| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2005-08-11 13:07:25 UTC-0400 |
| Description | Participants: Grigory Kolesov-Grisha, Mike Mangini, Atanas Pavlov-Nasko
Date: July 29-31 We discussed this trip on Wednesday at lunch. By Thursday night it was pretty clear that only Grisha and I are interested in hiking this weekend, so I hesitated. But then Grisha said he's going hiking this weekend no matter what, so I hesitated no more. Next day Mike also joined us so we made a nice little group. We left on Friday night and arrived at Intervale around 11pm. The weather was so nice, and there were so many stars, that we decided we will camp on the deck of the old cabin and won't bother to put up a tent. The night was short and at 6:30 next morning both of my companions were up and full of enthusiasm. Grisha was walking nervously around, while I was packing, impatient to get his morning coffee from Dunkin Donuts. We had breakfast, drove up Rt. 302, Grisha got his coffee, and at 9:30 we started our ascend towards Mt. Crawford along Davis path. We reached the summit just in time for lunch, during which we enjoyed the pretty view and the abundance of blueberries. There were so many of them, that it took Mike and Grisha a good half an hour of persuasion, before I reluctantly put an end to my blueberry feast and went along the trail. There were some steep ascends and not many views on the rest the way to Mt. Isolation. There were no streams or ponds on the way and we saw water with suspicious quality just one or two times on the way. Towards the late afternoon we started to get exhausted, and the hike started to suspiciously resemble the one from my previous backpacking trip. (see "A Day of Joy, a Day of Misery"). We passed Mount Resolution and Stairs Mountain, but did not even bother to climb to the summit, and just kept on walking along the trail. We finally reached Mt. Isolation in the late afternoon, and were rewarded with an awesome view towards Mount Washington and the southwest part of the presidential range. We started thinking about a place to set up our camp. Although we were above 4000ft, the forest was rather thick, so there were no good places to put up the tent. A guy informed us that the camping place labelled on the map is overcrowded and he's looking for another one. Nevertheless we headed there and reached it just before dark. Luckily there was enough space for our tent. Mount Isolation turned out not to be so isolated :). After a satisfying dinner (which due to my inexperience in cooking included rice paste), we drunk happily the sixpack that Grisha brought in his backpack, and figured out that beer cans do burn. Next day I foolishly insisted we continue to Lake of the Clouds and then come back along the part of the Presidential range, which is almost parallel to the Mt. Isolation ridge. That meant a full day of intense walking with heavy backpacks, which seems like Mike realized long before I did. He decided to go down and meet us on our way back. Grisha, who knows no pain, agreed to do the hike and we set off. After an hour of walk we climbed above treeline. The incredible views during the next few hours, in which I had constantly to try to catch up with Grisha, were worth the pain. After we passed the AMC hut (as crowded as ever), we climbed Mt. Monroe, Mt. Franklin, Mt. Eisenhower, and (I believe) Mt. Pierce, then started descending towards the Dry River Valley, to meet Mike. The trail we took (Clinton Trail), obviously hadn't seen maintenance for at least 10 years. We were bushwacking most of the time; there were fallen trees and marshes everywhere. Grisha was incredibly happy about it (it invoked some nostalgic feelings, reminded me of my daily route to college in Siberia - Grisha ;), I kept on trying not to be left behind. Finally we made it to the river, met Mike, had third lunch, and walked the last 6 miles to the car, while attempting to translate jokes from various languages into English. |