veteran hiker who has logged 5,900 miles hiking the entire Appalachian and Pacific Crest trails. On his fastest days he covered 36 miles, and his pace en route to Horns Pond attests to his claim.

As Maine’s only backpacking fish stockers, Short and his crew are performing more of a service to anglers seeking a great wilderness fishing experience than trying to replenish natural stocks of fish.

Some of the 4,300 fry stocked by Short and his men each spring grow to 16 inches.

“The fishermen like to go up there and catch fish, so we’ll stock it,” said Dave Howatt, while making one of his many hikes to The Horns Pond. One of Howatt’s jobs is to keep track of what kinds of fish anglers find most desirable.

Also making the hike was Chris Hardy, who prefers the strenuous duty to his work culturing the fish.

The release into Maine’s remote ponds culminates a process that starts the previous fall, when eggs are artifically spawned from brood trout and fertilized. The young fish are then hatched and reared until they reach optimum age and size — 2 to 2.5 inches — for stocking.

In preparation for the trips through the forests and up the mountainsides, food is withheld from trout fry for two days so they cannot produce potentially toxic waste in their carrying tanks.

The fish are then placed in buckets of water charged with extra oxygen to enable them to survive the trip. The water, normally 45 degrees in the hatchery, is cooled with ice to 32 degrees to slow down the metabolism of the fish during their ride.

When released into The Horns Pond, the 400 tiny fish scattered; none appeared to have died during the two-hour hike.

“Look at them, just taking off,” said Short. “These started at our hatchery. It’s a big deal to us.”