Mt. Monadnock Intro Winter Hike 01-11-03

Summary
OwnerMITOC Gallery Administrator
Creation Date2004-09-16 00:39:49 UTC-0400
DescriptionTrip 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