| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2004-09-12 23:57:15 UTC-0400 |
| Description |
Mt. Moosilauke Hike, Intro Circus 2004 Date: September 11, 2004 Location: Mt. Moosilauke via Gorge Brrok Trail Participants: Mike Whitson, Chris Glazner, Summer Austin, Chris Brooks, Jon Mapel, Audrey Lee, Thomas Gauthier, Marion Gauthier Author: Chris Glazner Trip Report After making our way to Camelot on Friday night, Mike Whitson announced a trip up Moosilauke for Saturday. He was joined by a strong crew of 7 other MITOCers who wanted to summit the White Mountain's "Gentle Giant." After a breakfast of cereal (?!?!), we were out of the cabin by 8:15 and on the trail by 9. We parked at the trailhead near Dartmouth's Moosilauke Ravine Lodge, where their Freshmen Orientation was in full swing (they were blasting music from the lodge). Given how beautiful it was, we were suprised that there weren't more people at the trail head (there were perhaps 8 cars when we arrived). After loading up, we took off up Gorge Brook Trail. We set a nice, quick pace for most of the hike up. The trail up was in very good condition, and very pleasant to hike on--there was very little scrambling, and the grades were nice and constant, with few steep pitches. Our first long pause was at a section in the trail that had lost many of its trees in what looked like a slide, affording us our first very nice view. Before long, we reached treeline. Mike gave a short talk on the fragile alpine environment, and we pressed forward to the gentle summit ahead. The alpine grass was a dark brown, with a few small plants with round, dark red berries. When we summitted, we found many, many people up there. Apparently, we just took an unpopular trail. Up top, we took off our packs and enjoyed the magnificent views of Franconia and Kinsman ridges to our northeast, where many of our friends were hiking. We ate a slightly early lunch, and shooed a few dogs that really liked Mike's smoked gouda. One interesting thing was that a couple of guys showed up carrying a two part flag pole and flag, which they began erecting. Apparently, a group of people decided to commemorate the 9/11 attacks by placing and flagpole and American flag on the summits of every 4,000 foot peak in New Hampshire. The wind was mild, so they had few problems raising it and keeping it flying. After about 30 minutes on the summit, we decided to head back. Since we had plenty of extra time, we opted to take a longer trail with more gentle grades down in order to save our knees. This, in hindsight, was a very bad idea. Asquam Ridge, in a word, sucks. While the first bit of it was interesting, it turned out to be a 6+ mile stream. It was very mudding, and slogging was the word of the day. The trail was so mild that we all secretly prayed for large descents, if only because we knew that would end the trail sooner. There were many parts that had either no descents or even included a few signifigant climbs. Towards the end, the trail reached the bottom of the ravine and just continued along on perfectly flat ground for quite some way. All and all, we decided this was not the way we would return in the future. While on Asquam, we passed several people on the way up, and each and every one of them was certain that we were from Dartmouth. At first this was funny, but by the time we reached the fourth one, we thought of getting shirts that say "not Dartmouth", or, more succinctly, DOC with a red line through it. See, just another reason that we need to hurry up and get new MITOC shirts. When we reached the trailhead parking lot, we found that it had swelled greatly, with cars parked up the side of the road for more than a 1/4 mile. We decided to try to get some ice cream at Chris and Summer's favorite shop in Plymouth, so we drove out to 93 and down to get there. Once at the shop, we found a neat cardboard sign that said "back at 5:30". This was at 3:45. Not good. Instead, we headed to Hannaford's to pick up some ice cream and supplies for hamburgers that night. We were the first of Saturday's trips to get back to the cabin, so we started preparing for dinner for everyone else. |