Mount Washington: July 19, 2014

Mountain: Mount Washington
Elevation: 6,288 (New Hampshire's Tallest, New England's Tallest)
Route: Crawford Path/Appalachian Trail/Gulfside Trail/Jewell Trail

Mileage:1.5 miles from Lakes of the Clouds hut to Summit, 5 miles from Summit to Cog Railway Parking Lot
Arya's Take: Excited, but confused as to where all these people came from


Even though things had gone quite well up Mount Monroe (well, after we got up the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail), I knew that we were still in for a challenge up the shoulder of Mount Washington to the summit, if we were going to be able to summit it at all.  One thing my Dad instilled in us from an early age hiking was NEVER, EVER underestimate Mount Washington.

Mount Washington is 6,288 feet tall, and is the highest point in the United States East of the Mississippi and North of the Mason-Dixon Line.  It dominates northern New England, visible on a clear day both from St. Johnsbury, VT and the Green Mountains to the West, and Portland, ME and the Atlantic Ocean from the East.  The native Abenakis believed it (understandably) to be the home of their gods, and it was first summited by a European when Darby Field did so in 1642, though it didn't get its name until an expedition of geologist hiked what would be known as the Presidential Range in 1784 and gave the tallest peak they saw the most impressive name they could think of.

Through the 19th century Mount Washington became a popular destination for hikers, and to reach the summit, we'd be heading up from Lakes of the Clouds Hut on the Crawford Path, considered the oldest continuously maintained footpath in the United States, being cut and created in 1819.  In 1869 the Cog Railway was built, allowing more people easier access to the summit, and a hotel and newspaper were even founded.  In fact, the numbers became so great that the whole point behind the 4,000 Footer Club in the first place was to encourage people to spread out and see more of the White Mountains, and help save the environment in and around the Presidential and Franconia Ranges.

But here's the thing about Mount Washington:  it can be an incredibly dangerous place.  Three independent storm tracks intersect on its summit, and it has some of the worst unpredictable weather in the world.  Since the mid-19th century when records started to be kept, over 140 people have died on Mount Washington or the surrounding mountains, making it one of the deadliest mountains in the world.  Even in the summer, the weather can change in an instant, and it can go from being sunny and warm to cold and snowy.  Hell, in 1934 the Mount Washington Observatory (which in those days was just a wooden shack chained to the mountaintop) recorded the highest wind speed in human history, 231 miles per hour (before the wind speed instrument broke).  Whenever you pass treeline in the Presidentials, big yellow signs warn you to SERIOUSLY, TURN BACK IF THE WEATHER IS SHITTY.  THIS IS NOT A DRILL.  It's a big deal.

So even though we had climbed Mount Monroe and the summit of Washington is only a mile and a half from Lakes of the Clouds and it was warm and overcast the day that we were climbing, well, like I said, you can't take Washington for granted.

After stopping back by the Hut to drop off Arya's poop bag from earlier (thankfully the bag was biodegradable so I didn't feel so bad dropping it in their latrine), we set out on the aforementioned Crawford Path, which over this particular stretch is coexistent with the Appalachian Trail.  Above treeline we had to rely on the rock cairns to know where the trail went, which I suppose would have made me nervous if there wasn't a steady stream of hikers all the way up to Washington.  Getting lost wouldn't be an issue; seriously, it felt like we were in one of those old pictures of the Klondike Gold Rush, with hundreds of people waiting in line to hike up a mountain.

Arya took the opportunity leaving the Lakes of the Clouds to go for a little swim, which was funny to me because 1. Arya doesn't really know how to swim and 2. She seemed genuinely confused as to what she had gotten herself into when she waded into the water. I suppose it was a good start, though it left us somewhat behind my brother and our friends, and with the sheer number of people that were with us on the trail, it looked like Arya and I were going to be hiking by ourselves for a while.

Which was fine, really. As I mentioned in the post about Monroe, I'm a slow hiker in general, and didn't want to bog down the others too much.  The Crawford path ascends the southern shoulder of Mount Washington, and while it's never super steep, it does have a habit of just, well, going.  It occurred to me as I continued to make less progress than expected (judged by how small the Lakes of the Clouds Hut was getting over my shoulder), that even though I'd climbed Washington 4 times before this point, it was always from the North or East, so I always descended the summit down the Crawford Path.  It seemed nice and pleasant going down (as you would expect), but now heading in the other direction it seemed to take forever.  Which is just awesome, since Arya was chomping at the bit to keep going and was having none of me taking breaks on the way.  I lost track of how many people passed us going up or going down, and as a guy who tends to look at my feet when I hike, there were more than a couple awkward bump-ins.

But!  Turns out about halfway to the summit, as you really start to get to the summit cone of Washington (and the towers and antennas of the observatory start to recede), my brother and friends felt bad about leaving us behind, and stopped to have us catch up.  Not only did they offer to take Arya off my hands for a bit, but they ran into a mutual friend who just happened to be a coupld of hikers behind me.  It was rather surreal; all of a sudden they heard a familiar voice, completely out of context, and BOOM!  Friend on the trail.  They actually ended up hiking with us all the way to the top, though they had slightly more ambitious plans after bagging Washington.

After what seemed like forever, the big rocks of treeline started to get a little smaller, and we emerged at the summit, replete with sand paths, concrete walkways, a food court, and a CRAPTON of tourists who either drove up the Auto Road, or took the Cog Railway.  It's something that you never really get used to as a hiker, and it's kind of a shame when you get right down to it.  I mean here you are, having just conquered one of the most dangerous mountains in the world, the highest in the region, and you're confronted with a bunch of people in sandals, who barely could be bothered to get out of their air-conditioned cars.  Maybe that's a bit harsh, but I always felt like hikers were a bit of a novelty to the tourists, almost amazed that someone would climb this thing with their own two feet when they didn't have to.  I mean for God's sake, there was such a line to get your picture taken at the actual summit (a big cairn with a sign, and the USGS elevation cap) that we didn't even bother.  I guess technically we didn't get to the very tip top of the mountain that day.

And Arya, as I have come to notice when we reach the summit of any mountain, still wanted to keep climbing, almost disappointed that we'd made it to the top.  The hordes of tourists were a welcome distraction (usually she just whines and whines until we start the climb down), and she made the day of a couple of people by being a friendly, bubbly, energetic puppy.  She also tried to eat ALL the food.  A recurring theme with her, and the bounty of fried food from the cafeteria certainly didn't help.

Honestly, from there we didn't spend too much time on the summit.  There are a lot of things to see up there, including a museum about the observatory, a couple of older buildings (one, the Tip Top House, dates from the early 1850s), and an observation deck where you can look out over the whole of the Whites, including the impressive Northern Presidential Peaks of Mounts Adams, Madison, and Jefferson.  The high clouds that had been with us for most of the day started to descend, though, and the views didn't stay impressive for long.  After some group shots and a bathroom break, we took a look at our watches and realized that we still had quite a ways to go, taking the Jewell Trail (by way of the Gulfside Trail) back down to the Cog Railway base.  It's a nice gently sloping trail (in contrast to Ammonoosuc Ravine), but we had a couple miles of ridgewalking to get there, as it comes up between Mounts Washington and Clay.  We said goodbye to our temporary companions, and headed out.

And MAN, as much as I hate hiking straight up?  That's how much I love ridgewalking above treeline.  It's awesome.  Wonderful views in 360 degrees, a clear sense of accomplishment, and since you've gained a lot of your elevation already, it's really not super taxing, either.  The Gulfside Trail gave us the bonus of traversing the Cog Railway tracks directly (there was a rather impressive amount of soot and coal littering the trail around the tracks...kind of makes me understand why they're making the switch to Biodiesel-powered engines), as well as putting us right up against the geographic feature that gives the trail it's name, The Great Gulf. 

And it really is quite impressive.  Basically, between Mounts Adams and Madison to the north (the very edge of the range in one direction) and Mount Washington in the middle, there is a whole lot of nothing.  I'll have to check Wikipedia to see if it's some kind of glacially-formed leftover (update: yup!  it's a cirque), and it really is like a great big bathtub with steep sides.  Arya again went running right up to the edge, and I once again had a minor freak-out, thinking that she was going to hurl herself to her doom.  Maybe if there'd been a butterfly (she likes chasing butterflies).

Eventually we got to the Jewell Trail spur on the shoulder of Mount Clay, and it was time to descend.  Mount Clay is actually above 5,000 feet, much like the rest of the Northern Prezzies, but does not "count", as its peak lacks a minimum of 200 feet of prominence from the surrounding ridge.  It's a nice little mountain, but is essentially a sub-peak of Mount Washington, and getting so close to counting in the Presidential Range but not quite getting there is, in my mind, a perfect honor for a mountain named after Henry Clay (Incidentally, there was a state law passed in the New Hampshire legislature in 2003 to re-name Mount Clay "Mount Reagan" because apparently we need to name everything after Ronald Reagan now.  The USGS politely told the New Hampshire legislature to go fuck itself). 

Arya desperately wanted to climb Mount Clay, but by that point it was getting on into the mid-to-late afternoon, and we really needed to get back to our car.  We also paid an additional price for the trails we'd taken, as while we gained a lot of our elevation at once to start the day, we lost it very, very gradually, which is why the Jewell Trail is such a popular trail to hike UP Washington.  There were a lot of switchbacks, a lot of slow ridges, especially around treeline.  It felt like we were hiking through waist-high scrub trees forever, and we were no closer to the bottom.  Our day-long games of "I'm thinking of something that starts with the letter X" and "Name an athlete whose first name starts with the same letter of this athlete's last name" even petered out, as we all got tired and wanted to just be fucking done already.

And that's kind of the dirty little secret of hiking.  The worst part isn't starting off and knowing how much you still have left to climb, it's not having clouds roll in to obscure your view, and it's not the letdown of leaving the summit and your sense of accomplishment to realize you're only really halfway.  It's that inevitable moment when you know you're getting reasonably close to the end, but you're not there yet, and all the exciting things are over with and where the hell is that parking lot?

It was even worse this time around for a couple of reasons.  First, Arya didn't seem to tire out at all, and forced me to slalom a couple of trees in her search for exotic animal poop to eat.  Second, the light really did start to fade, and I began to wonder if I should have packed a headlamp.  And third, I really couldn't predict when we'd be done.  Growing up hiking, our Dad used to use a bag of tricks to keep us whiny kids motivated, and, despite my best efforts, I still use them on myself when I'm feeling tired or sore.  One of these was to say "well, the average speed for a person over level terrain is 3 miles an hour", and then try to extrapolate our speed and how far we've gone (and how far we had to go).  This is actually a good motivator.  The second was to say that we had to keep hiking for X amount of minutes before we could stop for water or GORP.  The third, which is almost as useful as the first one, is to try and memorize the trail when you're hiking up it.

For instance, maybe I notice that after 20 minutes, we step over a large fallen tree, or pass a large rock.  Often the White Mountain Guide will say something like "trail crosses Pemigewasset River at 1.2 miles", which helps a lot.  That way, when I see that tree or rock or river again when we're descending, I know that we're only a handful of minutes away from being able to take our hiking boots off in the car (one of life's top 10 pleasures, btw).  And this usually works because, being a day-tripper on average, we were simply hiking up one trail to the summit, and then hiking back down the same trail.  But noooo, we HAD to hike two mountains in the same day...

So even though I'd hiked the Jewell Trail before (again, UP), I really had no idea where we were in relation to the bottom.  This was really kind of frustrating, and I found myself uncharacteristically charging ahead of the group, though part of that was due to Arya.  There were moments we had to stop and wait for the rest of them (though they were never out of earshot), and for a while there I resorted to scouring the guidebook to see if there were any landmarks of note.  Alas, all it said was that we'd cross a stream basically RIGHT as we came into the Cog base area, and that was it.  So it wasn't exactly the best moment for me, since really once you go below treeline on the descent, the really fun stuff is over.

Rather amusingly, one of our number (and the only female among us besides Arya) had to pee really badly as we were winding down, and since this is much more of a production for her than it was for us (even Arya didn't have that problem), we formed a scouting party up and down the trail in case other hikers came through, since no one wants to be caught like that.  I suppose we didn't need to go down the trail, though, since no one would be starting their hike up Washington at 5:00, but whatever.  And I kid you not, like 3 minutes after she finished, we emerged at the Cog base, and its restaurant, snack bar, and indoor bathrooms.  Oh, well.

After coming to the mutual understanding that we all smelled and there was nothing we could do about it, we piled into the car, with Arya FINALLY curling up and passing the fuck out, snoring the whole way home.

  We even decided that as adults, we could stop for ice cream on the way back to the Farm, and after a nice vanilla shake (an underrated flavor!) we made it back in time for showers, supper, and a well-earned evening of putting our feet up.  Moreover, Arya and my friends got to add their names to the Big Board, having knocked off two of the more challenging peaks New England has to offer.

-M

Mount Monroe: July 19, 2014

Mountain: Mount Monroe
Elevation: 5,372 (New Hampshire's 4th Tallest, New England's 4th Tallest)
Route: Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail
Mileage: 3.6 miles to summit
Arya's Take: Why is Dad so slow?!


One of the things I knew would happen when I resolved to hike the New England 4,000 footers with Arya was that I would run across trails I'd hiked before and hated.  And full disclosure, I LOATHE the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail.  I've hiked it 4 times, and it's sucked every time.  Let me explain:

In addition to Arya, I have some friends who also just got into peak-bagging in a big way, and they expressed interest in going on a hike over the summer, when we were all at my family's house in New Hampshire.  Figuring we'd start them off with a challenge, my younger brother and I suggested hiking in the Presidentials, and we set about finding a route that would allow us to hike a couple of mountains while keeping it a day trip.  Initially we'd thought of making it a multi-day excursion, though looking at the mileage involved we decided that wasn't such a good idea.  So we settled on Mounts Monroe and Washington, two of the tallest in New England.


From there, we knew we needed to find a manageable loop back to our car, and the best candidates were the Jewell Trail and the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail, both of which start at Marshfield, the base station for the Mount Washington Cog Railway. 

After a brief argument about where to start, we chose to head up Ammonoosuc Ravine, which would bring us to Lakes of the Clouds hut, then the summit of Monroe, and then we could take the Crawford Path up the shoulder of Washington, coming down the Jewell Trail.  And based on timing and mileage, it made sense.

But here's the reason I despise the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail.  It's all well and good to start out with, departing from the Cog Railway and snaking with the Ammonoosuc River (which has its headwaters at the aforementioned Lakes of the Clouds).  It's all very pretty and wilderness-y, the river only really being a babbling brook at this point so close to its source.  At around 2 miles, you even reach Jem Pool, a nice little pond with a waterfall, where you can pause, get a drink, and eat some GORP/beef jerky (and we did).  But then you think about the fact that you've gone 2 out of 3 miles to the Lakes of the Clouds over basically flat terrain, and if the Lakes and the AMC Hut are above 5,000 feet and we only have a mile to go when are we going to gain our elevat...OH.

It's basically straight up for a mile.  Which would suck on general principle anyway, but with Arya being much faster than I was, I had the added pleasure of being pulled up the trail, and she didn't want to stop for any reason at all it seemed, even to let poor me catch my breath.  I eventually had to hand her off to my brother for a spell, as I am, and always have been, a bit of a cow's tail.

And I just...nothing is worse than hiking straight up for an extended period of time.  No switchbacks, no brief flats to ease your legs and catch your breath, nothing.  I'd go what felt like 4 or 5 steps before I wanted to take a break again.  This is why I had lobbied to take the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail DOWN, so at least we could go quickly and it wouldn't be aerobic murder.  But my brother made the compelling argument that it's better to just get it the hell over with, and this was coming from someone who, the last time he was on the trail, climbed down Ammonoosuc Ravine in a rainstorm and had to basically swim.  So there's that.

And the worst thing was, I knew this was coming.  All the while hiking in, when my friends were remarking on how it wasn't nearly as bad as we told them it was, I knew.  And even though every single time I've hiked up Ammonoosuc Ravine I've had a moment where I said to myself "Where is that Goddamn Hut!", I thought maybe this time it'd be different.

It wasn't.  Almost on cue, as we were emerging from the scrub trees and poking our heads above treeline, I thought it.  I was done with the whole enterprise and about ready to murder my brother for convincing me to come up this God-forsaken trail when I spied the faded wooden clapboards of the AMC Lakes of the Clouds Hut.

Just as an aside, the High Huts of the White Mountains are awesome.  Basically, way back in the 1880s, when alpine tourism was really taking off in New Hampshire, the AMC decided to build cabins along the Appalachian Trail, modeling them after huts in the Alps.  There are 8 of them, and they're spaced about a day's hike from each other so, in theory, someone hiking the AT could spend the night at each one in succession.  They're staffed by a motley, crunchy bunch of folks called "The Croo", and can house between 36 and 96 people overnight. 

I've been to all of them but one (someday, Lonesome Lake!), though I've never stayed overnight at one.  First, you have to make reservations ahead of time, and second, they're LUDICROUSLY expensive.  Better to plan out day trips, or, as we did at summer camp, buck up and camp in tents.  But what an oasis they can be!

Emerging from treeline and barely able to see the rest of the people I was hiking with (or Arya), the hut is a wonderful place to catch your breath, take a load off (on benches and chairs!), fill up your canteens with fresh cold water, and plot your next move.  Or, depending on the Presidential Range's infamously erratic weather, raid the lost and found for socks to use as mittens because it's August and why the hell is it snowing?  ...Not that I've ever done that.

Lakes of the Clouds is nice, too, as you can clearly see up and down the spine of the Presidentials, with Monroe looming over you and Washington up to the North.  We lucked out with reasonably good weather, warm with high overcast clouds, and while people took turns getting water and using the bathroom in the Hut, we prepared to make the loop up and back to Monroe.  I also started to get a little nervous.  Arya had done really well with the hikes we'd gone on so far, though this was her first experience above treeline for an extended period.  The extendo-leash helped me keep her under control, though the thing about treeline is, you need to stay on the marked paths along each trail, as there are a myriad of plants and the like that only grow in those very specific alpine conditions, and are very fragile.  Arya loves eating grass.  My dog was potentially about to become an ecological menace.

The other thing that worried me, more about Monroe than Washington, was the fact that there were several spots approaching the summit with very steep inclines, and while "cliff" is a bit dramatic, some places where there would be a bit of a drop on the other side.  So I didn't want her barreling over a ravine, or getting stuck.  I thought back to a hike I went on with my fiancee's brother and his wife, and their German Shepherd, who had a spot of bother on the rocks.

That turned out to be a lot of worrying over nothing, because apart from trying and failing to eat some lichens on a rock and pooping off the trail on some alpine grass (always hike with poop bags!), Arya was a freaking natural when it came to treeline.  She hopped up over rocks and all around the summit of Monroe no problem, and looked back at me with such contempt when I got overly scared and called her back from a ledge.  Almost like, "What, you thought I was stupid enough to jump off a cliff?"  She was great.

And since the summit of Monroe really is only half a mile from Lakes of the Clouds, we were up on top in no time.  The clouds continued to stay high enough to give us a lovely view both up the ridge to Washington, and down it to Mount Eisenhower and the Southern Presidentials.  Not to shabby for Arya's first 5,000 footer.  We took the time to eat some lunch on the summit (meeting some very nice through hikers, one of which was closing in on finishing, as Monroe was his 45th 4,000 footer), and Arya did her best to convince us that Cape Cod Potato Chips are a staple of a balanced canine diet.  It was right around 1:30, and we had demolished book time in getting to the top.  Looking across the ravine, though, was our ultimate goal for the day, and even though the weather looked like it would cooperate, you should never take anything for granted when it comes to Mount Washington

All we had to do was get there.

-M

Killington Peak: June 15, 2014

Mountain: Killington Peak
Elevation: 4,235 (Vermont's 2nd Tallest, New England's 36th Tallest)
Route: Bucklin Trail
Mileage: 7.2 miles round trip
Arya's Take: Skeptical but Cautiously Optimistic


I suppose to start Arya off on the right foot (or paw), I could have chosen a mountain that I was more familiar with, to make sure I knew what to expect and how to guide her through the experience with as few question marks as possible.  I did not do that.  Instead, I chose a mountain that I had my own eye on and figured that she wouldn't complain (and she didn't).

June 15 is actually one of the earliest dates I've ever gone hiking, and it is by far the earliest date I've hiked a 4,000 footer.  Either because we were at summer camp in New Hampshire over July and August, or my family would go on hikes in the fall and early winter, I never went out in June.  I mean, on the one hand the mountains need a lot of time to dry out after Mud Season, so even if your back yard is nice and clear, there's still a lot of water coming off the higher elevations.  On June 15, though, everything seemed to be aligning for a nice hike.

We piled into my trusty Prius and headed out for the Bucklin trail a little after dawn that day; I wanted to get on the trailhead as close to 9:00 as possible, to avoid a possible rush, and to make sure that we could get home at a reasonable hour.  It was odd driving down to the Killington area, as I'd gone there many times to ski, but had never seen it as green and warm as it was in June.  The Bucklin trail was accessible by a nice pictureseque and out-of-the-way dirt road off of US route 4, and we arrived at the parking lot after a couple of false starts lead us up to people's summer homes (or ski chalets) a few times.

I strapped on Arya's shoulder harness (a godsend for an excited puppy who seemed heart-set on strangling herself when we attached her leash directly to her collar), and got all of my effects together to put in my pack.  I had everything we could possibly need for the day, extra food and water, two differnt trail maps and guidebooks, my cell phone in case of emergency (having a ski resort on the mountain tends to mean excellent cell service), first aid kit, and warm/waterproof clothes just in case the sun didn't hold.  I even had a knee brace and hiking poles for myself, based on a recommendation from my orthopedist.  Arya had an extendo-leash that would allow her to go up to 25 feet ahead of me, as I didn't quite trust her off leash yet.

We hit a bit of a snag to start things off, though, and it looked like we were well and truly screwed for a few minutes, as in my rush to get everything ready, I put my phone and car keys in my pack, and locked the car with it (and them) still inside.  So not only could I not open the car to get my pack, but I also couldn't call AAA to have someone come to the middle of nowhere and fix it.  I may have "invoked the Deity", as my grandfather used to say.

But!  Who should happen up my idiot self and my very ready-to-go dog but another pair of hikers, a very nice couple from New York.  They let me borrow their cell to call AAA, wished me luck, and headed up the Bucklin trail.  Now all I had to do was wait for the mechanic, who said he'd be there around 10:30.  We were going to be OK, though I still debated whether we would actually hike Killington once he arrived, since with such a late start I, having never climbed Killington before, had no idea if we still had enough time to get out comfortably before dusk.  Especially with a dog who might not take to the whole "hiking" thing.

 Well, the AAA guy eventually did arrive, and I decided we'd go for it.  Worst case scenario, Arya decides she hates it and we turn around after a mile or so.  And off we went.

The Bucklin Trail is probably the most popular route up Killington, and one that is recommended in most guide books.  The "Hike with your dog!" book I had described it as "4 paws, very strenuous", which is garbage.  Starting off with a nice little grade, there were some small but curvaceous hills we had to scale before crossing Brewers' Brook on man-made bridges.  It was all very pleasant, in the dappled sunshine of the lower deciduous forest, before following the brook up and beginning to gain our elevation.

Arya blazed ahead most of the time, and seemed to really enjoy sniffing various things by the side of the trail, without bolting into the woods (which is good, since as I was tethered to her via the extendo-leash, I'd have to follow her into the woods and untangle her from various trees and roots.  Not the most fun).  Unfortunately, right after we passed the 1.5 mile mark or so, she began to get pouty, and refuse to keep going in a couple of spots. At first I figured this is because she was tired, hungry, or thirsty, but after several pit stops where she refused to sit, eat, or drink, I thought of something else.

See, where we live in Montpelier is very close to Hubbard Park, a nice little plot of urban wilderness that got me thinking that Arya would like hiking in the first place.  However, at least when we first got her, both my fiancee and I were with her, and I think she got used to both of us being there when we went on hiking-type walks.  So on our first real hike, I think Arya kept looking for her, turning around and whining and being confused about why my fiancee wasn't there as well.

This made me nervous, since we'd gone far enough that it'd be a shame to turn around, but at the same time I didn't want to drag Arya up the rest of the mountain.  I resorted to the chunks of hot dog that I'd kept in my pocket for just such a situation, and held them out in front of her to entice her to keep going.  I didn't have to do this more than a couple of times, thankfully, and we steadily gained elevation.

Unfortunately by the time we reached the intersection with the Long Trail/Appalachian Trail at 3.4 miles, the sun that had accompanied for most of the day had disappeared and a heavy fog obscured most everything.  The lodge itself was full of people having lunch (including our parking lot saviors!), though considering that Killington Peak was only 0.3 miles from the lodge, we weren't going to stop now, even if Arya realllllllllllly wanted to help people with their lunch.

The summit was kind of an anti-climax, to be honest, since the fog obscured all the views, and the ski area infrastructure (towers, lifts, and the like) made it feel a lot less like wilderness.  Arya and I hunkered down behind some rocks to shield ourselves from the wind, and at a hasty lunch.

The trip down was also a lot less interesting; Arya did turn around and look UP the trail a couple of times, whining, which really made me think that she was looking for my fiancee.  Also, in perfect fashion, as soon as we dropped below treeline again, the sun came out and remained out for the rest of the day, so that it was hard to convince people that we couldn't see anything at the top.  On the whole, a nice pleasant climb, one I would do again with anyone who was interested, and a good pilot to see if Arya was in fact going to be a mountain dog.  It really wasn't as difficult as we were led to believe from the guidebook, and it remained to be seen whether Arya would be up for some of the larger mountains.  But she slept the whole way home, which was a good sign.

-M

Trailhead

So in an attempt to jump-start my writing again, and because it's 34 degrees in Vermont for the first time in over a month, I decided (with some prodding from my better half) to start up a new blog.  After the relative success of my Civil War Battlefield Tour travel journal, the focus of this one will shift a bit based on a couple of factors:

1. I now live in Central Vermont, near Montpelier.
2. There are lots of mountains in Vermont
3. I like hiking mountains
4. I have a 16-month old puppy named Arya
5. Arya loves hiking mountains

So here we are.  We've had the little bundle of brindled energy for almost a year now, and after we got her used to her surroundings and who we were (and got her started on some basic obedience classes), I took her out hiking for the first time in June 2014.  It took some coaxing and a couple of cut up hot dogs but we got there, and she's been nuts for it ever since.

My reasoning behind doing this was that, having grown up spending my summers in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, hiking became second nature to me and my family, and really was THE thing we did on vacation each year.  Specifically, my Dad got me hooked on hiking the 48 4,000 footers in New Hampshire, and I set out trying to hike all of them before I turned 16.  And I did. 

After that, though, there didn't seem to be much point in hiking; bagging the 48 peaks was always my primary goal, and I often had to shrug off going on hikes on smaller mountains that, in my mind "did not count".  I went on hikes with other people in the White for sure, and was there when both of my brothers finished their 48 4,000 footers, but it wasn't something that I ended up doing a lot.  Which, in retrospect, is a shame.

Flash forward 14 years, and living with my fiancee and puppy surrounded by the Green Mountains, it seemed like a fresh challenge.  Though I went to college in Vermont, I hadn't gone hiking very much when up here, and in the intervening years after I graduated, I basically moved to Boston (notably devoid of mountains) and didn't look back.

 "But!" I hear you cry, "You said that you didn't care about hiking mountains unless they were over 4,000 feet!"  And yes, you would be correct.  The thing is, I'm trying to get better at that and enjoy the little things about hiking (the stillness of an alpine morning as the sun rises, river valley fog, the fresh smell of evergreens) and not just the sense of artificial accomplishment that comes with peak-bagging.  Also, Vermont has 5 mountains above 4,000 feet.

That's the thing!  Why settle for the 48 New Hampshire 4,000 footers when you can go for the New England 67 4,000 footers?  Yes, granted most of them are in New Hampshire, and I'd only have to hike 19 more mountains to finish.  But still!  And now that I have a dog, I can go peak-bagging with her.  Which is exactly what I've done.  I made a Big Board with all of the mountains on it (color-coded by state of course), and added Arya's name to it pretty much the day we got her. 

So here's what I'm going to do.  Since we started the better part of a year ago, Arya's climbed two 4,000 footers in Vermont (Killington and Camel's Hump), and three in New Hampshire (Monroe, Washington and Eisenhower) plus some smaller mountains both here and there that lend credence to my "try to enjoy climbing ones that don't count" effort.  And I'm going to write about each of them.  Of course after I catch up with all the mountains she's climbed (and since it's March and the mountains won't be hikeable until after Memorial Day), I think I'll dive into preparations and planning for future hikes, and then reporting and writing on them in real-time once the happen.  So should be a nice summer (and Arya still has 62 mountains to go!)

See you out there!

-M