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