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