Peak New England
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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Old growth
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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Famous for a reason
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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My favorite short hike
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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Why I’m a bad outdoor blogger
This weekend found me backpacking in the Carter-Moriah range in the northern part of the White Mountain National Forest, following the Appalachian Trail most of the way.
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Desolation and other trails
With yesterday’s hike up and over Mt. Carrigain, I’m more than halfway through the list of New Hampshire 4000 footers. Instead of doing the more common 10-mile out and back, we opted for the longer loop which took us down from the summit into the Pemi Wilderness in the area that early surveyors and loggers called Desolation.
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Hitting the bar at golden hour
Summer weather and state guidelines for safe reopening under Covid have brought my trapeze practice back to full height outdoors. There are still a few limitations— even with masks there’s no good way to give a safe spot still keeping social distance, but it brings me joy to stretch out under the open sky.
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Up is (almost) always the right answer
Any good alpinist will tell you to expect the the air temperature to drop by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit for every 1,000 feet elevation gained, so what would make more sense on a hot July weekend than heading uphill?
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Now for something completely different
For some time I’ve been meaning to commit to video the definitive version of the parlor trapeze routine I developed with my teacher during quarantine. Here it is. You may need to turn the volume up all the way to hear the music well. Yes, I’m a monster for taking video in portrait orientation.
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Backpacking in the Pemi wilderness
The federal holiday for US Independence Day was this Friday, and since long weekends in the summer are a precious commodity, we took to the trails for a few days of backpacking in Pemigewasset Wilderness.
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