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Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
Creation Date | 2004-09-16 00:39:49 UTC-0400 |
Description | Trip Report: Mt. Monadnock Intro Winter Hike 01-11-03 MITOC Winter School 2003 Leaders: Deb Fraser, Rick Abbot Participants: Paul Ayers, Nate Goehring, William Hawkins, Felipe Jain, Thomas Kozhimannil, An Nguyen, Kush Parmer, Miriam Riner, Bilal Zia I met the group at 7:30 am in a campus parking lot to organize carpooling for the drive up. As we waited for everyone to arrive, Miriam announced that she had trouble adjusting a nut on one of her crampons. Nate, to the rescue, opened his trunk to reveal a huge tool box with an extensive wrench and socket set that he happens to carry with him. (Yes, I know, I need to put some tools in my car, was thinking maybe a screwdriver, a monkey-wrench, but damn, his collection would have impressed Tim Allen). We split into cars and headed north to meet our second trip leader, Rick, who lives in northern MA, at the Dunkin Donuts in Chelmsford. Like many MITOC trips, we had to throw a Dunkin Donuts stop in there somewhere. To save on gas and emissions, we condensed our carpooling even further. I parked my car at a nearby mall, and my carpool group went in Rick's jeep. We took Route 101 over to Peterborough, passing through the major areas of Nashua and Amherst, the way I'm most familiar with going to the mountain. However, Rick argued that he didn't think it was any faster than his usual back road route, which he would show me later. We arrived at Monadnock State Park near 10 am, registered at the store, and prepared for the hike. It was sunny with wind gusts around 15 mph. We headed up on the White Dot Trail, the most direct route to the summit. The trail starts off gentle and was completely packed. After the group had warmed up sufficiently, we stopped to take off some layers, before continuing. One group member, Felipe Jain, from southern California, was so excited to see the snow, he joyfully sprang ahead like a jack rabbit at the front of the group. He would hike ahead, then wait for us, or come back toward us, as he knew we wanted to keep the group together. At one point, I joked that we should put a harness and reigns on him so he could pull us up the mountain, but I doubt he would have held still long enough. After a time, we reached our first major incline. Being the most direct route, the White Dot Trail has 1800 ft elevation gain in a distance of just 2 miles to the summit. Thus, it has some pretty steep grades on it. I wanted the group to experience the steepness of the hill without aid, and knowing the snow is soft, I let them proceed upward in just their hiking boots. People started having trouble, slipping and sliding on the slope. Finally about halfway up this grade, they started asking if they could use crampons, and I agreed the group should stop there and put the crampons on. Boy, did they appreciate those crampons now. Everyone put on crampons, except for Felipe, who was agile enough to scale the slopes without them, and preferred not to bother with them. As the group continued up the slopes, a couple people had trouble getting the ancient MITOC-rented crampons with leather straps, the only ones that fit the insulated "mouse" boots that MITOC rents, to stay on their boots, which Rick patiently helped them with at the back of the group. Unfortunately after many years of wear, (20?), some of these crampons were in pretty bad shape, the leather straps were old and sometimes broken, or not long enough to fit properly on all the boots. I had spent a half hour in the MITOC office two days before, helping one participant, An, with crampons, testing and switching straps to get a pair long enough to fit her boots, and she has small feet! As a result, she had little trouble with her crampons on the trail, but some of the others were not quite so prepared. Not to mention, those crampons could use some work and new straps. Perhaps the situation can be improved for next year. As we continued hiking, Bilal had trouble with his crampons, and eventually took some duct tape to them. When the first bit of tape he used on the front wasn't successful in holding them on, I suggested he tape the straps to his boot all the way around his foot. That seemed to do the trick. Duct tape: the universal gear repair tool. Don't leave home without it. After awhile, we came to our first views of the valley, where small exposed tree limbs were coated in ice that looked like glass. We couldn't yet see the true summit, but the upper mountain before us showed the trees becoming sparser, and we continued on. When we thought we were close to breaking treeline and could feel the wind start to make us colder, we stopped to layer up. There was one more patch before the trees disappeared completely revealing Monadnock's open summit ahead of us. The terrain changed from completely snow-covered path, to snowy rocks and ice. Nearing the top, I turned to take pictures of some group members making their way up the open mountainside. Then, I turned back toward the group that was already gathered behind me, and encouraged them to keep going, as I was sure we were almost there. They informed me that we were there. Oh. Already. So we were, on the summit. I laughed at myself, feeling silly. I had hiked the mountain a couple weeks earlier when it was only ice and rock on top, so it looked very different, especially than now in foggy goggles. That, and I was generally used to doing longer hikes. When the rest arrived on the summit we took some group pictures. The sky was fairly gray with clouds, only a bit of sun peaking through from the southwest. Yet the views were still impressive from the top, especially looking down along the snowy ridgeline. At only 3165 ft, the snow cover on the open ridge made it look as though we were on some much higher summit in some distant land. Viewing this beauty after a relatively short hike, it is no wonder Monadnock is so popular, being the second most hiked mountain in the world, behind Mt. Fuji of Japan. Interesting enough, the splendor of the mountain's open summit is man-made. According to the AMC Southern NH Trail Guide, around the early 1800s, sheep farmers had set a series of forest fires to create pastures for the sheep to graze on the lower mountain, and then later to drive wolves away on the upper mountain which had already been devastated by fire and windstorms. The upper mountain fire got out of control and ended up burning down through the soil, leaving only bare rock behind for 500 ft at the top. Later that century, Monadnock began attracting visitors from afar, and was officially declared a New England attraction in 1850. It was graced by transcendental likes of Emerson and Thoreau, who praised it in their literature, and has since become a hiking mecca. Monadnock was the first mountain that I ever hiked, back when I was about 8 years old. Since then I have hiked it a great many times in every season of the year and on nearly all of the different trails. The mountain offers a great variety of terrain, scenery, and beauty on its many trails, and one never tires of the panoramic views from the top. I have stood on the summit on a crowded summer day with 50 or more other people, and on a breezy winter afternoon with just my hiking partner and myself. I've seen many types of hikers of all ages on the mountain, from snowshoers and trail runners, to a young man reading by himself, to whole families, toddlers to grandparents, hiking the mountain together. The mountain has something for everyone, and I enjoy bringing new hikers to experience the awesomeness of this place. We headed down along the ridge to find our decent route following the Pumpelly Trail to the Red Spot Trail. The Pumpelly trail is marked with cairns and pretty much follows the ridge, so it was not too hard to stay on route. When we reached the first major patch of trees, where we were well sheltered from the wind, we stopped for lunch. Everyone got to practice layering up for a longer break. I took a picture of Bilal's fully-doctored crampon binding, his whole foot wrapped in duct tape, to document it for the record. He had successfully scaled the summit with it. After eating, we continued our decent. The Red Spot trail branches off from the Pumpelly Trail at a wooden trail sign, hence the start of the trail was easy to locate. However, the trail is marked with red painted spots encircled with white paint on the rocks. They are easy to see in the summer, but being winter, many of the rocks were now covered in snow. The first few marks had been exposed from the snow by either the wind or a person. But we came to an area where we could not readily tell which way the trail went and needed to do some route-finding. So we sent some of our speedier hikers, like Felipe, Nate, and Will, ahead to scout out one possible direction. When that turned out to be a dead end, we headed back, and I showed Rick where the last red spot blaze had been. He set off in a different direction, and sure enough found where the real trail continued. Soon we were down into the trees far enough where it was easy to see where the trail continued. There were some footprints from some hikers before us, but the trail was not nearly as packed down as the White Dot Trail had been. Several of the guys had fun jumping and tumbling in the deep snow on the way down. The Red Spot Trail spills into the Cascade Link Trail which leads back to the White Dot Trail, and back to the park headquarters and parking lot. We reached the parking lot around 4 pm, when it was still light out. Peter, Kush, Felipe, and Thomas needed to head back to Boston right away, while the rest of us planned to get some food locally. Felipe, having thoroughly enjoyed the trip, said thank you, by giving me a great big hug. That was a first for me, to get a hug from one of my participants, and it made me feel good to have introduced him to winter hiking on Monadnock. The diner in Jaffery, that Nate was familiar with, turned out to be closed, soon to be taken over by new a "Grill" place. Thus we scouted on Route 202, just north of the town center, and found a place called "Athen's Pizza and Family Restaurant". We ordered at the counter, where we all got numbers to wait for our orders. The pizza and calzones turned out to be really good. Two thumbs up. However, Rick and Bilal ended up waiting extra long for their order, tortured while watching the rest of us with our food, and we can only guess because they both ordered something with french fries. Why fries take longer than pizza we don't know, but if you go there, be careful ordering them when you are really hungry. As we ate, we shared experiences, and Miriam told us enthralling tales of how she had camped out in tents for months in line for college basketball tickets during her senior year of college at Duke University. They have some system or tradition that the students had to stay in tents to keep in line for tickets to beat out the competition, as only so many student tickets were available. There were rules governing how many people could share a tent, and how many had to occupy the tent at any one time, etc, etc. It was interesting to hear about the whole culture that surrounded this scene. Certainly different from my small college experience. After dinner, we headed back to the mall in Chelmsford, where my car was waiting. Rick took us along his back road route so I could see if it was any faster than taking my familiar route. His route was nice in that it avoided major towns and didn't have many traffic lights. However, there was a quick turn that's apparently easy to miss, especially in the dark. And he almost did. He noticed it at the last second, and freaked me out when it was really too late, but still tried to pull the turn anyways. We ended up in the snow bank of the median in the middle of the road. It's a good thing Rick has a jeep, which is a little more robust than your average car. Nonetheless, we were stuck in the snow bank. An and Miriam, who had been dozing in the back seat were now awake. Some people in a passing car stopped on the road, and offered to help us. Rick along with two other guys tried to push the jeep out of the bank while I sat in the driver's seat to work the gas petal. The first couple attempts failed, and the tires just rotated in place in the snow. Then they tried using the car mats in front of the tires to get some traction, but the tires wouldn't move forward onto the mats. The snow was just too deep. Then Rick cleared a lot of snow out from in front of the jeep, making a small path for it to move forward toward the road. The guys pushed again, I hit the gas, and the jeep popped out onto the road. We thanked our helpers and headed on our way. Fortunately the rest of the trip home was rather uneventful. But we had a good day with a good group, and a bit of adventure. Mt. Monadnock, 3165 ft. Our route via White Dot, Pumpelly, Red Spot, and Cascade Link Trails: 4.6 miles round trip with 1800 ft elevation gain. View trip pictures at: http://www.wildmountain.net under "MITOC Trips" Deb |