Adventure blog with a real job
After a few cold nights and a prolonged dry spell, fall foliage has arrived seemingly overnight. Even as I write this, enterprising neighborhood children are selling cider and doughnuts from a roadside stand. I have a hazy, juicy IPA in one hand and a new pair of hiking boots on my feet. This is Peak New England, right now.
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The history of the White Mountain National Forest is intimately linked with the logging industry that dominated the region from the mid nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It’s easy to spot the legacy of the logging companies in railroad grades and road cuts that cross the forest, and in the artifacts left behind in the woods. Knowing that most of the forest I see is second or third growth, I always wonder what the mature, old growth forest would look like. This weekend’s mission was to find out.
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I’ve written before about my love of ridgeline hikes, so it should come as no surprise that I love Franconia Ridge trail. Unfortunately this is a trail in danger of being loved to death. It’s one of the more spectacular sections of the AT, part of the increasingly popular pemi loop, and frequently featured on lists of the best hiking trails in the state/nation/world. In good weather and on weekends I avoid it, because the last thing I want when I venture into the mountains is to join a conga line of other hikers, but on a weekday with clouds flowing through Franconia notch, I took my chance.
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While my favorite trail feature is a ridge line with dramatic valleys to either side, open ledges or exposed slab come in a close second. My beloved Welch-Dickey loop crosses two summits with spectacular views, but what makes it special to me is that so much of the hike is over bare granite slabs- where I can geek out over the exposed geology of the mountain.
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