Mount Osceola: September 5, 2015

Mountain: Mount Osceola
Elevation: 4,340 (New Hampshire's 23rd Tallest, New England's 27th Tallest)
Route: Mount Osceola Trail
Mileage: 3.7 miles
Arya's Take: My Dad is Waaaaaaay Overprotective

I know I've said something to this effect before, but I have a real soft spot for this mountain.  Mount Osceola was one that I did with my Dad and our family dog back in 1996, when I was smack in the middle of my peak-bagging days.  It was actually the second hike we'd done as a misplaced apology for not getting both Mount Madison and Mount Adams when we'd attempted them in 1995.  Which is to say, my parents rightly interpreted the weather as being too dangerous for us to attempt Adams, and we turned around.  Me, being a selfish 10-year old, pitched a fit.  Have I told this story before?  I'm sorry, I have a habit of repeating myself sometimes.

At any rate, my Dad and I hiked Adams with Max in September of 1995, and we made a tradition of going on a hiking trip each September the years afterwards, until I finished my 48 in 2000.  It was a really nice getaway for the two of us, and it was a special thing that I looked forward to through the summer, as a nice transition into Fall.  We also went out to dinner at our favorite restaurant by the Farm, a place called The Woodshed (which has, sadly, since burned down).  Osceola and Osceola East Peak were the mountains that cemented the trip as an official tradition, so when I was looking for nice mountains to continue Arya's 2015 Summer of Hiking, it was a natural fit.  We also figured to invite one of our friends from the Franks trip, as she had gotten waaaaay into hiking, and hiking with friends is always better than hiking alone.  She even has a dog who will actually put up with Arya, and while the pooch didn't join us up this time, let's just say you'll be seeing some of her in posts to come.


Labor Day actually provided me with a nice chance to stretch the weekend after the hike itself, and at dawn on that Saturday, Arya and I headed out from Barre to trek up through the Northeast Kingdom and down 93 to Osceola.  It's situated not really all that far from the Franconias, and having skied at Loon Mountain over the winter while still driving from Vermont, I figured to chance it and meet up with our friend at the trailhead as she lives in Southern New Hampshire.  After the climb, we'd head to the Farm and meet up with everyone who was already there.


It's actually a really nice drive over the North Country, and the leaves were juuuuuuuuust starting to hint at changing when we headed out amidst river valley fog.  I'd loaded a fair amount of podcasts for the trip (Arya was overruled) and apart from getting slightly lost before finding the Connecticut River, we managed OK.  This of course presented a problem, as we'd agreed to meet at the trailhead at a set time, and I didn't actually have our friend's cell number at the time, so there really wasn't a way that I could alert her that we were running a bit behind.  I took it a little faster on 93 than I probably should have given the circumstances, and once we were off at the Tripoli Road exit, I tried to rely on my 9-year old memories of the trailhead to see if we were headed in the right direction.  The White Mountain Guide has descriptions with mile markers, which helps, but Google Maps isn't really all that useful when you're trying to A. Find a trail that isn't part of it's road network and B. Have no cell service to speak of.

We did end up finding the right place, and our friend had only been there for 10-15 minutes, so I only felt moderately bad than shitty about not being able to get there on time.  I had a minor freak-out when it looked like I'd actually forgotten Arya's harness and extendo-leash, though after ripping my entire car apart I found that they had just fallen to the floor in the back seat.  Crisis averted (and adrenaline pumping), we headed up the Mount Osceola Trail and out of the fog.

The climb was much as I remember it from when my Dad and I climbed in years ago; nice and steady, moderately steep but not exactly anything super challenging.  Arya did her thing of plowing ahead and occasionally getting wrapped up around trees, and the only thing that really struck me was how hot it was for September.  My friend and I chatted away, catching up about various things over the summer (she's originally a friend of Amanda's from the barn they both boarded their horses at), and she gauged my excitement for Amanda and my wedding, which at this point was a mere 10 days away (Spoiler Alert!  It was great!).  Eventually we were able to come up on some nice overlooks of the Waterville Valley, though I was only really able to say that with confidence because after wondering what mountain we were looking at nearby, I saw the cut ski trails of, well, Waterville Valley and hazarded a guess.

Our friend had actually just recently climbed Tecumseh, the 4,000 footer that Waterville happens to be on, and corroborated that my memories of the climb are pretty much accurate to this day. A lot of stairs, a lot of trees, and not a lot of payoff at the end.  I'm sure Arya and I will get there in due time, of course, though I think I can admit freely at this point that I'm picking and choosing nice hikes to go on her with, before we exhaust that list and end up scraping the bottom of the Hale-and-Zealand-filled barrel.

And honestly?  Osceola's not a bad couple of miles.  The trail sort of meandered gradually as we gained elevation without even realizing it, and right I was starting to wonder where we were on the ridgeline, we emerged at the peak.  I quickly remembered why I liked the mountain so much, as we were up in barely 2 hours, with it even being really too early for lunch (I remember my Dad and I getting on top by like 10:00 or so in 1996, and me remarking that my brothers probably weren't even up yet).  The remains of an old Fire Tower gave Arya some makeshift shade, as we peered across the view towards Osceola East Peak, which would be our destination before lunch.

Osceola is a rather nice view for the effort you put in, as while it's not quite above treeline at the summit, the clearing for the former fire tower, coupled with a rockface and cliff to the East, gave us a clear vantage point to see for miles.

I was chatted up by some hikers from Virginia who, when discovering I was from Vermont, asked if I was a Bernie Sanders supporter (I am) and if it took me long to drive to New Hampshire from my house (it did not).  I also showed my rust for the White Mountains when asked by my friend what we were looking at, and I couldn't for the life of me tell her.  A fellow hiker helpfully pointed out that they were the Tripyramids, which I suppose I should have figured out, as I know the trailhead for them is rather close to the Tripoli Road exit off of 93, and the three peaks had a uniform, distinctly pyramidal shape.  Can't win them all, I suppose (I'm still horrendous with mountains in Vermont, by the way.  It may take me decades to correctly get my bearings).

The Tripyramids (only two of which count, annoyingly) were the next Me-and-Dad trip in 1997, and it was the first time we'd gone hiking with our old dog Max when he had a dog-pack.  Not to get ahead of myself, but suffice it to say that Max's reaction to having to carry his own stuff and his overall speed afterwards was a driving force in my insistence that Arya have one too.  We even looked at Max's old EMS pack, actually, but as he was a 80-pound barrel of a black lab and Arya is...not, it didn't really work out.

From there, we hydrated, ate some gorp and jerky, and prepped for what would actually be the more arduous park of our trip.  Because, dear reader, while Osceola is the larger of the two 4,000 footers on this particular ridge, we still had a ways to go to get to the East Peak, and we had to lose and then gain at least 200 feet of prominence in the process.  Most mountains do this rather gradually, with peaks being separated by quite a bit of ridgewalking.  Others simply glom onto a larger peak and don't actually count (COUMountClayGH).  Osceola East Peak, though, is actually quite close to Osceola (it's only a mile), which meant we were in for a bit of a change of pace.  They call it:  The Chimney.

I was really actually rather apprehensive about all this, especially because I honestly wracked my brain and had NO memory of doing it with my Dad and Max, and the fact that the White Mountain Guide goes out of its way to mention the Chimney, and how dangerous it can be in bad (and especially wet) weather.  We didn't exactly have rain clouds bearing down on us, but still.  How would I fare with my bum knee down (and up!) a freaking chimney?  How would my dog fare?

Arya's response?  --------->

Here we go!

-M

Mount Moosilauke: August 7, 2015

Mountain: Mount Moosilauke

Elevation: 4,802 (New Hampshire's 10th Tallest, New England's 11th Tallest)
Route:Gorge Brook Trail
Mileage:3.7 miles
Arya's Take: We should go this way!  Wait, no.  This way!  Wait, no. This way!

This was actually more difficult to coordinate than it should have been.  I'd known for a while that Mount Moosilauke, apart from being one of the tallest 4,000 footers in New England, was also New Hampshire's Western-most one, which made it an ideal choice to hike while starting at home in Vermont instead of at the Farm.  Once I'd decided to hike it with Arya and picked a date in late July to do it when the weather looked good, I prepped and was ready to go, until I found out that I had actually left my knee brace at the Farm when we did the Franks, and, unfortunately, I can't really hike (or walk for long distances) without my knee brace.

"Fear not!" I said, "I'll just go to Walmart and buy another copy of the same brace, since that's where I got the first one.  And redundancy is good!".  Alas, even though I should have known better, I woke up at the crack of dawn and went to the Walmart in Berlin to find that they had sold out of braces, and didn't have any.  This happens a lot at this particular Walmart, and yet I never learn.

I then proceeded to go to every pharmacy and grocery store in the Barre-Montpelier Micropolitan area to no avail, and had to scrap my plans.  It felt terrible, and I'd been really excited to do Moosilauke, considering my memories of it (a lot of above-treeline stuff) and the fact that I had everything ready EXCEPT the brace.  At any rate, my parents found it and I got it back in time to try again, a little later in the summer but no worse for wear.

And after an hour and a half drive (not bad, really), we found ourselves in the domain of the Dartmouth Outing Club.  See, there's a bit of a quirk with Moosilauke, in that while most of the White Mountains are under the purview of the Appalachian Mountain Club, around a century ago, some intrepid students at Dartmouth College decided to form an Outing Club, and owing that Moosilauke is the closest major mountain to the college, kind of set up a little kingdom there.  All the major trails start at a stunningly nice lodge that they've built there, with outlying bunkhouses paid for and built by subsequent classes.  There must have been some kind of event going on at the lodge the weekend we were up, because it was alive with crowds; alumni running around with their kids, peppy and helpful current Dartmouth students acting as staff, and sooooo many people on the trails.  It honestly took us a little bit to find the trail we were looking for, for a couple of reasons:  first, there were so many walking trails around the lodge that were simple loops and *seemed* like they should be the one that we took, and second, after Tropical Storm Irene, the DOC had to reroute basically all of their trails around the river in some capacity, which would lead to some angst from me later on in the day.

At any rate, we found the trail for the Moosilauke summit (well, the one I had chosen, at any rate), and after helping a nice couple find the trail as well, we started our gradual ascent.  I figure as best I can they were from New Jersey, and Dartmouth alums, guessing from their accents and green-and-white apparel, and for a while there it looked as though we would be de facto hiking companions.  This irked me a little bit, through no fault of theirs, as they seemed perfectly nice, but I was keen to get out on the trail and not be in the middle of some pack, so that I could avoid having to make idle small talk with strangers, and so that I wouldn't have to worry about reeling Arya in on her extendo-leash.  I was successful, at least in part, and after a bit the New Jersey couple started to lag a bit.

I guess this wasn't surprising, as the trail snaked along side Gorge Brook, and they weren't exactly dressed for more than just a stroll through the woods (the woman had a Dartmouth sweatshirt on, and wasn't even carrying any water).  I suppose they didn't really know what they were getting themselves into, though they seemed only a little worse for wear when I encountered them coming down.  Eventually the early morning fog started to lift, and we started to gain some elevation along a nice little ridge with some mossy what-looked-to-be fir trees.  I was starting to feel pretty good (and the headache I'd developed on the drive started to lift), though every now and then I'd feel a pang of anxiety about whether we were, truly, on the trail we needed to be on.  I mean, we were heading in the right direction in that the trees were getting sparse and I could see Moosilauke looming at us in the distance, but I never quite settled down.

I really shouldn't have been as nervous.  After all, I had purchased a new White Mountain Guide for this very purpose, even though I've since learned (through a wonderful AMC book on the History of the White Mountain Guide itself!) that up until 2006, all of the maps that the guide came with relied on the same surveying data that was originally done for the AMC by one guy at the turn of the 20th Century.  I wanted to be absolutely clear that my path was correct, and was a little disheartened to learn that not only was the blurb in the guide's description of Moosilauke basically "be careful, a lot has changed since Irene", but the maps were a barely-ledgible mishmash of red lines that all seemed to intersect at one point or another.

I was just beginning to second guess myself when I came across a lovely DOC sign nailed to a tree, brightly colored in orange and blue (quick aside: why don't more mountain and outing clubs choose their blazes and trail signs based on high visibility?).  It was rather oddly in the shape of a humpback whale, but it clearly marked a new cutoff to the left, and the continuation of the Gorge Brook Trail to the right, so off we went.  After that, confident that we were at least on the right trail, I went back to obsessively wondering where the next landmark was so I could plot how far we'd gone, and how far we still had to go.  After we reached the bridge and memorial marker at about 1.5, we began to really, truly ascend, and I calmed down.

Arya at this point was having a blast, especially since the trail was wide enough for her to truly slalom around it.  I actually had a bit of trouble myself, based mainly on my lingering headache and lack of Aleve.  Eventually the trees started to thin out, and after a couple of rather conspicuously man-made viewpoints complete with benches, we really made it above treeline.  Well, sort of.

This was around the point that I figured out that the Gorge Brook Trail was definitely NOT the one that I'd taken up Moosilauke when I did it at summer camp all those years ago.  Moosilauke being a big honking mass of a mountain, we'd actually approached from the other side of the summit, which is why I remembered so much hiking above treeline (I also remember that one of the counselors actually finished his 48 on top, and I attempted and was denied a swig of the bottle of champagne that they'd smuggled up for him).  This isn't to say that Arya and I didn't have much hiking above treeline, it was more that we had fits and starts of treeline hiking (like the picture to the right there) before dipping back for some almost-but-not-quite-above treeline straights.  The mountain flies were especially bad that day too (it being August and all), much to my and Arya's annoyance.  We ended up having to cede right of way to a fair number of hikers who were faster than us (more on that later), and it wasn't until right below the summit cone that we were really able to be above treeline completely.

We were actually confronted with a nice pleasant surprise, as the final approach of the Gorge Brook Trail takes you across what I can only describe as a mountain meadow.  Unlike other places above treeline we'd climbed earlier in the summer or last year, we were treated to a good half mile of a grassy clearing, with a rock-marked pathway to help conservation.  You can probably guess how much respect Arya had for such artificial boundaries.  Upon reaching the summit we were surprised to see a fair number of people already at the top, not just the ones who had passed us as we lost steam at treeline.  There were some rather nice dogs, too, including a golden retriever and a German shepherd who wanted to become fast friends with Arya.  After extricating her from a tangled leash or two (I'm getting really good at that, by the way), we settled down in the hollow remains of a summit house and had some lunch.  After snarfing down hers as quickly as possible and refusing water from her collapsible trail bowl (naturally), Arya decided it was high time for a nap and sprawled out in what looked to be the most uncomfortable position possible.


This was actually a welcome change of pace from her usual MO of alternating between trying to play with other dogs on the summit, and trying to eat my lunch when I'm not looking.  Hopefully this is a sign of things to come, at least for enxt hiking season.  With zero cell service (shocker!) I tried to amuse myself by reading the intro of the White Mountain Guide's section on Moosilauke, as it has its own section of the guide, and its own map besides.  Apart from learning about the history of the DOC and the partnership it has with the AMC, the only thing I gleaned was that while there is some debate over how exactly the mountain's name is pronounced (Moo-sill-AWK vs. Moo-sill-AWKEE), both are considered valid.  This kind of frustrated me, as I'm firmly in the AWK camp, and friends of mine I grew up hiking with (and my Dad) are in the AWKEE camp.  Come on, AMC, pick a side.

It was also around lunch that I started to notice something that was going to have a bit a an impact on our day:  some cumulus clouds were sneaking in, getting a bit bigger, and starting to get dark.  Now, since I started hiking again with Arya, we'd had impeccable luck with the weather, mainly because I would call off hiking plans for a weekend if it looked like there was going to be rain.  Even with the forecast today, there was only a chance of showers, and when I'd woken up, apart from some river valley fog, everything looked fine.  So I was a bit dismayed to see what was looking to bear down on us, and decided to wrap up lunch and start the descent, just to be sure.

This turned out to be a pretty good idea in hindsight.  Right as we left the summit, the clouds started to close in , and I felt really kind of bad for a group of summer campers that Arya and I ran across as we slipped back into the trees.  There were the standard campers you'd expect: the ones that were chatting away at 1,000 miles an hour, the quiet ones, and the ones who probably didn't want to go on the trip in the first place who desperately asked me how much further they still had to go.  I rounded down on my estimate, at least for their counselors' sake, and after Arya was done getting simultaneously petted by like 15 people (she was, to say the least, a fan), we continued downward, casting a worried look at the sky.  I mean, it didn't look like it was going to thunderstorm or anything, but I bet that the summer camp had a lousier time on top than Arya and I did.

Arya and I also had to contend with one of the oddest circumstances that I've come acrosson a hiking trail as we wound down the mountain.  I mean, moving to the side of the trail to accommodate ascending hikers is rather common, as you generally want to defer to the people who are having a rougher go at it than you are.  However, without much warning, we were confronted with he fact that so many Dartmouth alums were around Moosilauke on this particular day because there was a footrace scheduled up the mountain.

You read that right.  While this hunk of rock is challenging enough at the nice leisurely pace Arya and I were setting, a bunch of what I can only assume were current Dartmouth students decided to RUN 3.7 miles up and 3.7 miles down, all the while working around all of us normal hikers.

Most of the time it was easy enough for use to lurch to one side as we heard the huffing and puffing coming up the trail, though there were a few instances where Arya and her extend-o leash were far enough ahead to snare a few runners.  They were all nice enough about it, though I felt kind of bad, and hope that their overall times weren't affected by dogs too much.  Still, among the wackier unexpected events on the trail, and something I still can't quite believe.


We ended up passing the New Jersey couple as well, who also asked how much farther the summit was, after insinuating that I'd not warned them about how hard the climb was going to be.  The woman now had her Dartmouth sweatshirt tied around her waist, and was obviously getting water from somewhere, since she was probably the more chipper of the two.  Again, I found myself erring on the side of a shorter estimate, and wished them luck.  Arya wasn't one for small talk either, and it was now decidedly overcast.

Thankfully the rain didn't start until we were back at the bridge and memorial plaque at 1.5, and it didn't start in earnest until we were back in the maze of former trails and bypasses from Tropical Storm Irene.  That said, even though I tried to tough it out to the end, even I had to stop and put on my raincoat eventually.  Arya seemed to be fine with getting wet and really was rather mad at me for making her stop, but it was worth it as we approached the DOC lodge when it really started to come down. 

I actually had an odd little interlude at the end of our hike, too, as a woman I'd passed hiking up had said that she left her blue fleece behind when she'd stopped for a drink, and asked us (well, me, anyway) to keep an eye on it as I descended.  I did end up finding a fleece (I'd call it more grey than blue, which led me to wonder if I was just stealing someone else's fleece), and dropped it off at the lodge after trying to explain exactly why I was wandering around the mess hall).

We then had to trudge back to our car, which was a rather long walk down the access road, as only Dartmouth alums can use the parking lot by the lodge.  That, coupled with the fact that my phone died on the way out, complicated our drive home a little bit (OK, a lotta bit), as I officially had no idea where I needed to go to end up back in St. Johnsbury, and thus, on the track back home.

Rather frustrstingly, too, the rain cleared almost immediately as we got back on the road, and I was left to wait for my car charger to wake up my phone and Google Maps.  This took what seemed like for freaking EVER, and while I drove around blind, thinking erroneously that I had some clue of where we were, we ended up tacking on a good 35 minutes to our drive back home.  Not that Arya minded, of course, as she was snoring in the passengers seat the whole way home.

Next up:  an old favorite!

-M