Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway Section 1 (4/3/21)

My apologies that there hasn't been a post in a while. It's mud season up here in northern New England, and the hiking conditions aren't great. It's hard to find solid trails that can be hiked on without causing environmental damage. The problem is that when the trails are muddy, hikers walk around the edge to avoid the mud. This creates more erosion, and the trails get even muddier, until eventually the trail is one big mud pit. That's why some places, such as Vermont (also known as Vermud), don't even allow hiking during mud season.

Thankfully, this past weekend Dragonfly and I were able to find a place to hike where mud wasn't a major issue - the Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway. I thru-hiked the Greenway last summer with my friend Red, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, so I thought it would be a great place for Dragonfly to earn a hiking patch and me to get more hiking in on a trail I enjoy.

We decided to do a car spot for this hike. We would drop my car off at the Dublin Trailhead by Mt. Monadnock, and then Dragonfly would drive both of us up to the village of Nelson, and we would hike south back to my car. Unfortunately, the road that led us to the Dublin Trailhead was closed, so we had to improvise and park at a small parking area along Route 101 instead. It was tight, but I maneuvered my car in, and then off we went to Nelson.

Nelson is a really quaint town, and one of the coolest features is that all the mailboxes for the town are all grouped together in the center of town, right near the library. I assume that makes life a lot easier for the mail carrier. We started south from Nelson, walking along the main road for maybe half a mile before we turned onto a small dirt road.

We stayed on the small dirt road for a while, seeing some great fields and a couple of small views before we entered into the woods for the first time. That was where we met our first other hikers, a couple walking with their dog in the opposite direction. Almost immediately after we passed them, I regretted forgetting to ask them where they were hiking from. I wanted to figure out if they had found a way to park near Monadnock that we had missed.

The first major feature of the day was the Childs Bog Dam. The last time I was there, the water was right up to the edge of the dam, but not flowing over. This time the water was flowing over, and it was quite a sight. Dragonfly and I both stopped to take pictures, and we realized that if you waited for the wind to blow, enough water would come over the dam to form a small rainbow.

The rainbow in the dam water.

Dragonfly was able to resist making any dam puns at this point in the hike (or more likely, she just forgot to), but that restraint would not last the entire hike.

After spending a few minutes enjoying the dam, we walked on towards Silver Lake. We didn't realize it at the time, but we had actually already passed Silver Lake earlier in the trip when we drove from Route 101 to Nelson. It was a pretty lake, and I went to take some pictures while Dragonfly did some yoga.

The view of Silver Lake.

After Silver Lake, we continued hiking south and we found an area with a great view of Monadnock. Unfortunately, the view was obscured by telephone poles, so it was hard to get a great picture. Up until this point, neither of us had really realized that Monadnock is actually a ridge rather than a solitary mountain, and this was despite the fact that we have both hiked it before. Supposedly Monadnock is the second most hiked mountain in the world after Mt. Fuji, but I don't think I believe that.

The trail did some weird things after that, going up a road that felt like we were hiking up someone's driveway (the MSG used to actually hike up someone's driveway, but they re-routed it). Pretty soon we came to a sign for Eliza Adams Gorge. We took a picture of the sign just in case Eliza Adams Gorge ended up being something memorable. It was a good call, because the gorge was definitely memorable.

The gorge was the area below another dam. There was a water release on the side that was letting a lot of water flow down into the gorge, but no water was flowing over the dam itself. Thankfully, a bridge had been built over the gorge, or the crossing would have been extremely dangerous. I took a live photo of the water flowing under the bridge. It wasn't until later in the evening, when we went back through the photos we had taken, that Dragonfly realized that I had been singing "Bridge Over Troubled Water" while I took the live photo. Of course, Dragonfly got to make her dam puns here, so I think we're even.

The Bridge Over Troubled Water (or Eliza Adams Gorge).

From the gorge, it was a short walk to the shelter where we stopped for lunch. If you want to know the kinds of things that hikers get excited about, both Dragonfly and I were excited that the shelter featured a new moldering privy. The lunch stop was nice. The temperature was perfect, especially in the sun, and the woods were peaceful. My lunch of champions included maple butter almonds and Cheez-Its.

The car was a short hike from the shelter, and when we got there we decided to add an extra three miles to our hike to eliminate some of the section we missed with where we ended up having to park. We passed by a beaver bog, and noticed that the beavers were still hard at work.

Beaver handiwork.

We ended up getting a bit lost in this section, as the blazes, which were so good on the rest of the trail, were lacking in this section. Dragonfly and I theorized that one of the trees with a blaze on it had fallen across the trail, and that explained both the lack of blazes and the difficulty of the trail in this area. Thankfully we eventually made it through, although not before I got my foot wet a couple times.

Once we reached our destination, we doubled back to the car. We were both a bit worn out, but it had been a good day, and I look forward to our next hike on the Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway. Always remember, you can't take flight until you spread your wings!