UPTON – Cindy Scribner was an expert motorcyclist. That’s what has perplexed her grieving, close-knit family.

They can’t understand how the 42-year-old could have lost control of her Suzuki 900 motorcycle and crashed while driving uphill, heading north on Route 26 at 4:55 p.m. on Aug. 29 in Grafton Notch.

“There had to have been something or someone in the road for her to swerve like that, but if somebody caused the accident, they didn’t stick around to help her when it happened,” said Bob Anderson of Upton.

Scribner died of her injuries later that day at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston.

“She was an expert motorcyclist. She used to race enduro bikes,” said her older sister Doreen Vlk of Sturbridge, Mass.

Another sister, Lucy Nelson of Upton, said the family grew up riding dirt bikes.

So when Scribner rode over to Bob and Lucy’s home on Sunday, Aug. 29, inducing them to ride down to Newry to play their guitars, it was just another motorcycle ride on a familiar road.

Descending through Grafton Notch State Park, the three motorcyclists, Cindy, Bob and Lucy, and a friend in a car with the guitars, crested a rise to suddenly find two cars stopped in their lane, Anderson said.

“It happens all the time. You go around a corner and people are stopped in the middle of the road with a movie camera, taking pictures of a moose,” he said.

The group barely had enough time to swerve around the cars and avoid an oncoming car.

“It was like an omen, because the same thing happened on the way back,” Anderson said.

In Newry, the group decided to go home, get their camping equipment and return.

When they reached the passing lane below Screw Auger Falls, Anderson said Cindy overtook him and two other cars in front of an oncoming car, then began up the hill.

She wrecked opposite the falls, shortly after disappearing over the crest.

“When we got over the hill at Screw Auger, Cindy was already lying in the road. It was all surreal at the time. I did stuff I don’t remember,” he said.

What he did recall was trying to get Cindy and her bike off the road.

“Cindy had been through enough, and I didn’t want her to get hit by another car. I tried to pick up her bike, but I had to get help.”

Plenty of help was nearby. Anderson said the park was packed that day with “the typical end-of-season tourists. Screw Auger was full-house people.”

Two vacationing emergency medical technicians helped calm Nelson, who was horror stricken on seeing her baby sister in dire straits.

Scribner, who wasn’t wearing a helmet, had suffered a serious head injury when her head landed against a rock.

An ambulance arrived before police. A LifeFlight helicopter crew left with Scribner at 5:50 p.m., bound for Maine Medical Center in Portland.

But, Anderson said, Scribner’s condition must have worsened in flight, because they diverted to the Lewiston hospital where Cindy was pronounced dead.

Over the next three days, people came from all over New England, bringing food, and grief support; others, calling and sending cards.

“Almost everybody in town and Errol, N.H., brought in food,” said Belmira Thompson, mother of Scribner, Vlk, Nelson, Diane Casko of Fisk Hill, Mass., and Dennis Wood of Augusta.

On Thursday, the first quiet day the family has had, they reminisced in between tears.

“She was the Queen of Toys,” Vlk said of Cindy. “She had to ride everything. It was just a big toy convention when we got together. She was a social butterfly everywhere she went.”

Thompson said her daughter even had a pilot’s license and flew airplanes.

“She was a jack-of-all-trades. She was an excellent mechanic, and she ran heavy equipment. She could sing, play the guitar and harmonica. She was always trying to help people and abandoned animals,” Thompson said.

There were no visiting hours or a funeral service. Instead, Thompson said her daughter wanted to be cremated and have her ashes spread over Baldpate Mountain, the place which she and husband Jeff Scribner loved.

A memorial service is to be held then, on the mountain, but a date has yet to be set.