Adventure blog with a real job
It took a long time this winter, but finally the White Mountains lived up to their name.
On Friday 18 inches of snow fell in the White Mountains. It was cold during the storm and stayed that way through the weekend, which meant that the snow stayed dry and fluffy- a rare condition in the northeast!
Continue Reading →
After the fourth heat wave of the summer, it was a great relief when the weather broke, sending cool though still humid air over the White Mountains. It was finally a nice day for a hike!
Continue Reading →
I took this week as vacation, and even though I didn’t travel far I got off the grid for a few days of backpacking along the Appalachian Trail. My plan was to go solo, but as it turned out I had plenty of company: a multitude of mosquitos and black flies joined me for every step. Nonetheless it was a great trip— the terrain is beautiful, it was quiet, the weather was good enough, and I feel so accomplished for having done it!
Continue Reading →
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.
Continue Reading →
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.
Continue Reading →
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.
Continue Reading →
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.
Continue Reading →
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.
Continue Reading →