This past week Ethan and I went on a hiking trip together to the White Mountains in NH; I thought I would write a short blog post on it and put up some photos. Ethan's school year finishes up so much earlier than Lydia's that it has left him with a lot of slack time in June, so I decided that I would take some time off from work to go hiking with him. We left Wed Jun 12th in the morning-- nice weather in Lexington, but with somewhat scary forecasts about upcoming rainstorms, etc. The traditional pre-hike regular photograph:
...and the traditional pre-hike sumo wrestling pose:
The backpack I am wearing is new (gift from my dad), as are Ethan's hiking boots (gift from his mom). E's boots are now size 13, eek. We weighed our backpacks before the trip-- mine came in around 23-25 pounds, and Ethan's was around 15. Those numbers seem pretty comfy to me; with no tent, no stove, no sleeping bag you can have a nice light load.
Midway through the hike. This sort of gives you an idea of the conditions...
The trail itself was very wet, too-- there were quite a few sections where it felt as though we were hiking through a swamp that had a few rocks sticking out of it. Ethan is now a very speedy hiker, so I spent the whole of the hike trying to keep up with him.
We reached our destination (Zealand Falls Hut) a bit after four; it was about a five (ish) mile hike. The hut is perched a couple of hundred yards up from a small lake, and next to a river flowing down a rocky outcrop. When we got there the river was an absolute torrent, very fast and quite muddy (much fuller than usual because of the rain).
The crowd at the hut was the usual mix of young and old, although this time around they had a big group of middle schoolers (6th grader) from one of the local NH schools, so it was weighted a little more heavily towards the young. The AMC now has a program called "Moutain Classroom" (or something similar) that caters to school groups: given a dozen or so kids, and maybe a couple of school chaperones, the AMC provides a mountain guide, a program, and a stay in the huts.
As always with the huts we had an excellent dinner: Challah bread, soup, salad, "pulled" pork, rice, and corn. Afterwards we played some cards, then Ethan managed to get himself invited into a "hearts" game with some of the hut crew. I wrote in my journal and did some reading in my book ("Cloud Atlas" by Liam Callahan, which is turning out to be good).
The bunkroom at Zealand was really nice-- they had redone things to add little LED lights for each bunk, and the layout was very convenient. Better yet, the middle schoolers were all on the other side of the hut, so Ethan and I actually got quite a decent night's sleep in spite of the usual snoring and noises of people clambering in and out the bunks.
Jun 13: despite the less-than-perfect weather forecast, Thursday actually turned out to be quite a nice day: sunny, not too warm, nice and clear. I got up around 5:50 and put a bunch of our wet stuff outside to dry before breakfast.
After breakfast we got packed up and headed out. The trail (Twinway) goes up very steeply, crosses the river (which thankfully had a little less water in it this time), and then tops out at a superb overlook with views to the south and to the west of Mt Washington. Photo from the overlook:
... and here is a video from the same spot (the big mountain in the far left of the scene is actually Mt Washington):
We hiked along with a family from Cleveland that was also headed our way: mom + dad + three kids, the oldest just a little younger than Ethan. It was good to have some company on the trail. After the big climb up to the overlook, the trail mostly followed the ridge, but there were still a lot of ups and downs. The weather was good, not too cold or too warm, although there was a period where it seemed as though I was cold on the downhill sections and sweating like crazy on the uphills. We had lunch on South Twin Mountain (nice views), then made a big descent to get to the hut.
This is a photo of the trail-- gives you an idea as to just how little topsoil there is up on the ridge of the mountains-- it's basically a couple of inches of dirt, then bare rock.
Ethan at our mid-morning snack spot, near Mt Guyot.
I had a close encounter on the trail with a speckled grouse-- it let me get very close with my camera, so I am guessing that I'm not the first human it had run into. Interesting looking bird.
Lunch on South Twin mountain:
In spite of the distance involved (7+ miles) we arrived quite early at Galehead Hut, around 2:15 or so. In the afternoon we had a marathon card game session, featuring the "math game" (you are dealt 5 cards and you have to come up with a series of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division operations using your cards to arrive at a specific value), then "Oh Hell" (Ethan and I explained the rules), then "Hearts", and then a bunch of other weird games, including "E.R.S" (Egyptian Rat Slapping, which I had never heard of), "B.S." and so on. As usual the adults were exhausted long before the kids.
We had another nice dinner, then the kids had a big game of frisbee outdoors, then a complicated game of tag. There was another gang of school kids at Galehead, this one 7th and 8th grade boys. They were a good deal more noisy and rowdy than the last group, meaning that it took them a while to get settled down and stop making a racket around bedtime. The bunkroom was also a bit damp, so it wasn't quite as pleasant as the Zealand Falls experience. Still, it beats having to pitch a tent in the rain, and/or having to haul the thing around.
Another scary weather forecast that evening; (rain predicted for Friday), so a lot of the folks who were planning on making the next leg of the journey to the Greenleaf Hut were biting their nails.
Jul 14: we woke up not to showers but to nice weather after all-- big relief for everyone. After a solid breakfast, Ethan and I had a strategy session and decided that we would try to extend our hike a bit. The original plan had called for heading directly from the hut down the "Gale River" trail to the parking lot, then hopping on the 2:20 shuttle back to Highland Center. The Gale River segment was listed as about five miles on the map, which meant that if we left after breakfast we would wind up spending a lot of time sitting around in the parking lot. Instead we decided to do a side trip along the Garfield Ridge trail (also the trail to Greenleaf), up to the top of Mt Garfield, then down the Garfield trail and to a different trailhead, then connect up by hiking along one of the back roads for a couple of miles. Much more interesting hike, but also more distance (a bit over eleven miles). With the nice weather, though, it turned out wonderfully-- we got to hike alongside our friends from Cleveland (they were also headed to Mt Garfield) and we had wonderful views from the top. Alas, no pictures for the last day-- my camera battery had completely died at that point-- not sure what happened there.
We finished our loop by around 1:45 or so, then hung out for a while at the shuttle bus stop talking with a couple from Reno. They were interesting people -- both geologists in the gold mining industry. Hadn't been aware of this, but apparently gold mining is a big business in Nevada-- that state alone is the third biggest gold producer in the world. We also caught a glimpse of a black bear ambling along the road that we were on (maybe 100 yds off). He did't seem interested in getting any closer to us that than, which I suppose is good.
Ethan and I dozed on the shuttle bus back to Highland Center, then had an easy drive back to MA. We had fun listening to the Dan Brown book-on-tape that Paul and Frances gave me for my birthday; the stuff he writes is fairly cliche' at various points but it's still very entertaining.
It was a very nice trip -- Ethan is a good hiking companion, and we covered a lot of ground and saw some beautiful views. Also gave me plenty of opportunity to start thinking about where to hike next...
