Belknap Traverse (7/30/22)

 Yesterday's hike was a bit different. I was hiking with Hummingbird (Dragonfly's cousin) and Ben (Dragonfly's brother-in-law), but not Dragonfly herself. The hike all started with Hummingbird. She wanted to do a traverse of the Belknap Range, hitting all twelve peaks in one hike. That would be about nineteen miles and 5000' of elevation gain. Hummingbird knew that this was beyond Dragonfly's range, so she asked the two strongest hikers she knew, Ben and I, to join her.

Neither Hummingbird nor Ben had ever done a hike of this length before, so I felt it was important that we start really early. This was not only to give us enough time to finish the hike, but also to take advantage of the cooler morning before it got hot later in the day. We all agreed to meet at the Mt. Major parking lot at 6 AM. This was quite an obligation for Ben, as he would be driving from Connecticut, meaning he had to get up at like 2:30 AM. I had to get up at 4:45 AM to travel from Dragonfly's house, which was certainly early enough for me.

We all met at the parking lot as agreed, and then Hummingbird's boyfriend shuttled us to the Gunstock Ski Resort area, where we would start. We took a quick picture at the start, and then headed up the first peak, Mt. Rowe.

Unfortunately, we took a wrong turn right at the beginning. We had been planning to use the Belknap Range Trail, or BRT, as the base route for our hike, but we started on a different trail, Rowe's Revenge. Thus, we had a quick huddle about whether it was worth re-starting the hike, or whether we should just go for the peaks and forget the BRT. We opted for the latter, as we simply didn't think that we were going to have the time or energy to repeat anything more than what we absolutely had to.

Even in the relatively cool air, Rowe was tough. The first peak of the day is usually the toughest, as it's the one that gets you up to elevation, and thus involves the most climbing. We were all still in high spirits and we dealt with it without too much trouble, but I don't think anyone would have called it easy. Not too long before the summit, there was a nice viewpoint, and someone had used rocks to build a compass there, so that was kind of a cool find.

From Rowe, we headed over towards Gunstock on the BRT. Dragonfly and I had planned to do this route a few years ago, but darkness had precluded us from ever accomplishing that goal. Thus, this was a section of the Belknaps that I had never been on before. I should point out here that the three of us had varying levels of familiarity with the Belknaps. Hummingbird is close to red-lining them (hiking every single trail in the entire range), and so she is very familiar, and caught a lot of our mistakes over the course of the day. I have hiked all twelve peaks with Dragonfly, but it was a few years ago, and my memory of it wasn't great. Ben had done very little hiking in the Belknaps, but had familiarized himself with them via studying maps, and so he did a good job navigating over the course of the day.

The hike over to Gunstock was easy, and we didn't delay long there. Since Gunstock is a ski resort, we got into telling skiing stories for a while, and that helped to pass the time. The hike over to Belknap went very quickly, and before long, we were at the highest point in the entire range. Belknap has a fire tower on top, and Ben decided to climb it. Hummingbird and I decided not to waste energy, and we waited for him below. While there, we met a nice couple who were out hiking several peaks in the Belknaps, and they wished us good luck on our traverse.

From Belknap, we left the BRT behind and veered south towards the two peaks that were disconnected from the others, Piper and Whiteface. During this part of the hike, Ben discovered that there were wild blueberries growing all along the trail across Piper, and so he and I both indulged in them. They were delicious, even better than the ones I had on Pitcher Mountain a few years ago when I was hiking the Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway. Amusingly, Ben texted his daughter about the blueberries, and she responded by admonishing him about Leave No Trace principles.

There was a significant drop in elevation from Belknap down to Piper, and another one from Piper down to Whiteface, and I voiced concern that it wasn't going to be fun climbing back up those peaks. As we were leaving Whiteface, I came across an odd site. There was broken glass scattered everywhere near the trail. I wasn't sure how so much had gotten there, that high up in the mountains. Hummingbird speculated that someone might have brought a Jeep up and the back windshield had gotten blown out. It was at least as good as anything I could think of.

As I had guessed, the climb back up Piper was no fun. Thankfully, Hummingbird saved us the climb back up Belknap by taking us on the Piper-Round Pond Link trail. It was a nice trail, although a bit overgrown. It reminded me a little of some of the trails that Dragonfly and I had used when we were hiking Gulf Hagas in Maine.

If you've read my previous blogs, then you know that I require a constant flow of calories to keep my energy up while hiking. I was taking advantage of most every stop to pile food in to my mouth to feed my internal engine. However, as we got on the Link trail, I decided that lunch would be soon (we were planning to stop at Round Pond for lunch), so I stopped feeding the engine for a while. That was a mistake. My calories dropped off, and I was feeling a blood sugar crash coming on.

Meanwhile, Ben was having problems of his own. He drinks an absurd amount of water while hiking. In fact, I suggested the trail name Thirsty for him, although I don't know if he has accepted it yet or not. By the time we got near Round Pond, he was almost out of water, having drank almost all of his 3.5 liters. I had drank 2 liters, and Hummingbird less than 1.

We were all happy when we finally found Hummingbird's suggested lunch spot. I immediately sat down to eat. I had brought with me two sandwiches and two cheese sticks for lunch, and I consumed them quickly. My two companions likewise sat down to eat. After lunch, Ben and I set about refilling our water. We scooped water from the pond and filtered it with our Sawyer filters. Hummingbird still had plenty left, so after I filled up my water, I helped Ben replenish his.

During lunch, Ben also changed shoes from his boots to trail runners, with custom orthotics in them. This was his first time wearing trail runners, which is what Hummingbird and I were both hiking in. We also changed our hiking plan a bit, altering it in such a way as to make it much more manageable based on our current location. If we hadn't done that, the entire day would have been much more difficult, as we would have had to deal with the Rand and Quarry approaches twice. I am getting ahead of myself, though.

After lunch was finished, we hiked over to hit Mt. Mack, which was relatively close-by. We were less than five minutes away from the Pond when Ben had to change out the orthotics in his shoes because they weren't working. Once he did that, he seemed more comfortable.

Once Mack was summited, we headed north to hit Mt. Klem, which wasn't too bad. From there, we headed east towards Mt. Rand. It was somewhere in here that Ben uttered the quote of the day. Looking at a boulder field above us and off to our left, he said, "I'd really like to be here to see it when all those boulders come down in a rockslide." I replied, "Really? I'd like to be anywhere else." He did later clarify that he meant he would like to see it at a safe distance, but I still thought it was a funny moment.

Unfortunately, that was the only humor in that section, as the climb up Rand was no fun. I would say the section from Klem over to Quarry was the hardest part of the hike, with a lot of dicey boulder scrambling. If we were fresh, it wouldn't have been a big deal, but we were probably at about twelve or thirteen miles by that point. Once we summited Rand, we had the choice of taking the Ledges trail or the Bypass trail up Quarry. I suggested the Ledges trail, as it sounded like more fun. It was fun, but it was more tough climbing.

Around this time, we started to see weird inserts in some of the trees. Hummingbird thought they might be related to hunting, and neither Ben nor I had any idea what they were. I have shown a picture below in case you think you know what they are.

Another strange thing we kept seeing over the course of the day was animal scat made up mostly of blueberries. It seemed likely that the bears had been having a blueberry feast.

Once we finally summited Quarry, we headed south on the Marsh Crossing Trail towards Mt. Anna. We had nine peaks down, and I felt like we were in the home stretch. Anna wasn't too bad a climb, and we regrouped and checked our status on top of the mountain. Hummingbird reported mild knee soreness, but nothing worse than that. I was physically fine, but girding myself for the ever-present mental challenge of grinding out that last little bit of the hike. Ben, however, was starting to wear down. He was also having foot problems and had to switch back to his boots.

We had two peaks to go, Straightback and Major. On the way up Straightback, the bottom fell out. Ben's energy level crashed, and he needed to stop and rest. This was concerning, because it wasn't too long since our last rest. From here, it was clear that we would finish the hike, as we were past our last bailout point, but I wasn't sure how long it would take. During his rest, Ben ate some food, drank some water, and probably got his body back in synch a little bit. He was still a bit weak coming out of the rest, but from there he got stronger again, and he hiked fine for the entire rest of the trip. Personally, I think he was just fighting a blood sugar issue. It can be difficult to realize just how many calories you need for such a long hike if you haven't done anything like it before.

Once Ben was back in motion, we headed towards Straightback. Unfortunately, our way was barred by an unexpected visitor, a porcupine. I volunteered to shoo him away, and I was successful at getting him off the trail. He went uphill to the right. This was great, because the trail went uphill to the left. Unfortunately, the trail then turned to the right, and we had to move quickly and carefully past his hiding spot under a tree.

After passing the porcupine test, we easily summited Straightback and headed over to Major. Major was the peak that we all knew the best, and the most popular peak in the Belknap Range. So popular, in fact, that cars have to park out on the highway because the parking lot fills up so fast, and those cars can stretch for a full mile down the highway. It's not a fun thing to have to hike back to your car after you finish a hike.

Anyway, we made it up Major with little difficulty. On the summit, we found a guy just hanging out and he was nice enough to take our picture for us. We were a lot sweatier at this point than we were in the beginning of hike picture above.

I suggested going down the trail we normally take down Major, the yellow trail, but Hummingbird thought we should take the blue trail, as it would be faster even if it was steeper. We all wanted to get down as quick as possible, so we went with Hummingbird's suggestion. I was amazed at how quickly we got back to the trail junction, although the path out was significantly longer than I remembered it being. Nonetheless, we were all very happy when we made it back to the cars.

As a whole, I think Hummingbird and Ben had a pretty remarkable accomplishment. This was the longest hike that either of them had done, and aside from Ben's one blood sugar crash, they both made it through without any significant issues. The hike came to 19.2 miles, which is not a short hike. Even for me, I was happy with my performance on this hike. I have obviously hiked significantly longer distances before, but I haven't hiked in a while (biking has become my recent passion), and it was good to see that I am still in shape. The three of us talked about going back to hike the BRT, given that we missed it this time, and I look forward to doing that hike with them. Until then, always remember, you can't take flight until you spread your wings.