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

Old Speck: October 1, 2015

Mountain: Old Speck
Elevation: 4,170 (Maine's 5th Tallest, New England's 40th Tallest)
Route: Old Speck Trail
Mileage: 3.8 miles
Arya's Take: Booooooored Now


The reality of me hiking the New England 4,000 footers with my dog has usually been that I'm seeing a lot of old familiar places.  As I've mentioned in the past, I finished the 48 new Hampshire 4,000 footers when I was 15, so there isn't a whole lot of new ground for me to cover, so to speak.  Now, having moved to Vermont, I was able to do this a couple times, mainly with Arya's first-ever 4,000 footer, Killington.  But even then, I'd been hiking in Vermont before, and even though I hadn't done Killington, it's not like I was new to hiking in the Green Mountains.

This changed when we did Old Speck.  In an interesting quirk, Old Speck is actually the eastern-most peak in the White Mountains, technically belonging to the range that you probably associate most with New Hampshire.  It's right over the border in Grafton Notch, and so it was a natural starting point.  As a stroke of luck as well, I'd decided to take the better part of two weeks off after my wife and I got married (which I would strongly encourage of anyone getting hitched; we did NOTHING for two days after the wedding itself and it was incredibly restful), so I plotted to head up on October 1, figuring that it would still be reasonably warm up there.  Besides, I really had no idea what to expect from Maine, given that if I'm in it I'm more often than not down in Portland or Kennebunkport.  So I was excited.

Now, before I get into the actual hike, let me tell you that I'm glad I did this on vacation and not over a normal weekend, because it turns out, getting to this part of Maine from central Vermont is freaking impossible.  I headed out at the break of dawn (though it's October, so that was at like 7:00), and it took two hours and 45 minutes to just MAKE the trailhead.  Granted it was a pretty drive, as I got to head through far-northern New Hampshire and past the Presidentials on my way, but I really had no concept for what to expect once I got into Maine.  See, Vermont and New Hampshire are, much like most New England states, tiny.  I can be in 5 states and 1 Canadian province within a 3 hour drive of my house.  Maine, though, is the closest we have to a normal-sized state, and even when we crossed the border, we had many miles to go.  I'd actually asked my wife if I could borrow her CR-V to drive there instead of my Prius, since even though the gas mileage would be worse, her headlights are much better than mine, and I honestly had no idea when Arya and I would be making the trip back.

So we eventually puttered into the parking lot for Old Speck around 10:00, which was I supposed a little on the late side, and I jumped out of my wife's car to discover that it was FUCKING FREEZING.  Now I'm never one to start a hike layered up, since I sweat pretty much immediately and have to pause 10 minutes in to pack everything up, but when I saw that it was 37 degrees outside, I knew even I couldn't start in shorts and a tee shirt.  Arya was, of course, fine, as well as annoyed that I was taking so long to get ready.  And, reader, I'll have you know that I didn't devolve into a sweaty mess for 20 minutes.

Apart from that, though, it was a lovely New England fall day.  There was a fair amount of valley fog we had to contend with to start, which obscured some of our views of the notch when we'd gotten high enough (in the picture above, which was right by a cut-off rather weirdly named "The Eyebrow".  The leaves hadn't started to change really at all in Vermont or Massachusetts, but it was like heading 6 weeks into the future up in Maine.  This was especially odd to me, since I had felt like summer had persisted far further thanks to our wedding (the weather we had on the day itself felt more like July than September), and now the world was playing catch-up.

Arya and I followed a stream up past the Eyebrow, trying to get beyond the fog.  I was able to use my Maine Mountain Guide for the first time, and was struck at how much longer it seemed to be taking to get to the top of the ridge.  This really wouldn't surprise you if you looked at any topographical map worth its salt, but I had anticipated really being able to get on top prior to lunch time, and that looked less and less like it was going to happen.

Not that it wasn't a pleasant hike, of course; there was a peculiar flower/moss hybrid plant that kept following us as we went up the trail, but with the fog obscuring any views that we might have, once we left the path of the stream, there wasn't a whole lot to keep my interest.  I got a particularly annoying song stuck in my head, and with Arya charging ahead, there wasn't a whole lot I could do about it.

The other thing that really started to annoy me was a series of...well, they weren't quite false peaks, but they certainly made me feel like they were in my way.  After each one, I was convinced that we would start ascending Old Speck proper any minute now, and my hopes kept getting dashed.  I did start to feel a glimmer of hope when the clouds began to break enough for use to start getting some views, as well as using my Dad's old trick of watching the size and composition of the trees in the surrounding forest to gauge how high we were.  Eventually we reached the junction with the Mahoosuc Trail, which is where we left the AT and when I knew that we only had 0.3 miles to go till the summit.

And unfortunately, once we got there, it turned out to be a bit of a letdown.  The summit itself was just a dirt clearing surrounded by trees.  I mean, this is Maine's 5th tallest mountain, which is farther north and significantly taller than mountains like Camel's Hump or Abraham, and yet they had wonderful views in all directions.  Of course, there was a fire tower on top (seemingly the last one standing in the Whites; the Guide makes mention of plenty of former towers on summits),  but the ladder was vertical and Arya wasn't really feeling it.

The clouds continued their valiant attempts to break, though without the tower there wasn't much good it was going to do me, so I settled in for lunch.  Arya didn't really want anything to do with her lunch at first, patiently waiting me out to see if I would grow bored with mine, and I read up in the Maine Mountain Guide about the surrounding area and why, exactly, Old Speck is a holdover in the Whites.

I also looked at the maps that came with the guide for all regions of Maine, and realized that Old Speck might be our only Down East 4,000 footer for some time.  Most of the rest are located even farther north along the New Hampshire border (and look like a great series of hikes), but GODDAMN it would take all day to just get up there to do the likes of the Bigelows or Saddleback.  I've since resolved to make a weekend camping trip out of them, but Arya wasn't read for overnights yet.  And don't get me started on Katahdin.

I learned from my in a text over lunch that October 1 is National Black Dog Day (because every day seems to now be National or International *Something* Day), so with that in mind I gave Arya the last little bite of peanut butter and bread from my sandwich, and we headed back down.  The subpeaks were still annoying, and it seemed to take forever to get back to the Eyebrow.  I guess that's the blessing and curse of having a landmark or junction to look for right by the beginning of the trail, since on the way up you basically know "We haven't gone nearly that far yet", and on the way down you spend a looooooong time muttering "Where the hell is the Eyebrow"?  This wasn't helped by me knowing exactly how long it was going to take us to get home once we were done with the hiking bit, and how tired I would be when we did get home.

Eventually, though we were overlooking the Notch again, this time bathed in the fading autumn sunshine, and by the time we got back to the car, it was completely clear.  Arya did her customary "zonk out for the entire ride home" bit, and I was treated to another spectacular view as we passed through Gorham, NH and the Prezzies again, as the peaks of Mts. Madison and Adams were dappled in the twilight even as dusk came to the valley floor.  We did end up needing the CR-V's headlights on the way home, though only for the home stretch, and I felt good out our first foray into Maine hiking, even if it would be some time before we would be able to try it out again.  And, as mentioned previously, an October 1 hike would usually be seen by me as a nice cap to the season before swapping my hiking boots and pack fro skis and poles, but we still did have one last gasp, even as Autumn began to cede to Winter over the New England High Peaks.

Next up: Completing the set in VT!

-M

Osceola East Peak: September 5, 2015

Mountain: Osceola East Peak
Elevation: 4,156 (New Hampshire's 34th Tallest, New England's 41st Tallest)
Route: Mount Osceola Trail
Mileage: 1.0 mile
Arya's Take: My Dad is STILL Waaaaaaay Overprotective

So with it not even being noon, Arya, our friend and I set off from the top of Mount Osceola to its East Peak, which lingered around a mile to our, well, east.  Having properly psyched myself out about how hard the trip was going to be, we descended off to the left of the old fire tower, and back into the woods.  We had been able to see our objective while we were resting on the summit, which I suppose is nice, given that it didn't really seem too far away.  Arya didn't really want to depart from the summit quite when we were ready to, but after we got going, she was all in.

As with most of the mountains that we've been climbing as Arya's worked on the list, I racked my brain to try and remember my impressions of East Osceola from when I did it with my Dad (and our black lab, Max) all those years ago.  Honestly, not a lot was coming up, which made me a bit nervous, as the White Mountain Guide made special mention of a chimney section that seemed like it would give us a hard time.  Well, that it would give Arya a bad time.  Honestly the main thing I remember from the hike up with my Dad was peering down the back side of East Osceola and him mentioning that Greely Pond was down there, and that it was a bitch and a half to climb up East Osceola first.  So we went onwards, a little blind.

And I think mainly because I has psyched myself out about it, I kept anticipating when the chimney would be.  The whole mountain turned out to be quite steep, which I should have probably guessed considering that East Osceola drops the required 200 feet of prominence from the main peak over only half a mile.  At any rate, the trail did drop off almost immediately, though each time I was convinced that we had just arrived at (or more frequently, we had just passed) the chimney, there was another section of steep rocks ahead.  We had to wait every now and then for a hiker ascending to pass us, yielding what we could to someone who was having a much worse go of things than we were.  But, eventually, we got to the chimney itself.

And almost by accident!  Arya charged ahead on the extendo-leash, as she usually does, and was out of sight briefly while I was catching up.  I had half a thought that she would careen over the edge, but I found her paused at the top, being a bit skeptical as to how to proceed.

Also rather thankfully, she ended up deciding that the best route was off to the left, where there was a slope that, while steep, wasn't straight down.  Our friend decided to try her luck at the chimney itself, and we congregated with some other hikers at the bottom, all waiting for various friends and family members to catch up.  And from there, it was a rather nondescript trek to the summit, through a little flat bit at the col of the ridge, and then a moderate but not too strenuous ascent.  We ended up arriving basically at noon, and took the opportunity to have some lunch.  Arya snarfed hers down immediately (SOP), and then amused herself by going after some mountain flies.  They have a habit of staying absolutely still until disturbed, and then they swarm up and buzz around in one huge mass.  Arya had a blast.

I was also able to show our friend the joys of the Lindblad family lunch packing technique, ie, a squished blob in a plastic bag that at one point had been a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.  There was some jelly making a purple stain on one side of the bread, and on the whole it was still edible, but we never were a family with much thought into where our food needs to get stashed.  My Dad always said that it looks the same in the end anyway.

From the summit of Osceola East (being that it's completely wooded we didn't really spend much time there except to eat), we made our way back to the chimney, and Arya and I decided that the easier route would still be the side trail to the right, and our friend took the chimney again to see what it'd be like on the ascent.  After waiting worriedly at the top for her, Arya was satisfied and we were back on the summit of Osceola in no time.  It was crowded with a lunch rush, and it was difficult to find a spot for us to take a snack at first.  Arya was also a little sick of being in the sun after a few minutes, and took the chance to crash under one of the old concrete supports that was left over from the fire tower that used to be on the summit.  I chatted with some nice people from Virginia who were up for Labor Day, and when they found out I was from Vermont they of course immediately asked me about this Bernie Sanders guy and what we all thought of him (this has, over the intervening months, only become more and more common when people hear where I live).

Apart from that, the rest of the hike down was, I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear, rather uneventful.  It was nice to catch up with our friend, and to see what she thought of the upcoming hockey season, and what she thought of her Osprey framepack, as I was in the market for one and have *loved* the 18 liter daypack I have from them.  She also asked how I and me then-fiancee were doing, as September 5th was a mere 10 days before our wedding (everything went great!).

From there, we headed our separate ways and Arya and I went back to the Farm, to find everyone lounging around the pool and enjoying their Labor Day.  And most years, a September hike might be the last one of the year, but this season turned out to be a little different.  After a couple weeks off (wedding, after all), Arya and I put our sights to a place neither of us had ever hiked before: Maine.

-M

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