Mt Rowe (2/22/25)

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 less than what I would normally bring in winter, because I know Rowe is an easy hike. We started from the Gunstock parking lot. Parched and I wore snowshoes while everyone else was in spikes.

When we got going, Parched and I quickly ran out ahead. He was struggling a bit with some minor dizziness, but he said he was fine and it wasn’t a big deal, so I didn’t make an issue out of it. We chatted about his AMC hikes, and I told the story of my January hike to Zealand and my recent hike to Monroe. We kept getting out in front, so when we did, we would stop and wait for the other three to catch up.

We came to a fork in the path, and Parched and I asked which way we should go. Hummingbird said right, so we went right. Then Dragonfly corrected and said we need to go left, so we backtracked and went left instead.

Towards the summit, Parched and I wanted to let Dragonfly and Hummingbird summit first, since it was their day. Unfortunately, we didn’t know exactly where the summit was, so we walked right over it without knowing.

We then went back and Parched and his wife set up a tunnel (really more of an arch) with their trekking poles so that Dragonfly and Hummingbird could walk through. Meanwhile, I took pictures. You can find some pictures below.

Under the arch we go!
High five!
Unfurl the banner!

We went over to a viewpoint after the summit, and we all watched the skiers on Gunstock (it was sold out today) while we had snacks and enjoyed the relatively warm weather. The temperature was above freezing, which was way better than what it has been for the last month. We even took a group selfie!

Hummingbird, Dragonfly, Hawk, Dragonfly’s sister, Parched

We headed back down, and on the way down Parched and I hiked in back. Parched explained to me how to make snow shelters, and we had a nice, relaxed hike down. I enjoyed getting to hang out with Parched, and I was very impressed with Dragonfly and Hummingbird’s accomplishment. Any grid, even a Belknap grid, is a huge challenge, and I have seen how much work they put into it. I wonder what they’ll do with their free time now? As for me, I was able to sit down with Parched and plan out some future hikes. Hopefully we’ll be able to do another AT hike in New York and a Franconia Ridge Loop in the months to come. Always remember the advice that Dragonfly and Hummingbird both obviously took to heart - you can’t take flight until you spread your wings.



 

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