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Cardigan
Saturday, December 07, 2002
Jon, Clint, Keith and I drove to Cardigan from Hanover and started hiking at 11:00 or so. It was a pretty easy, but very beautiful hike. We only saw a few people on the way up, though there was a huge mob of kids at the top as we neared it--maybe from the Cardigan Mountain School, we thought. Jon, Clint and Keith each tried using crampons briefly, but they weren't really necessary. We hiked down on the South Side trail, which I really liked. There were little corridors through snow-laden pines, and lots more exposed sections of rock than on the other trail. We stopped for lunch on the way down just below tree line near an old ranger camp. We took our time on the way down, enjoying the scenery, animal tracks, and ice formations. We got back to the car at around 15:00 and headed back to Hanover.
Cannon
Friday - Saturday, November 08-09, 2002
I hit the road from Hanover at 15:50 and drove up through Kinsman Notch on 112, over to Lincoln, and parked at the Lafayette Campground in Franconia Notch. I arrived at about 17:30, packed up in the dark at my car, and hit the trail at 18:00. There were a few people camping, nearby, but then nobody for a while. It was somewhat exhilarating hiking in the snow in the dark. The weather was very mild, and I wasn't cold at all. I got to the Lonesome Lake Hut in a little under an hour, and found that there were lights on. I went in and chatted for a few minutes with a woman who was working there. She was remodeling or something, so that the hut could be reopened for the winter sometime next month. I then continued up the Fishin' Jimmy trail, which seemed to just keep going and going and going. Thankfully, someone had broken trail recently, and so that saved me a lot of effort. I finally got close to the Kinsman Pond Shelter at about 20:25, and could hear voices. I called out, knowing it must be John and Chad and probably the others who'd broken trail before me. Sure enough, John and Chad just arrived, and I met the others briefly. We made dinner and set up in the shelter, finally getting to bed around 22:00ish.
We got up around 07:00, had oatmeal, and chatted with the others. I was ready pretty quick, but the others took a while longer and I waited. We finally hit the trail at about 09:00, heading across the Cannonballs toward Cannon. I was feeling really good and broke trail all the way. Those two had started hiking on Thursday from Kinsman Notch through some tough trail conditions, and were understandably more exhausted than I. At one point we saw some fresh bear tracks in the snow--the only really nice bear tracks I've ever seen, so it was pretty exciting! We stopped for lunch near the Lonesome Lake Trail junction, and finally started seeing some other people. We hiked up the steep trail, making good time to the summit. We spent a little while on the summit platform taking in the views, then hit the Rim Trail which heads northeast back down to I-93. It was pretty steep in places, and I was having fun sliding all over the place. It was a bit dangerous, and I did fall a lot, but survived OK. John had one pretty good wipe-out himself. We then walked along the snow-covered bike path through Franconia Notch back to my car, arriving at a little after 16:00. We packed up and I drove them back to John's car in Kinsman Notch, where we all changed and then drove back to Hanover for a tasty post-hike dinner at Molly's.
Spruce Peak
Saturday, October 19, 2002
Jim and I, along with Nakita, got to the Long Trail on Routes 11 and 30 at a bit after 10:00, and started hiking. We'd intended to start hiking on the north side of Bromley Mountain and take the LT south to it, but didn't realize we were actually south of it--oops! We'd had a little miscommunication as we were driving to the trailhead which resulted in the mistake. We realized a little ways into our hike, but decided to keep going to Spruce Peak instead of Bromley. Nakita was happily leading the way the whole time, and we didn't see anyone else on the trail. It was damp out, but not really raining, and the colors were nice. We talked the whole way, about various things, and it was very enjoyable. After hiking for a while, we found a two-way radio on the ground. We tried to find the owner by calling out on it, and in response we heard some people, but not the ones we were looking for. We stopped at Spruce Peak, which wasn't really a peak at all but just a lookout, and took in the views for a bit. We had a little fun with the radio while we sat there, responding to some others we heard, but I'm not sure they heard us. We then headed up the trail a ways to the Spruce Peak Shelter, where we said hello to six guys who were camping out there, and found out that it was their two-way radio we'd found, so we returned it. We then turned around and hiked back out, stopping for lunch under a little overhanging rock back near Spruce Peak. After that, we passed a handful of people on the way out. It began raining more and more as we went, but we stayed fairly dry with our rain gear. We made it back to the car at a bit before 14:00.
Absaroka-Beartooths
Saturday - Sunday, September 14-22, 2002
Coming soon ...
Cardigan
Saturday, September 07, 2002
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Velvet Rocks
Sunday, September 01, 2002
Just after lunch, Ron, Susie, Andrew, Mark, Laura, Zoe and I drove up to Trescott Road and started hiking up the AT to Velvet Rocks. Mark and I made a run to drop a car off at the AT in Hanover near the Co-op gas station, and the others started off without us. We hiked quickly, though, and eventually caught up to them. Seeing as Zoe and Andrew were there, we didn't expect that the group would be in any rush. After stopping for a long break and snack at sunny area that had some velvety rocks (though none of us was really sure where the Velvet Rocks were), we continued toward Hanover. I taught them the Contact word game I'd just learned and we played it for quite a long time as we hiked. We eventually arrived at the gas station where we'd left one car, and Mark and I went to get the other one back from Trescott Road. Though not a terribly long hike, it was a lot of fun for all.
Carrigain Notch
Friday - Saturday, July 26-27, 2002
Felipe and I started hiking at about 19:00 from where we parked at the junction of Route 302 and Sawyer River Road. We headed up the road and, noticing that there was a trail parallel to it, we followed that for a while too. It wasn't terrible well-used, though, and fizzled out after a while, by which point it was a bit of a steep uphill hike back to the road. Eventually we came to the Signal Ridge Trail, which we followed to the Carrigain Notch Trail as it started getting dark out. We talked a lot along the way, having not hiked (or spent a lot of time in general) together in quite a while. We started keeping our eyes peeled for places to camp, and passed up a couple, taking the chance that we could get a ways further and still find a good spot. We started realizing, though, that there were a bunch of people already camped in the area, so it seemed like it might be tough. Just before the junction for the Carrigain Notch Trail, we accidentally scared a woman who was camped with her husband really close to the trail, and who somehow didn't hear us coming. We heard the voices of other off in the woods nearby, and kept on hiking on into Carrigain Notch. It was pretty slim pickin's for places to camp after a while, but eventually we explored into the thick woods a bit and found a sandy little flat spot in a dry river bed area in the notch. As long as it didn't rain, which it wasn't supposed to, we'd be all right. It was about 21:00 when we finally found it. After setting up camp in this tight little spot surrounded by thick greenery, we talked for a while and eventually fell asleep.
After getting a fairly good night's sleep, we had a lazy morning, getting up around 09:00. We hit the trail at about 09:30, and made our way to Stillwater, where we had lunch. We were very close to where we'd hiked when we did Carrigain a few years ago, and we returned this time because we knew just how beautiful an area this was. At about 12:00, we left Stillwater and backtracked a bit to the Nancy Pond Trail. We made our way uphill, reaching Norcross Pond at about 14:00. We saw a bunch of people up there, a few of whom were doing weird things (trying to cut down a dead tree with a pocket knife right along the trail), and the footing of the trail got much worse--very rooty. The pond was pretty neat, though, and very large considering it was above 3000 feet in elevation. Unfortunately, it seemed to be a pretty heavily used area. We passed Nancy Pond as well, and soon were headed downhill. It was very steep for a little while, but eventually flattened out. The Nancy Cascade was beautiful, and we bumped into several other hikers in that area. We continued on down, stopping to fill up water briefly, and finally made it out to Route 302 at about 16:00. We hiked down the highway for about 30 minutes back to Felipe's car, then hit the road for home.
Cardigan
Friday, July 05, 2002
I met Garry and Guanhua at ISTS a bit before 09:00. The hike was organized by Garry for our group at ISTS (the Institute for Security Technology Studies at Dartmouth College), but no one else showed up, so the three of us drove to Cardigan in my car. I suggested we try the steep Holt Trail, and they liked the idea so we did it. The hike started from the east side, which I'd hiked Cardigan from once before. We started hiking at maybe 10:30 or 11:00, and moved quickly along on this clear-weather day. We saw very few people, and the trail was clearly not so heavily used. It was moderately steep in places, and only got steeper towards the end, at which point it was practically a scramble up the steep, exposed rock. I really enjoyed it, though Garry was setting a fast pace and my calves were really beat. I took frequent breaks, and I think Guanhua appreciated that, as he seemed pretty exhausted. As we made our way up the scramble, we passed a group of young kids that looked like they were from the city, taking part in some kind of fresh air program. Some of them seemed a bit unhappy about the difficulty of the hike, though I tried to encourage them. When we finally reached the top, which was windy and cool, we took a break to eat our lunch. We then hiked over to Firescrew and down the Manning Trail, though for a while we weren't really sure we were going the right way. Eventually we figured it out, and had a fairly quick hike down and out. Even though turnout was low, the three of us had fully enjoyed the outing on this nice day.
Mom, Dad, Trav and I decided to go for a hike and try out Dad's new GPS too. We had some trouble finding the turnoff to get to the trail, but finally a local pointed us in the right direction. We started off at about 13:45 on this cool, overcast day. The trail, which was an old dirt road, was very wet for much of its length, espcially near the beginning, and we were constantly watching our footing to try to avoid getting soaked. In one of the few dry spots, we scared up a bunch of garter snakes that were lying out in the open. The trail was pretty heavily covered above by dense foliage too, so Dad's GPS lost the satellite signals here and there. Eventually the trail got pretty steep, and the footing was fairly tough. We took a break at the foundation of an old building at one point, looking around at some of the old junk that was still in it. As we got nearer to the top, one section opened up a little bit, and there were some views back toward nearby Chazy Lake. The old road that the trail followed was really washed out in this section, and we often walked along the side of the road where the footing was a little better. Eventually the trail narrowed down for the last little ways before the top, reentering a thicker evergreen forest.
The summit itself was surprisingly flat, though it was wide open and had lots of huge exposed areas of rock. Travis and I climbed the fire tower, and we all spent a while exploring around and taking in the excellent views of the surrounding area, including Lake Champlain in the distance. [The four of us at the rocky summit.] We had a bite to eat, too. I wondered exactly where the true summit was, and spent some time trying to find it, without ever coming to a definite conclusion. I wandered to an area in which the ground was flat, but scattered around were dozens of large boulders. I hopped from one to the next, and eventually reached a forested area, which looked like it might have been slightly higher in elevation. I was hoping there might be a trail in that direction that led to the true summit. I did, in fact, find an opening into the thick trees that looked like a trail. I followed it for a little ways, but it eventually just faded out, with no clear sign of a summit. So I returned to the others just as they were ready to head back down. As the others followed the trail from the top, I followed a parallel path that had been cut in the trees for a decades-old power line that ran up the mountain. It was wet and slippery going that way, and I nearly wiped out a couple of times, but it was interesting to see the short old poles, some still intact, that were used many years ago. I kept in voice contact with the others for a while, then finally rejoined them. Shortly thereafter, we ran into the only other person we'd see on the trip, and it turned out to be a friend of Dad's, Mr. Barcomb. They chatted for a bit, then we continued on down and back to the car, getting out at about 17:15.
Holts Ledge
Sunday, June 02, 2002
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Cohos Trail: Percy Road to Dixville Notch
Friday - Monday, May 24-27, 2002
John, Nancy, Lucy and I got up at about 07:15 after a short night--they'd arrived at my place late last night. We packed up and headed out around 08:30, stopped for gas, then stopped at Lou's for takeout pastries for breakfast. We started north at about 09:00, and finally got to Dixville Notch, where we dropped my car, at about 11:30ish. It was my first time driving up Route 3 north of Groveton. We drove back down through Groveton and east on 110 about 9 miles to the trailhead where we'd start hiking from on Percy Road. We got our stuff together and started hiking at about 13:00, following what seemed like a snowmobile trail most of the time. We took a short side trip up to a viewpoint called Victor Head, which overlooked Lake Christine. We didn't make as much distance as hoped during the day, finally setting up camp around 18:00 at the South Percy col. It started to drizzle, but we ate dinner and then decided to hike to the summit despite the weather and approaching darkness. It was a good decision, as we got good views and there was no more rain. And, on the way down, we saw an incredibly red sunset through the clouds. We had a little more to eat once back at the tent, then read a bit from one of the e-books on my Palm, then slept around 20:15.
We got up around 08:00 and hit the trail at about 09:00. We dropped our packs a few minutes later to hike North Percy. The weather was beautiful and so were the views. We saw three hikers and three dogs on our way down. We continued along the trail for a long while, passed a washed out bridge (on Rowell's Brook) and then found our way to a beautiful lunch spot at Pond Brook Falls. In the afternoon we went on a 1+ mile side trip off the trail when we missed a blaze. We were on old logging trails at that point, and some of them were extremely muddy. As we were hiking along looking for blazes after getting off track, we eventually encountered two ATV riders who we talked to, but they couldn't really pinpoint where we were. It was at that point that we decided to turn around anyway, though. The guide had said that there might be stretches of trail without blazes, so we suspected that this might be one of them, though we were wrong; the blaze we'd missed was somewhat hidden, as we discovered upon backtracking. After we were back on track, we eventually crossed a road and followed the trail along the Nash Stream, and then past the very mosquito-ridden Nash Bog. Overall, during the day we saw lots of different kinds of terrain, but finally ended up at the beautiful Cathedral Meadow, bringing some relief after a long tough day of hiking. We set up camp, had some dinner, and crashed.
During the night it rained, and come morning it was pouring. A quick-moving lightning storm passed over, scaring me momentarily since we were in the middle of a field. We got up around 06:45, cooked oatmeal for breakfast, then took down camp in the rain. Shortly after we started hiking it eased up, and our stuff began to dry out. The trail underfoot was still very wet in many places, though. This was a day of very remote hiking. We passed through what I was referring to as "Moose Alley", since there were so many signs of moose. We even found a moose antler, though we saw none of the animal itself, however, to my dismay. We finally approached the Baldhead Shelter as noon neared, and just before getting there we met another hiker, who turned out to be Kim Nilsen, the trail founder. I'd expected we'd see him, since he said he'd be working on the shelter over the weekend. It was good to meet him. We thanked him for all of his hard work and chatted briefly, but then continued on as he seemed to be in a bit of a hurry to hike on out of the woods. We stopped at the shelter for a nice, long, hot lunch, and the sun slowly started to peek out again. It had been a pretty dreary day, and we'd considered staying here for the night, but wanted to leave only a short hike out the next day since John and Nancy had such a long ride home. Our spirits were raised with the improvement in the weather, so we continued on. Eventually we reached some ATV trails, which we ended up following all the way to the top of Dixville Mountain. We talked briefly to some of the riders along the way. The summit was trashed and disgusting, unfortunately. Probably from snowmobilers, mostly. We started hiking down, looking for places to camp. Eventually we found a flat spot on the side of the ATV trail, which we were still following. It turned out to be a great spot, and we hung out lots of our things to dry in the sun, which shone through the trees perfectly. We'd gotten to set up camp earlier than usual--by about 18:00--and were able to enjoy the evening. We got to see our third consecutive sunset, and had a very nice dinner before finally getting to sleep at shortly after 21:00.
We rose at a little after 07:00, got our things together, and hit the trail around 08:15. It didn't take us too long to reach the Dixville ski area, where we found the very cozy Ski Patrol first aid hut unlocked. We'd considered hiking to it last night, though I'm glad we didn't as it would have taken away from the true backcountry experience, even more than the ATV trails already did. We hiked along ski trails for a while, finding it difficult to follow the trail at times, finally surfacing at Table Rock, which was an incredible (and incredibly scary) rock formation sticking out of a the high cliffs of Dixville Notch. We spent a while there, took lots of pictures, and stared down at The Balsams resort below. Eventually we continued on the Cohos Trail back down to my car, located at the Dixville Notch Wayside. We were pretty beat by the end, but overall we had a very good trip.
North Pack Monadnock
Friday, May 17, 2002
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This entry has been archived.
This entry has been archived.
Carlo and Goose Eye
Friday - Sunday, March 01-03, 2002
John and I didn't get to Berlin until about 19:30, but we found the beginning of Success Pond Road without much trouble. We'd learned that it was open only as a snowmobile trail this time of year, but decided to come here anyway, despite the fact that it would mean a fair amount of extra skiing. We got packed up and hit the trail around 19:50. There was no one around, and we followed the road as it wound through the lumber yard of the huge old Berlin mill. There were no official signs, just one small handwritten snowmobile marker that suggested we were probably going the right way. However, we weren't sure, and there were a couple of junctions in the lumber yard, so we kept our fingers crossed that we'd not missed anything important. We skied and skied for what seemed like ages, checking the compass and map once in a while to try to convince ourselves that we really were going the right way. A snowmobile passed us here and there, some slowing down courteously, others not. We figured they probably thought we were nuts to be out there. It was an incredible night to be out, with a huge full moon shining brightly down. The road went through some nice forest, and it felt good to be out there. However, as mile after mile went by, we were getting very tired and our feet, not used to spending so much time in cross-country ski boots, were starting to feel the pain.
Finally, after about 2 hours, we reached an AMC trail sign. It was a beautiful sight, confirming that we really were in the right place, though by now we were just about 100% sure anyway. It was the Success Pond Trail, but our starting point was further along. We hadn't actually fixed our exact route, deciding to play it by ear. If we were really lucky, we'd get a long way up the road and be able to hike all the way in to Old Speck and back, but that was probably a long shot. We continued skiing, our feet getting worse and worse. I eventually decided to stick something inside my sock to help prevent the ski boot from rubbing, and it seemed to work. We continued to monitor the map, because there were lots of side trails and roads, and it could be easy to miss a trail sign in the dark. We did pretty well keeping track of just where we were. As we were getting nearer to the next trailhead, we noticed that a distant rumbling sound we'd been hearing for quite a while was now getting quite loud. For a while we thought it might be a distant train, since we'd heard one of those earlier, but eventually we figured out correctly that, in fact, it was a snowmobile trail groomer. We stepped off the road to let the slow-moving vehicle, with lots of bright, flashing lights, pass. The driver stopped and chatted with is briefly, checking that everything was OK. He was a friendly guy and confirmed that we were just about to the Carlo Col Trail. It was kind of nice to talk to another human, as by this time I really felt quite removed from civilization.
After the groomer headed off, we quickly reached the trailhead and briefly debated whether or not to keep going to the next trailhead. We were so tired and our feet so sore, though, that it was an easy decision. We skied in a short distance, then changed into our snowshoes and stashed our skis and ski boots. We spent the next while looking for a junction with the Goose Eye Trail that was supposedly 100 yards in, since that was our preferred trail to take of the two starting from here. We went back and forth along the trail, searching for it futilely. It was very frustrating as it was around midnight and we were both pretty exhausted. We eventually gave up, finding a nice spot to set up the tent for the night. We quickly made camp and went to bed around 01:00.
We got up fairly early and were on the trail by 08:00. We debated whether or not to go back and look for the junction with the Goose Eye Trail again, and decided not to bother, and just take the Carlo Col Trail. Our goal now for the trip was to get up on the ridge on the AT and follow it as far as we could before coming back down to Success Pond Road on one of the other access trails. It looked like the Notch Trail was a good option, or perhaps the Speck Pond Trail if we made really good time along the ridge. We made excellent time up the trail--following the blazes was pretty easy, and there appeared to be some very faint snowshoe tracks as well. We got up to the Carlo Col Shelter at 09:53 and stopped there for a snack and a rest. I read the log book a bit and found out that it had been a little over a week since the last group came up. We headed out and got to the AT a moment later, and at 10:45 were at the summit of Mount Carlo. It was a sunny day and the views were great. From here we headed for the west peak of the Goose Eye, which was 1.4 miles away. We figured we could easily make it to the Full Goose Shelter, which was another 0.8 miles beyond that. It turns out, though, that it was really slow hiking, as we should have expected. Tree branches were constantly in our way, what with multiple feet of snow underneath us. Not only that, but all of the heavy snow on the branches themselves bent them down quite a ways, and even when we could easily push them out of the way, they often dumped snow all over us. It didn't take long before we were soaked. In some cases, the bent over branches caused a different type of problem. The trail would seem to come to a dead end, with nothing but dense trees in every direction. Knock the snow off of one of the branches, though, and it would spring several feet up in the air, revealing a "secret door" through which the trail continued. Worse yet, though, was when there was a secret door but we walked right on past it, thinking the trail continued through the trees in another direction. We had to backtrack several times looking for such hidden turns, though it wasn't nearly as bad as our winter AT hike last year.
We plugged along, a lot more slowly than we'd started the day. The dense pines at the higher elevations really make a huge difference. We were pretty exhausted, and took turns breaking trail, switching often. We took frequent rests as well. It was beautiful up there, though, despite the exhaustion. As is par for the course, we came to a couple of open spaces up on the ridge which made life difficult. We basically had to search every possible place around the edges of the open area to find where the trail continued. As we were finally ascending Goose Eye, one such open space got us a little confused. It was getting windy and difficult to hear, and John continued ahead while I stopped briefly to make a gear adjustment. Upon realizing I wasn't right behind him any more, he came back to look for me, but took a slightly different route around the rocky outcropping that we were on, and missed me. I now was ahead of him, but luckily after a few more moments he came back and we rejoined. In that same spot, we struggled to find the trail yet again, and I really started getting annoyed at the very small pines that were growing in the area. We were looking all over for the trail, and while searching, I postholed, even with my snowshoes on, several times. John had less trouble, though, presumably because the footprint of his snowshoes is much larger. Eventually, John was looking up at the steep ascent ahead up Goose Eye (we could see the summit was right before us) and he noticed a ladder. That gave us a good hint as to the approximate direction in which we had to go, and so we headed towards it. Sure enough, we soon found the trail again.
We worked our way up to the ladder, struggling on the moderately steep slope. Once at the base of the ladder, we realized it could be a pretty dangerous fall if we slipped. It wasn't a cliff, but it was a steep slope below through small trees, going several meters down. A fall could be a pretty serious problem. So, we decided that it was time to put on the crampons. We'd debated back and forth as to whether or not to bring them in the first place, but at this point we were glad we had. It took a while to get them on, and we had to do it one at a time since there wasn't much space. In the meantime, we cooled down quickly. As I was putting mine on, my hands were getting extremely cold from the air temperature and steady wind. I managed it without too much trouble, though, and then we headed up the ladder, with extreme caution, one at a time. It was a short climb up, but with all of our gear and lots of snow in the way, it was a little bit tricky. Once up, we were relieved to have that behind us and continued on our way toward the open summit, which we could see was just up ahead.
The remaining distance to the summit, though difficult, was a lot of fun. We left our crampons on for a little while longer, not knowing if we'd encounter any ice up on the summit, and so we did not have the benefit of snowshoes as we waded through the deep snow. The summit area of Goose Eye is small--almoust like a little plateau above the rest of the mountain--dropping steeply down in almost every direction. The ladder had helped bring us up to that plateau, and as we made our way across it, the summit in sight, open air in every direction, and strong winds shoving us around, I couldn't help but feel exhilarated, as though I was approaching an ornery top of the world. The wind had actually blown away much of the snow in spots, and our crampons clacked on the rocks. We spent only a very short time at the actual summit before continuing on our way; the wind, which I'd guess was steady at about 40-50mph, was getting to be too much to bear. We'd deciced long ago, based on our slow progress, that we would not continue on to the Full Goose Shelter, but would depart from the AT at the summit of Goose Eye onto the Goose Eye Trail. So at the summit, we looked for and found the beginning of that trail, and started down.
We bounded down the steep trail through the snow, carefully at first with our crampons still on, and then a little more recklessly as the snow deepened. We were able to follow it fairly well for a while, which is particularly surprising since the summit was treeless and wide open. After departing from the summit, though, we were back into the woods fairly quickly. At some point, I don't remember exactly when, we took our crampons off and our snowshoes back on. We made our way along the trail, noticing that the snow was much deeper than anywhere else on the trip thus far; trail blazes were sometimes only a foot or two above the snow level. We started having a little trouble following the trail as we slabbed along the still steep northwest side of Goose Eye. The small hardwood trees were fairly dense in one spot where we got stuck for an awfully long time looking for the next trail blaze. We were starting to get extremely frustrated, as it was getting pretty late in the day, when finally I called back to John, who was backtracking, asking him if there were any secret doors he could see. A moment later, he called back, "Got it!", and sure enough, he'd found the trail hidden behind a low-hanging branch. I made my way back to him, and found that the snow was so deep that the branch we had to go under to follow the trail was only about two feet above the snow! Below that branch the trail headed straight down a sharp incline, so John and I promptly sat down on our butts, in turn, and slid under the branch and right down the slope. It was a fun ending to the frustration.
From that point, the difficulties finding the trail were fewer and fewer, as the trail was pretty obvious as it wound its way between the trees. We were anxious to set up camp soon, but also wanted to lose some elevation and get out of the wind. We stopped in one place that was surrounded by snow-laden trees and looked like it might be just big enough for the tent to fit in. After some debate, though, we decided to push on a little further. We had also wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to get back out to the car tomorrow. So we kept going on down from there. A while later, we finally encountered a pretty wide open area and decided to make camp. After the tent was up, we started unpacking our gear and throwing it in. It was at this point that I made a very unwelcome discovery.
As I pulled out my sleeping bag, to my dismay I found that it was soaking wet. Most of my spare clothes were, too. I became very worried right away, thinking that there was no way I'd be able to stay warm through the night, and that we might have to pack all the way out from here. Another alternative would be to share John's bag. After further thought, and discussing it with John for a while, I decided that my bag could still serve as a buffer between me and the cold air, even if it was pretty wet. Because the bag wasn't entirely soaked (further inspection led to the discovery that my 1.5 liter water bottle had somehow come partly unscrewed in my pack, leaking its entire contents down onto the bag (and my spare clothes), though it wasn't enough to drench it entirely), and because I had my excellent Feathered Friends 800-fill down jacket, boot liners, waterproof rain pants, and extra clothes from John that I could wear, I should be able to do alright. Luckily, it wasn't a bitter cold evening, but I cooled down quickly nonetheless, as I always seem to in the winter. John was good enough to do all of the cooking and snow-melting, leaving me with the sole task of keeping myself warm. We had lots of chemical hand-warmers, so I broke open every single one of them and put them all over inside my clothes. John also heated up some of the water bottles so they were nice and warm, and I placed those strategically around my body too. With my rain pants and big down jacket on, I couldn't feel the dampness of the sleeping bag, yet it was still able to provide me with some warmth, so things were working out so far. Not long after eating we went to bed, and to my surprise I made it through the night getting cold just once, which I managed to take care of with a quick readjustment of the sleeping bag. In fact, I actually slept fairly well despite the predicament!
When we rose in the morning at about 07:30, it was clear that the temperature had risen above freezing--the snow was wet and it was even raining a little. There was evidence that it had snowed a little during the night, too. As we were getting packed up, the rain stopped. We hit the trail again at about 08:30 and tromped along through the wet snow. We went downhill a ways, and then there was a long flat stretch, which at times passed through an area that was recently logged. In one wide open area it was a little tricky to tell which way the trail went. There was an unplowed road surrounded by fields. We headed up the road a little ways and luckily we spotted the place where the trail reentered the woods without much trouble. The rest of the hike back out was pretty uneventful. We finally made it to the junction with the Carlo Col Trail--the junction that we searched desperately for on Friday night--and realized that it was pretty easy to see in the daylight. We then returned to where we'd stashed our skis and boots and got them out. We took a break for a bite to eat, and also cut down a small tree to use as a replacement ski pole for one of mine which had snapped at some point during the hike. We then got our skis on and headed back out on the snowmobile trail, which was very slushy from the day's increasing temperatures. It was a tiring ski out, and seemed to take quite a while since we were pretty anxious to get it over with. By the time we finally reached John's car again, at about 13:30, we were exhausted. It had definitely been a trip to remember.
Monadnock (take two)
Saturday, January 26, 2002
Sean, Kevin and I drove to the trailhead for the Birchtoft Trail on the east side of Mount Monadnock. This was to be our second try at the mountain, after having run out of daylight on our previous attempt. We started hiking at about 08:45. It was an unseasonably warm day, excellent weather. We didn't hike terribly fast, but made consistent progress up to the Cascade Link Trail, where we saw two other people. We cut over to the Spellman Trail, which we decided to take because it was steep. Turned out to be much steeper than I even expected, and it was lots of fun. We used crampons and played on a couple of small vertical ice patches with the help of my ice axe. We reached the Pumpelly Trail and headed for the top, soon taking off our crampons again as there was a large amount of exposed rock. We saw a few more people as we made the summit at about noon. We ate our sandwiches and took in the views--it was a fine day.
It was extremely windy up there, and we didn't stay long, deciding to make a loop around over to Bald Peak. We tried to find the Smith Summit Trail, but got a bit sidetracked on the Dublin Trail for a short distance. We decided to cut across to try to find the other trail, since it was all rocky and no trees. It was fun climbing around on the rocks, though it was quite icy. We eventually found the other trail and followed it to the Amphitheater Trail, which hadn't been hiked in several days. I was excited about that, since this mountain clearly gets a lot of traffic everywhere, even in the winter. We followed the Amphitheater Trail over to another trail that brought us to Bald Peak, where we rested a while. Along the way we stopped to check out a few points of interest, namely interesting rock formations. There were also a few places where the trail was not well-marked and we had to search around for the right way to go.
We then headed down the Cliff Walk Trail to the Old Farm Trail. A little ways down the Old Farm Trail we decided to bushwhack over to the White Cross Trail, since it would save us a lot of time getting back. We were successful, but came out a little further down than hoped, onto the Spruce Something-or-Other Trail. We hiked down to the White Dot Trail, then back up to the Cascade Link Trail, which we took until it connected us back to the Birchtoft Trail where we'd come in. This last little uphill stretch made it really obvious just how much this long hike was taking out of us--we were slowing down considerably. We rested and had a snack before heading down the last section of trail. When we finally did go, we flew down the trail and reached the car just before 17:00. It was an excellent but exhausting day of hiking.
Johnson Brook Cabin
Friday - Sunday, January 11-13, 2002
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![[The four of us at the rocky summit.]](/img/2002-06-14/0008lg.jpg){kind=link}
