Mount Hale: June 11, 2016

Mountain: Mount Hale

Elevation: 4,054 (New Hampshire's 37th Tallest, New England's 50th Tallest)

Route: Hale Brook Trail

Mileage:4.6 miles round trip

Arya's Take: New Personal Best!

After the success of our combined Pierce-Jackson trip, I wanted to keep the momentum of the early hiking season going, and poured over my White Mountain Guide to find another trip that would be easy to plan and easy to get to.  As this mostly entails the lower end of the 4,000 footer club (doing the Twins isn’t exactly something we could do in a day trip from Vermont), I set my sights on mountains I remember being straightforward.  This eventually led me to Mount Hale.

Hale holds a unique position for me, as it was my 48^th back in 2000, and I specifically planned NOT to finish at summer camp so I could do it with my family.  My parents and brothers had been there at the beginning of my quest to bag them all, and I wanted them to be there at the end of it, too.  All in all, I didn’t really remember a ton about the trail or the climb, apart from that it was pretty boring, and that the summit was a bit of a letdown with no view.  But I got to celebrate, and honestly looking back, setting out to finish the 4,000 footers before I turned 16, and actually doing it, was something I’m rather proud of, and a rare accomplishment of mine that I worked really hard to achieve.  But that brings us to the present, and my trip up with Arya.

I at least knew where the Hale Brook Trail got started, as I’d driven by the access road for it on our way to Crawford Notch the week before (I’m getting really good at the drive from central Vermont to Crawford Notch).  I also at least remembered that it was a straight shot up and down, and endeavored to be at the trailhead at 7:00, as per usual.  This ended up being a major factor in how…different this hiking day went, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

The day was mostly overcast, which didn’t really concern me anyway since I knew there wasn’t a view, and we headed off from the parking area the first ones there, which is something I strive for but never seem to actually accomplish.  We’d have the mountain mostly to ourselves through the day.  And my fleeting memories of the Hale Brook Trail ended up being rather inaccurate, as I had no memory of any water crossings, or even the fact that the trail followed a brook at all, which is rather silly considering the name.  I guess my mind was on other things back then.  After a stint of flat grading to get us into the woods, the trail started to ascend, and at least initially, there were some stone stairs built into the hillside to help us up.  Arya of course shot as far ahead as the extend-o-leash would allow, and then shot looks back at me as I took my time up them.  Honestly, at least going up, stairs can be even worse than a natural grade, but they didn’t last long and we turned towards the sound of running water. 

The crossings themselves were actually pretty dramatic, as a couple were over waterfalls, and the brook itself was high after recent rains.  Arya had no problem, of course, and dove right into the awaiting pools, though I had a spot of bother trying to find my footing several times.  There were also some downed trees that gave me trouble (and not like, fallen logs.  These were big-ass trees lifted up by the roots, either by Tropical Storm Irene or a later one.  Maybe Sandy), though I succeeded in keeping my feet mostly dry.

Book time from the trailhead was a little less than two hours up, which I found a little insulting, though as we trudged on, I did have to admit that the trail was mostly just, well, up.  This was another thing I’d remembered (and you can see for yourself on the map at the top, it really doesn’t have much to it), and thus I was surprised about an hour and 10 minutes in that we were confronted with a series of switchbacks.  I had a Gandalf-esque “I have no memory of this place” moment, really trying to wrack my brain to come up with something, but then eventually shrugged and kept going.  I figured we must be somewhere near the summit cone (or what might pass for a cone on a mountain like Hale), as while I didn’t remember this bit, I had a crystal clear memory of the last 100 yards or so before the summit, as I’d decided to sprint it when I finished.  We weren’t there yet.

The trees began their familiar switch to evergreens, with a surprising amount of mud and standing water (this was about when I realized I hadn’t packed a towel for Arya’s paws like I’d planned, so my beige passenger’s side seat was not going to stay that way).  I was trying to plot out when exactly we’d reach the summit when the trees thinned considerably, and we got some almost-views of the Presidentials flitting in and out of the clouds.  This was another thing I didn’t remember, and I started to really wonder how long this was going to take, if there were such gaps in my memory.  Then we hit the summit.

From the thin spots, the trail cut into the ground so that the trees and moss was at about calf-height, and it straightened out and we could see those last hundred yards to the summit.  Declining to sprint this time, Arya and I emerged into a clearing that was even more run-down than I remembered from 16 years ago, with a cairn in the center that was considerably more squat than it was in my mind.  Glancing at my watch, it was now 8:45, which was not only the earliest that I’d ever summited a mountain before,  but also pointing to the fact that we might be able to make it home in Vermont in time for lunch.

I mean, I’d packed lunch, but even moreso than on previous hikes, I wasn’t really in the mood for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before 9:00.  I got out the potato chips I’d grabbed the night before from the pantry, only to discover that what I thought was BBQ turned out to be Sea Salt and Vinegar, which really put me off the feed.  Arya wolfed down her lunch-turned breakfast with much gusto, though, and even helped herself to a facefull of chips when I wasn’t looking.  I tried in vain to get more than a 1x signal on my phone to let my wife know we’d already made it to the summit, and wandered around the clearing with Arya for a bit when she got restless.

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I found the spur for another trail that heads off to Zealand Falls (the cheekily named Lend-a-Hand Trail), peered down it for a bit, and then figured it was probably time to get going.  So at 9:00, we started back down.  Book time was 1 hour back to the car.

I know I don’t talk too much about the descents in these entries, though it was nice to see all of the people that had gotten a slightly later start than us as we passed them going down. I'm usually the one to pass people as they're coming down, though I may have been a little overzealous with our start time at the trailhead.  There was a nice, very large group that had started to drift apart a little bit, with some dogs for Arya to play with for a bit before they moved on.  This got a little complicated as we started crossing Hale Brook towards the bottom, as there weren't always great places to stand and wait for people to pass, but we made it.

We also had a rather weird interaction with a guy climbing up, as he said hi to Arya and thanked me for complying with the law that requires dogs to be on leashes whilst they're in the White Mountains.  Now, to be clear, I had Arya on a leash because her recall response is still poor, and she loves to run.  I have never heard of any kind of law that prohibits dogs from running free in New Hampshire, and every other dog I've ever hiked with has been free basically the whole time.  It's more for my peace of mind to have Arya attached to me (though I do long for the day that she's mellowed enough not to need the leash), but since I didn't want to blatantly correct the guy or disagree in the 20 seconds we had together, I smiled and nodded.  I thought maybe I'd missed some new law getting passed?  But I've not seen or heard one whit about it since, and I've seen a LOT of other dogs off-leash no problem.  Also, how would they go about enforcing that, anyway?  Just make sure your dog isn't an asshole, and be up front with other hikers if they are, and restrain them them then.  Easy-peasy (I will note, though, that Vermont requires leashes on dogs at the summits of mountains, and they do have park rangers up there to at least gently remind people.  I find it a little over-zealous but I would be mortified if my dog did something around another hiker they weren't comfortable with, so I digress.  Also, I've been in this parenthetical aside for waaaaaay too long).

And to continue a general trend, we murdered book time on the way down.  We were back to our car by 9-fucking-45 in the morning, and we were home just before noon.  Noon!  On a hike day!  Also I brushed up my very vague-sounding 4,000 footers application letter with some much-needed detail, so it was more evident that I'd actually climbed it.  Haven't submitted it yet, but I'm sure I'll get around to it one of these years.

Up next: Arya's first trip to the Northern Prezzies, where I'm a bad parent and she scares me half to death.

-M

Mount Jackson: June 4, 2016

Mountain: Mount Jackson
Elevation: 4,052 (New Hampshire's 38th Tallest, New England's 51st Tallest)
Route: Webster-Jackson Trail
Mileage: 1.6 miles from Mizpah Hut to Jackson Summit
Arya's Take: Why do have to stay on the planks?  The bog is so much better!


So our trip up Jackson begins with Arya and I at Mizpah Hut, and me tying her leash to a post in order to zip inside for TWO SECONDS to refill our water.  I didn't even need to use the restroom, so this really would be a surgical strike.

And after verifying that I wouldn't be needing a bunk, the friendly Croomembers got a confused look on their face when they heard the SQUEAKY DEATH YOWL of the dog they didn't know was even there, as Arya was convinced that I was abandoning her tied to that post (I may have commented on this before, but my dog has some breathtaking issues with separation anxiety.  It's kind of a problem that my wife and I need to work on).

After apologizing to the Croo and confirming that yes, that was my dog, I filled up our Nalgenes and headed back outside, to find Arya had looped herself around the signpost I'd tied her to several times, had somehow snagged one of her legs into the leash and snared it, and was furiously attempting to get free and run towards the hut.  I castigated her for making a scene, and when I reached her I realized that she had managed to complicate the simple knot I'd left her with, and the nylon extend-o-leash was seemingly fused together.

As I'd now come back, Arya was raring to go, though it took me like ten goddamn minutes to work the leash to a point where I could untie it.  Teeth and fingernails may have been involved.  After that, we set off up the Webster-Jackson Trail, which while only a mile and change to the top, would by book time take us around an hour.  After all, we had to gain back a sizeable amount of elevation.

We also helped direct a fellow hiker to Mizpah, as he was coming off of Jackson and was a little upset he hadn't found it yet.  I know the feeling well and was happy to let him know he was almost there, and asked about how Jackson was.  He said something about impending clouds, which made me worry about not getting much of a view when we were up there, and he headed off.

Actually it wasn't too bad.  The trail meandered up towards the summit cone, with a few helpful flat sections to give Arya and I a bit of a break, and to let us get a glimpse of how far we'd come, and how far we had to go (being able to see Mizpah during most of the ascent was handy).  This also gave me my second troublesome moment with Arya, as there is a stretch along the Webster-Jackson trail right before the last push to the top, where there is a bog.  It's a nice backcountry scene and very pretty, though it's deep enough that more wooden planks were set up to get us across.

Now Arya is usually a champ at these kinds of crossing (I used to call them Twix Bars as a kid), but they are mostly used on muddy sections where it's not exactly paramount that you stay on them or over streams where it's pretty obvious why you should use them.  On this bog, the ground at least looked solid enough for Arya to wonder why we weren't down on it, and at one juncture she decided to take the low road and leapt off.

I had flashes of the Swamp of Sadness from the Neverending Story, though thankfully one of the advantages of Arya's pack design is that it has a hoist handle on the top.  I flattened myself on the boards and was able to snatch her out of the muck, though her pack and her paws were a little worse for wear for the rest of the hike.  Lesson learned, I guess.

After the swamp adventure, we started to peak through the scrub ever so gradually, passing more hikers as the day wore on, as not everyone probably got as early a start as we did.  Arya did great over the rocks at treeline again (really, she's like a mountain goat).  I had to pause every now and then to rest my legs, as Jackson's summit really does get quite steep right at the end, being another thing that I'd forgotten about from when we'd turned that three-day trip into a two-day at summer camp.  Once we emerged at the summit, I was able to see what our passerby meant by incoming, as what had been nice and sunny through the morning on Pierce was starting to turn a not-quite-ominous-but-still-noteworthy grey, and the Northern Prezzies looked like they might get some rain after all.

We had the summit to ourselves for a few minutes and I was able to snap some pictures of Arya (one of which may or may not be the desktop background for my computer at work).  After a bit we were joined by another hiker ascending from the other side of the summit, who chatted with us for a bit on how the day had been and where we were headed.  It turns out that he was also peak-bagging, but having already completed the New Hampshire 48 (and not having a dog to bag with), he had settled on the idea of doing each of the 48 in every month.  That is, hike all 48 in the month of January, hike all of them in February, and so on.

Not that he was trying to hike 4 mountains in 30 days or anything; he was trying to get as many as he could for June, but he had a grid that he could mark off so that next June he knew where he'd left off.  A pretty clever idea, I'll grant him, but a little bit bonkers as well.  I know that as someone who finished the 48 and then basically stopped hiking for a decade that might come off as a bit callous, but it doesn't strike me that you'd be able to really enjoy them if you had to work so hard at making it a challenge for yourself.  At least, it would for me.

After splitting a Nature Valley granola bar with Arya, we packed up our stuff and headed back down towards Crawford Notch, aiming to get back down to the car around 12:30 or so.  I was met with the same steepness of the summit cone going down, though, and we had to take it easy to start off with.  This part of the Webster-Jackson trail around the summit is really, really steep at times, with large rock formations and boulders making easy going basically impossible.  I remembered coming up this way many times, both as a kid and as a camp counselor, and knew that it would be a while until Arya and I would be able to get some nice strides under us.  It also drops away from treeline rather suddenly, too, so we'd have to enjoy the views of the notch while we could.

Apart from that, though, I was reminded why we usually chose this route up Jackson when planning trips at camp.  Arya and I passed some nice hiker right as the steep stuff ended (I remarked on a Snowbird t shirt one of them was wearing, because My God what a nice ski area), and as we were approaching the middle of the day, more and more seemed to be starting up.  The rest of the trail was a nice grade through moderate scrub, eventually evening out into the pine forest and moss that typifies most of the White Mountains.  Arya did her thing of mostly staying on the trail, though as the trees started to thin out a bit (and turn back to deciduous ones) she did get herself tangled a couple of times, and snag her pack on a branch.  It exacerbated a previous tear along one of the seams, to the point where you could see her food and water even when the pack was zipped.  I tried to apply some duct tape to it, though it didn't really stick, and I gave up after about five minutes and vowed that I'd fix it later (spoiler alert: I did not).

Arya took the opportunity of an open pack to go swimming in the Flum Cascade Brook, ensuring that her remaining dog food was reduced to a brown mush that was super fun  to clean out at the end of the day.  I guess it was a testament to how much hiking we'd ended up doing that she uncharacteristically took every chance she could to go swimming.  Or, at least wade up to her chest.

We reached the spur for Elephant Head not a moment too soon, as I was getting both hungry and tired, and was ready to get in the car and take my boots off.  From there, we emerged onto US 302, right by Saco Lake (headwaters of the eponymous river that bends through New Hampshire to coastal Maine), and Arya went for another dip.  I also started to get a little nervous, as my original plan to walk along 302 to the Crawford Depot had not taken into account the idea that the parking lot our car was in was now full, and people had taken (as they often do around peak hiking hours) to parking along the side of the road.  So not only would we have to walk several hundred yards along a semi-busy stretch of road, but we wouldn't even really be afforded the breakdown lane.

But it wasn't anything that ended up being a problem.  After her swim, Arya calmed down, and I locked the extend-o-leash into its shortest length, and we prattled along.  We even had some company, as a family with small kids was heading from Elephant Head to the Depot too, so if drivers wouldn't stop for the 30-something with a dog, maybe they would for the 30-somethings with toddlers.  Useful, that.  There were also a fair number of people taking a cut-off trail around Saco Lake in the woods, and I briefly thought of doing so as well to avoid the road, though I saw several people running the trail, and figured we would just get in their way.  The only tenuous bit was waiting for a large enough gap in traffic both ways to cross 302 to the car (the AMC Highland Center near the Depot has really become a destination in its own right), and before long we were on our way back to Vermont, windows cracked to help with the smell, and the Hamilton Original Cast Recording blaring.

Up next, the ultimate anti-climax.

-M

Mount Pierce: June 4, 2016

Mountain: Mount Pierce
Elevation: 4,310 (New Hampshire's 27th Tallest, New England's 30th Tallest)
Route: Crawford Path
Mileage: 3.0 miles
Arya's Take: Was that it?

With the season underway after Mount Passaconaway, I wanted to set my sights for Arya and I on some bigger and better things.  After some contemplation (and using the fantastic build-a-trip tools offered by the online version of the White Mountain Guide) I decided on attempting Mounts Pierce and Jackson in one day.  First, they are some nice and very accessible peaks in the Southern Presidentials, and Crawford Notch is not too far from my house in Vermont to be beyond reason (just about two hours!).  If we planned right and were able to get out early enough, we might even be home at a reasonable hour.

I'm really quite familiar with Crawford Notch, having led many a summer camp trip on its various trails, and so it intrigued me to do a bit of intermediate car-stashing.  See, the most direct way up Pierce, the Crawford Path, has its trailhead only a couple hundred yards from the Crawford Depot, a stop on the Conway Scenic Railway.  The Crawford Depot, then, is only a couple hundred yards from a rock formation called Elephant Head and the start of the Webster-Jackson Trail, which as you would expect leads to the summit of Mount Jackson.  From other summer camp hikes, I knew that Pierce and Jackson are connected via the Webster Cliff Trail, and that I'd be able to stop off at the Mizpah Spring AMC Hut for my troubles.  So, after plotting the timing and making sure it'd all work (Arya being a nutjob along US Route 302 and getting hit by a car was my primary worry with the distances between my car and the trailheads), we headed off from home with an ETA in Crawford Notch of 6:30, and a start at the Crawford Path by quarter to 7.

And I really have to hand it to the AMC in general and to Abel and Ethan Allen Crawford in particular, who (as I've briefly mentioned previously) cut their trail in 1819, making it the oldest continuously used hiking trail in the United States.  The signage getting from one part of the notch to another is first rate (see, I could have made a top-notch pun there, but I didn't), and you always know how best to get from point A to point B.  And second, the Crawford Path is a fantastically well-thought out trail that not only gets you to the highest points in the Whites, but gets you there in style.  This actually is because it's not only been around for the better part of two centuries, but it was actually widened into a bridle path in the 1840s.  It's not terribly steep, it's nice and wide, and it really is the best way to do a Presidentials traverse (more on that in a bit).

The morning was clear and still, with nary even a breeze to speak of until we started gaining more elevation.  In fact, in a reversal of my usual bitching about being painfully aware of gaining our elevation, the Crawford Path meandered up the side of Mount Pierce, to the point that I was surprised when we started emerging from the scrub to the treeline.  

I couldn't really speak to my memory of Pierce either, as it has an unfortunate position as one of the "also-rans" of the Presidentials.  Don't get me wrong, it's a nice little hike, but it's situated between Mount Eisenhower which, as chronicled previously, is a prominent and easily accessible peak, and Mount Jackson which, as the southern-most and smallest Presidential, is a popular climb in and of itself.  Pierce is just kind of...there.  A mountain most people only climb in conjunction with Eisenhower or Jackson, or as part of that full traverse. And that's not really fair, I guess, since it's a fun climb on its own.


I mean, part of me feels like this is perfect for a mountain named after one of our most forgettable Presidents.  I bet if you asked the average person, they wouldn't even be able to tell you that Franklin Pierce was a president, let alone anything substantive about his administration.  My memory tends to lump him in with the other Antebellum one-termers who all tried their hardest not to get stuck with the looming Civil War hot potato.  You would think that as the only President who hailed from New Hampshire his home state would give him a more impressive mountain, but maybe they're just being realistic.  That, and with the names of the surrounding peaks, it's obvious that most of them were named by the mid-19th century, as if given the full list of names today, there's no WAY they would waste a Presidential Peak on Pierce.

There's even some dispute as to the name, actually, because when the original surveyors were naming the Presidentials, there weren't enough Presidents yet to name all the peaks.  That's why Mount Clay is named after a Speaker of the House, and Mount Eisenhower was actually Mount Pleasant (an apt name for a lovely hike) until the 1960s, when they honored Ike after his death.  In fact, it's still called Pleasant on the original 4,000 big board that my dad made when he was a teenager.  Along the same lines, Mount Pierce was called Mount Clinton initially, named after New York Governor DeWitt Clinton.  Of course, when we hiked Eisenhower and Pierce in 1993, I asked my dad why they renamed it since it was already named after a President, because I was an idiot.  To this day the jury is undecided as to what the official official name is, and a lot of people end up calling it "Pierce-Clinton" as a compromise.  But nuts to that, DeWitt Clinton wasn't a President, so to me it's Mount Pierce.

Once we got to treeline, Arya and I were able to see the rest of the Presidentials to our North, and we left the Crawford Path for a spur to the summit, where we'd catch the Webster Cliff Trail.  Clouds were starting to form that would impact some of our views for the rest of the day (though nothing more than that, thankfully), and we passed a nice family of hikers coming down from Pierce on our way up.  Once we got there and had found the USGS marker, I gave Arya a little bit to eat and had some GORP myself, and chatted with another group who were stretching their legs.  After a few minutes I discovered they were hiking through, and were attempting to bag all of the Presidentials in one day.

This struck me as a bit odd at first, as most Prezzie Traverses I'd heard of go North-to-South, getting most of the elevation gain out of the way quickly, and enjoying a long descent after Washington (this is how I'd always done it on multi-day hikes at summer camp, too).  That's when they let me know the best part:  They were actually one group of two, all friends who decided to do a Traverse, and they were racing against each other.

This is awesome.  First, not only for the sport of it, but it was clear that my temporary companions had every intention of going balls to the wall (hence the leg stretching), so that they could meet their friends more than halfway along the ridge, for bragging rights.  In addition to being kind of jealous, I thought back to the group of friends I'd done the Franks with, and started dividing us up into teams on a hypothetical Competitive Hike.  I thought maybe grouping the siblings together at first, but then thought that it'd be more fun if I my younger brother and I were on opposite teams, if we ever do something like this.  As they packed up and headed off to Eisenhower, I asked them how they solved the car-stashing problem (that had caused so many headaches for me on the Franks day).  They simply said that they cut the Gordian Knot on that one, and had not stashed cars.  One group went in one car, the next went in another, and when they meet on the trail and find out who's ahead, they'd swap car keys.  Genius, I tell you.

After they left Arya was beginning to get restless again, and we set out down the Webster Cliff Trail towards Mizpah Spring Hut.  Some other hikers hollered after me when we left, though, as they'd noticed I'd left my hiking pole behind (as I'd set it down when I attempted to have them take our picture.  Arya was less than cooperative).  I thanked them profusely, as it would have been pretty much murder on my knee to descend to the Hut without it, and we backtracked a bit to get back on course.

The descent was actually not to bad, all things considered, and we didn't lose quite as much elevation as I was fearing we would.  I have only a glimmer of a memory of getting to the Mizpah Hut, as when I'd done this particular part of the Prezzies as a teenager, the trip we were on from camp decided to stretch ourselves, and try and complete a planned three-day trip in two days.  We'd started up Adams and stayed at Crag Camp the first night, with the second planned day being from there, across the rest of the ridge to Mizpah, where we were supposed to camp at one of their tent platforms.  For reasons I'm not quite clear on, we were able to convince the counselor in charge (I was 15 and part of the oldest group of campers) that we should just keep on going up and over Jackson, getting back to the Crawford Depot and calling the camp to come pick us up.  We made this decision in the mid-afternoon, and ended up cooking dinner by Saco Lake waiting for the bus.

Now, let me say that the camp administrators were NOT PLEASED.  The trips they coordinated were planned precisely to make sure that they had buses and vans where they needed to be, and they hadn't expected us until the next day.  After what I can only imagine was a very heated discussion with our counselors, they drove us back to camp and made us sleep in tents on the other side of the lake it was on.  So, even though I *had* seen Mizpah before, I really only remember blowing by it on our quest to one-up the other campers on three day trips.

And heading down to the hut, Arya and I found that the trail got fairly steep, fairly fast.  I mean, it wasn't anything to the degree of the East Osceola chimney, but the trail ended up heading diagonally down the slope, and in several places the AMC even put down wooden planks to walk along, as the ground was too steep to comfortably walk on.

At any rate, we eventually hit the hut clearing, and I was able to fill up my canteens with some nice cold water, before digging into an early lunch and considering my options for scaling Jackson.  And while unfortunately the Mizpah Croo had not made fresh pancakes like their Greenleaf counterparts when we were doing the Franks, they were nice and friendly, if a little concerned that I was planning on spending the night, having arrived mid-morning.

Also, as the picture shows, I had to leave Arya outside, as the High Huts don't allow dogs (the bastards).  When I've been hiking with her at other huts in the past, I was always able to hand her off to a companion in order to use the restroom or get water, though I didn't have that luxury this time around.  So, not quite knowing what to do, I tied Arya's leash around a signpost, and headed inside.  This, as it turns out, was not a great idea on my part.

But I think I'll save that for the Jackson post!

-M

Mount Passaconaway: May 28, 2016

Mountain: Mount Passaconaway
Elevation: 4,043 (New Hampshire's 43rd Tallest, New England's 57th Tallest)
Route: Dicey's Mill Trail
Mileage: 9.2 miles
Arya's Take:  WATER.  GIVE ME WATER

With a really successful 2015 hiking season behind us, which saw Arya snag 10 whole peaks, I wanted to get 2016 off to a good start.  I was hoping to be able to make 10 mountains a sort-of yearly average for Arya, which would have her in striking distance of at least the New Hampshire 48 by the time she exited her hiking prime.  She was going to be turning 3 in 2016 after all, and has plenty of steam left.  That might end up being a little ambitious, but it manifested in me wanting to get the hiking season started even a little earlier than usual.

I may have mentioned this in previous posts so I apologize if this is repeated, but the way the summers at my family's cabin in New Hampshire generally go is thusly:  there's a big get together at the unofficial start of summer, Memorial Day, where a lot of people come up, we grill, swim, play tennis, hang out, and generally just enjoy the weather.  There's a similar event at the end of the summer on Labor Day, but these long weekends include not a whole lot going on outside of the Farm itself.  This year, I decided to change that and announced that I'd be hiking with Arya on that Saturday, if anyone wanted to join me.  I didn't expect many takers, mainly because it'd mean spending the majority of the day away from everyone else (kind of defeats the purpose of a large get together), and also because through a fluke in the forecast, it was going to be BALLS ASS HOT.  Like, in late May, you can expect it to be in the mid to high 70s in Northern New Hampshire, but I had declared that we were going to hike in 95 degree heat, with accompanying 85-90% humidity.  As one of my friends has gotten into the habit of saying, this would be suboptimal.

As it happens, I did get some volunteers to come along on our little sauna adventure, being my sister-in-law's younger brother and sister.  We've all been close friends for most of the 17 years my brother has been dating/married to their sister, and both of them had gotten the hiking bug thanks to my brother a couple years previously (namely, they'd done the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail and Mount Monroe).  I was grateful for the company, as Arya's not terribly talkative on our solo hikes and I have a tendency to get songs stuck in my head when I'm alone.  Actually, I ended up getting "Cabinet Battle #2" from Hamilton stuck in there any way going up Passaconaway, but that's neither here nor there.

The impending heat compounded the importance of my choice of mountain, but basically I chose Passaconaway for a couple of different reasons.  First, it is situated in the Sandwich Range along with Mount Whiteface, which puts it at the southern tip of the New Hampshire 4,000 footers, and only around 30 minutes from the Farm to its Trailhead.  Second, after I knew I wanted to do one or the other, I did some research on the Blueberry Ridge Trail up Whiteface, and discovered that not only was it ridiculously steep in places (not Arya's favorite), the ladders and steps that had been in place when my family had done Whiteface in 1994 had been recently removed.  I didn't want to be literally carrying my dog up nearly vertical sections of trail in 95 degree heat, so Whiteface was out.  I still don't know how best we'll tackle it with Arya, but that's a problem for another day.

I also agreed with my companions that it would be ideal for us to get out well before dawn, so we could avoid most of the mid-day heat, and so that we could come back to the Farm, immediately jump in the pool, and enjoy the afternoon with everyone who didn't want to come hiking.

So there we were, out by 5:30, and on the trail by 6:15 or so.  The Dicey's Mill train actually starts off at the end of a rural residential road, and leads hikers up past a really lovely pastoral farm and fields before entering the woods.  There was a gate as well, more to keep out vehicles than anything else, and we crossed it to head to the trees.  It did feel a bit odd basically walking through someone's back yard before the sun was up, but between the mist coming off the fields themselves and the complete lack of other hikers, it was a nice start to the day.

The trail itself was fine, moderate if relentless in its climb.  I'd actually forgotten my hiking boots at home before I headed to the Farm, which made me panic for a second, before I realized that I'd worn some low-top trail shoes to work that day, and could use them instead.  For the most part it didn't impact my day at all, with a few exceptions, but I'm a firm believer in high ankle support whilst hiking, so I was moderately nervous all day.  I have no scientific evidence to back that up at ALL, mind you, but it's what I've always been used to.

Arya did great, and starting early to avoid the heat turned out to be a great idea.  I had, of course, packed more than enough water for both of us, and had a water-purifier pump with me just in case, but she took advantage, at least early on, of how wet the trail was to grab drinks here and there.  I was actually quite surprised at the dampness, as it hadn't exactly been a bad winter and we didn't get much rain recently, but I suppose in the mountains it takes things a little longer to dry.  It did complicate our footing in places, but for the most part it wasn't an issue.

I ended up playing some word games with my brother- and sister-in-law (I've given up trying to figure out if that's what we actually are since we're not directly related by marriage btw.  It's just easier that way), and starting an argument about Voldemort's strategy in creating Horcruxes that lasted the rest of the weekend.  My position was that it was foolish of him to use such obvious and connected artifacts, when he could have easily made a grain of sand a Horcrux and then dropped it in the ocean.  See?  How could anyone have found that?  My in-laws argued that he was paranoid enough that he needed to know where they Horcruxes were so he could keep tabs on them, which would be impossible with the grain-of-sand strategy.  But I digress.

Passaconaway didn't hold many firm memories for me when I'd done it at summer camp 15+ years ago, and in hiking it again I began to understand why.  Apart from an early stream crossing, there isn't that much that sets it apart, to the point where the only really nice views are below the summit, and there isn't much to the summit at all.  We actually decided once we were there to head *back* to the outcropping for lunch, since at least we could see stuff there.  Or, well, breakfast, since it was 9:30.

Another wrinkle of starting the season so early also arose, as while it wasn't quite 95 degrees when we summitted, the black flies were out in FORCE.  If you're not familiar with these bastards, I commend you on your charmed life.  Basically, little tiny flies swarm through New England from around mid-May to mid-June every year (my dad always said black fly season was Mother's Day to Father's Day), biting and buzzing everywhere.  I actually don't get bitten very much, but they have a nasty habit of flying right into your eyes and nose, which is downright annoying.  We applied as much bug spray as we could, and I started to cast a worried eye to Arya, as she pointedly refused to drink any water out of the dish when we'd had breakfast.  This is of course as you'll remember rather typical for her, but as she did end up suffering some acute symptoms in the heat when we did the Franks, and it was much, MUCH hotter on Passaconaway, I didn't want things to get out of hand.  To that end, I figured getting down and out would be the best option, and we started our descent.

This is where a recurring problem of mine started to make itself known, mainly, my bum right knee.  Now I had my brace on and everything, and I'm not sure if it was the lack of ankle support or what (displayed in the picture above).  My leading theory, based on my experience on Mount Ellen in Vermont, I think that it's not actually the steep stuff that really spells disaster for my knee.  More, it's the steady and unrelenting moderate slope, that doesn't allow me any real rest time, but is just...constant.  I really started to feel it at around 10:45 when we were about halfway down, and began actively wishing to see the gate and Farmhouse.  It wasn't, you know, BAD, but I was in a fair amount of discomfort, coupled with the fact that even at the stream we passed, Arya had refused to drink any water.

At this point I just wanted to be done, and figured that Arya would be OK once we got her back to the Farm.  We emerged at the trailhead around 11:30 (a new best for me being off the mountain!) and arrived back at Memorial Day just in time for a hop in the pool and a grilled lunch.  And, from the reaction Arya had when given some water and some shade, even she has her limits on when she wants to stop hiking :)

-M

Mount Mansfield: October 24, 2015

Mountain: Mount Mansfield
Elevation: 4,393 (Vermont's Tallest, New England's 24th Tallest)
Route: Sunset Ridge Trail
Mileage: 6.2 miles

Arya's Take: What's this?  What's this?  There's white stuff on the ground!

I don't think it's quite fair to say that I had been "saving" Mount Mansfield, but as I drive past it twice a day on my way to work (just like Camel's Hump), it had been looming in my mind.  Plus, there were other mountains that were easier and slightly more accessible, so Arya and I did those first.

It worked out though, since I was finally able to put the house that my wife and I bought to good use, and hosted a full crew for the weekend to come hiking with us.  Many were repeat hikers with Arya and I on this little quest to bag her 4,000 footers, most recently from the day hiking the Franconias, and we even were able to have another dog along for the ride!  A lovely sweetheart of a Pitt Bull named Lilo, she and Arya have been friends for a while, and she's on her own peak-bagging quest.  As a matter of fact, I think as of this writing she might be closing in on Arya, if she hasn't already.

This also marked on of the latest ends of the hiking season I'd ever had, as after doing the Osceolas right before my wedding and Old Speck immediately after, I couldn't find a good weekend for everyone to all come up until we were pushing the end of October.  This didn't really change much for prep and safety more than an extra layer or two, though I was disappointed that the weekend in question ended up being well after peak foliage, so the vistas we got (while nice) were not quite what I had sold everyone on when I suggested coming up and hiking in Vermont in the fall.  I was also unsure of what to anticipate from the hike, as Mansfield is Vermont's tallest peak, and I'd only ever been on it in the winter, when I'd gone skiing at Stowe, which dominates one whole side of the ridge.

And that led to me having to make a decision, unsure of what the best route up would be.  The guidebooks I have (as I've lamented in the past, not particularly helpful if you're not on the Long Trail) suggested a couple of options, depending on how we wanted to approach the mountain.  From the Stowe base area and Smuggler's Notch, there were a couple of trails that were described as the most direct ascents, and that is admittedly usually what I'm looking for when I plot a hike.  However, as I delved further, I was put off slightly to discover that this would take us up the "Profanity Ridge Trail", and the more I thought about it, the more I figured that there had to be a good reason someone called the ridge and the trail that, and that it didn't bode well for us enjoying ourselves.  That, and some more reading described some steep sections that would force us (and most importantly, Arya) to use ladders, and that's not really super ideal when you're hiking with a dog.  So, to the other side of the ridge I went.

I settled on the Sunset Ridge Trail, which would almost double the total mileage we would do, but also didn't look too bad when I looked at the topographical map (side note:  I am TERRIBLE at reading topographical maps).  It would put us right between the Nose and the Chin, with some nice extended hiking above treeline, which is a downright rarity in the Green Mountains.  Oh, also, a note on naming the peaks on Mount Mansfield:  See, the mountain itself is actually a really long ridge, with multiple prominent peaks.  Some time ago a bored Vermonter decided that if you squint right, the whole ridge looks like a human face, so they're all named appropriately.  From south to north, there's the Forehead, the Nose, the Chin, and the Adam's Apple, with the Chin being the official summit at 4,393 feet.

Now I can't really see it, or at least, I don't think it's obvious enough to name all the peaks like that.  I guess my baseline for a mountain face is the Old Man of the Mountain in Franconia Notch (RIP), and so for me it has to be reallllllly obvious to warrant something like that.  But I digress.  We were coming from the southwest (hence, I think, the name Sunset Ridge), and it would get us right up behind the top of the Stowe gondola before we had to turn up to the chin.

We awoke to a fairly crisp 23 degree morning, with the furnace going to the surprise of some of our Boston-based guests.  Our trip to the base area for sunset ridge would take us through some rather unfamiliar territory for me, as I'd never been to Underhill, Vermont, or any of the other little hamlets we passed through on our way to the back side of the mountain.  I mean, I wasn't worried or anything; it's hard to get lost or miss the mountain when it's the biggest and most prominent thing in the goddamn state.  Once we pulled in, we met some friends who came over the Connecticut from New Hampshire, and set off up the ridge.

Which, for the first bit, was a little anticlimactic.  From the parking lot, we actually followed a paved road for the better part of a mile, before hooking into the woods.  This wasn't a bad warm up, actually, and it allowed us to all realize that the cold start to the day had caused us all to layer up way too much to start out, and we all shed various layers before we were too far along.  I'd started the day wearing track pants, for crying out loud!  You'd think I would have learned from my experiences on Old Speck, but there it is.
And from there, the hike was really quite wonderful.  The day turned out to be not only sunny and clear but in the mid-40s, which was refreshing while we were at least in the trees.  I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the GMC had done a fair amount of trail maintenance, with good drainage and both wooden and stone stairs when needed.  Arya had a blast with Lilo, though she did find out that it's hard to keep up with better-behaved dogs who are allowed off leash.  Maybe some day.

At around 10:00 we took a break for breakfast just as the ridge was moving above treeline, to take in the sights and survey the Champlain Valley. The trees were basically completely bare at that point, giving the whole view a weird stark and still feeling, though we were for the most part shielded from the wind by the other side of the mountain.  I tried to practice some sit-waits with Arya while my companions ate, though she has never been one to sit still on the trail, and was wholly unconvinced that we should stop.  After all, there was still trail to climb!


Once we got full above treeline, my spirits began to soar.  There looks to have been an early-season snowstorm on Mansfield a few days before, and while it had mostly melted in the sunshine, pockets of snow were coupled with a really neat ice effect.  The exposed rocks of the ridgeline were covered with it, though between the rocks and the ice had begun to melt, so we could see streams of water trickling down the slope under the ice.  Arya didn't really seem to care, though she did find out the hard way a couple of time that just because footing looks secure, doesn't mean that it is.

We ended up in our familiar position in the back of the group, as Lilo and her owner plowed ahead and most of the rest of the group settled in front of us.  This wasn't a bad thing in my mind, though, as we got to enjoy the ridge rising in front of us at our own pace.  It made me really remark at how little true alpine areas there are in Vermont, and I wanted to savor it while I had the chance.  Even the taller peaks like Camel's Hump and Killington don't really have much to speak of when it comes to hiking above treeline (Killington not at all and Camel's Hump only barely), and the only other instances I can think of involve ski areas.  Jay Peak, for instance, as a slight alpine area at the top of its tram, though as you can probably guess, Jay is 3,862 feet, so Arya and I haven't done it.  I've enjoyed the open view whilst I've been skiing there, but it's not a place that we'll probably find ourselves any time soon.

At any rate, we did eventually meet up with the Long Trail, which of course traverses all of Vermont's major peaks on its way to the Canadian Border.  From there, we took a sharp left and began to ascend the Chin, with me trying to make sure that Arya didn't travel too far off the beaten path, what with the polite but forceful signs to keep off the fragile alpine vegetation.  We caught up with the rest of the group at the summit, I found the USGS marker to officially summit the mountain, and then we scrambled to find and alcove out of the wind.  Without the protection of the ridge, we were hit with some pretty forceful gusts, to the point that I even put my winter hat jacket and track pants BACK ON, to keep warm over lunch.  I couldn't even remember the last time I'd gone hiking and actually USED my warm stuff on the summit.  Flume as a kid, maybe?

I grumbled to myself as I wolfed down my soggy peanut butter and banana sandwich, while my friends proved that they have thought much better about what they would want to have for lunch on the top of a frigid mountain.  One of them, who had proven resourceful with sausage and naan on our Franks trip, even produced a hiking thermos with tea he had brewed that morning, which was still piping hot.  I don't even *like* tea, and I though a swig of it really hit the spot.  Made me think that with all the over-planning I do that gets Arya and I on a summit wicked early, I should invest in one to bring some coffee along.  Maybe next year.

There were a surprising amount of people on top, too, maybe attempting like we did to enjoy the last few easy hiking weekends of the year.  We wrapped up lunch after about half an hour, and began our descent.  I even kept the track pants on the whole way down,  

Arya was more or less in constant motion on the way down, as she does, and only rankled slightly with the blaze orange bandana that I made her wear around her neck.  I usually force it on her in mid-September, and I even took the step of bringing along my blaze orange winter hat, just to be on the safe side.  Not that anyone would mistake her or me for a deer, but you never know. 

The trail improvements that were so nice to have on the ascent also gave us a fair amount of landmarks on the way down to estimate our progress (as did a spur trail with 2.0 miles to go), and by the time we hit the paved road at the finish line, we were all ready to get to the car.  I mean, I will say that Mansfield as a whole was a lot less taxing than I had initially anticipated, but six miles is six miles.  This was also nice as, since it was the latest that we'd been hiking all year, we had the setting sun to deal with.  Not quite as dire as a trip with my brothers up Owl's Head several years ago (where we were racing the shadows by the end of it), but enough to make me appreciate how much daylight you have to play with when you're hiking in the high summer.

We returned back home and had a nice pot of chili waiting for us courtesy of my wife, who enjoys being around everyone after a hike a little more than going on a hike herself.  All in all it was a wonderful weekend, and a great test-run for us to be able to host hiking and skiing weekends up in Vermont for our friends.  Of course, I was confronted with the fact that with Mansfield done (which was my first ascent as well!) Arya and I had completed all 5 of the Vermont 4,000 footers, and beginning with the 2016 season, would have to look increasingly further afield in order for her to keep pace.  But in all, not a bad way to cap the year.

-M