Taking Flight

For the past year or more, Dragonfly and her cousin Hummingbird have been working on completing the Belknap grid. The Belknaps are a group of mountains in the 2000’ range in southern New Hampshire. Completing a grid means hiking every mountain in a particular range in every single month of the year, though it doesn’t need to be the same year. In other words, you must hike every Belknap in January, every Belknap in February, and so on. With twelve official Belknap peaks, that means hiking 144 peaks total, not counting repeats. There were a fair number of repeats because Dragonfly needed to complete some peaks that Hummingbird already had, and also the reverse. This hike on Mt Rowe was to be the big finisher. They had 143, and just needed Rowe in February to finish. Because of that, we decided to make it a big family hike. Parched and his wife (Dragonfly’s sister) came up from Connecticut, and I came from Maine. Thankfully, the day was beautiful. I brought a relatively light pack, much l...

When you see Mt Monroe in the title, you can generally be sure that it was an attempt at Washington where I had to take the consolation prize, and this was no exception. Still, despite not getting Washington, this one wound up being an interesting hike in its own right. It was certainly the hardest hike that I have done in a very long time, and it pushed me physically in ways that haven't happened for a while. Whenever you are looking for a weather forecast for the White Mountains, there are two major sources to check. The first is mountain-forecast.com , and the second is the Mount Washington Observatory . Mountain forecast will generally underrate the weather, while the Observatory will generally overrate the weather. In other words, Mountain forecast will almost always say that it's safe to hike, while if you followed the Observatory forecast, you would never hike. Thus, the only thing to do is to assume that the truth lies somewhere in the middle between the two forecasts. ...

This past week, Dragonfly and I went skiing. We had planned the trip for a while. I am a decent skier, and she is very good, so we try to get out once or twice a year if we can make it work. We went to Bretton Woods in New Hampshire, which is a ski resort that I enjoy because it has a gondola. Dragonfly and Hawk, ready to ski! Riding a gondola is a much better way to ride up the mountain than a ski lift. First off, you're not exposed to the wind, so it's warmer. Second, if you need to re-arrange your gear, you can't drop it down onto the mountain. It's also easier to talk to people when you're sitting across from them. Bretton Woods opens for skiing at 9 AM. Being the early bird that I am, I arrived around 8:15. It took a while to get lift tickets, because the guy in front of me in line had a complex order that took forever. Guest services had no one waiting, but I guess they can't do lift ticket sales. Eventually, I got the lift tickets. Bretton Woods had a new...

This is the account of my hike of Mt. Jackson. Wait a minute, that's not right. Let's start again. This is the account of my attempted hike of Mt. Jackson, that eventually became my hike of Mt. Roberts. Mt. Jackson, a four thousand footer in the Whites, was the mountain that I wanted to hike today. However, a snowstorm blew in during the morning and made the roads crappy. I probably could have gone, but I saw no reason to take chances. Thus, I sat tight and waited in my apartment until the snow stopped. That took a while. By the time the snow stopped, it was early afternoon, and Mt. Jackson was off the table. I needed a backup plan. I was going to go see Dragonfly anyway after I hiked, so a hike that would bring me closer to her would be best. I could have done something in the Belknaps, but I like the Ossipees better. Thus, I opted to go for Mt. Roberts, which would be about 2.6 miles in, and obviously the same back out, making for a hike of just over 5 miles. Of course, my p...