The Difference a Day Makes: An Overnight on the Twin Range

Johnny G. on the Bondcliff Trail hiking south to camp.

A few months ago, I was working on a project in the basement and glanced at my backpacking and camping gear sitting unused in a musty storage bin. "Geez, I haven't been on a proper backpacking trip in about three years, what a shame," I lamented to myself. Backpacking, you see, is one of my absolute favorite outdoor activities. Of all the outdoor sports, I consider backpacking to be the most "pure" because of the inherent simplicity of walking in the woods, the self-reliance of carrying your life necessities on your back, and the enhanced situational awareness of navigation, weather, body, and trail conditions. Of course, backpacking trips are the hardest to come by these days precisely because of the time needed to pull one off (such are the compromises of being a parent). That, and there are few people out there who are willing to subject themselves to such "recreation".

Johnny G. near the summit of Mt. Guyot.

So, much to my delight, a planned family day hike in the White Mountains of New Hampshire morphed into an overnight excursion with my cousin Johnny G, a participant in one of the famed Bolton backcountry ski trips. The plan was simple; the family, Johnny, and I hiked the 2.8 miles to the Appalachian Mountain Club's Zealand Hut via the Zealand Trail. For those of you hiking with small children or, ahem, older folks, the hike to Zealand Hut is moderately difficult with rewarding views of mountain marshes, streams, waterfalls, and Zealand Notch. Not to mention, you can buy hot food and drink at the Zealand Hut and have yourself a proper sit-down potty break if the occasion calls for it. After lunch at the hut, Johnny and I parted ways with the family and continued another 5 miles along the Twin Range to the Guyot campsite on the southeast flank of Mt. Guyot.

I love hiking in the fog. I estimate that two out of three White Mountain hikes I've done in the last 3 years have been shrouded in mist…a testament to the stormy temperament of these mountains. Day 1 of the Twin Range expedition kept the foggy streak alive. The fog obscures the obvious vistas and forces us to look elsewhere for inspiration…those intricacies that go unseen on clear days when sweeping mountain views capture our attention. The movement of the wind, normally invisible to the human eye, is portrayed in swirling droplets that pass through the trees with a whisper. The scent of pine pitch, strangely resembling cotton candy, is somehow amplified by the mist. These sensations haunt and excite me, and they are worthy reasons to hit the trail on less than perfect weather days. I reflected on similar sentiments in my blog post about a hike on Mt. Moosilauke almost exactly one year ago.

Pemigewasset Wilderness.

As the family hiked back to the car for a comfortable evening of hot-tubbing and Web TV, Johnny and I forged through the fog, passing by the cloud-choked Zeacliff view, the imminently forgettable forested summit of Mt. Zealand (but one of New Hampshire's 48 peaks over 4,000 feet above sea level), and the rocky moonscape of Mt. Guyot. The trail gave us a nice blend of rocky, heart-thumping climbs and mellow ridge traverses, perfect for conversation, observation, and photography. And then there was the nerve-jangling rush of flight from a disturbed spruce grouse! As the day grew long in tooth and our legs weary, the trail brought us to the Guyot campsite. The friendly (half stoned) caretaker informed us that the tent platforms were full and offered us space in a crowded lean-to or an overflow tent site that was in the path of a water diversion ditch. Thanks, but no thanks. We elected to try our luck at a tent site on the ridge between Mounts Guyot and Bond…windier, but without the human commotion of the main campsites. After a quick dinner and beverage, we retired to the tent as daylight faded. That evening, the ridge was host to the tumultuous arrival of a cold front that evicted the fog from the mountains. The winds raced down the ridge from Guyot to Bond and onward, sounding like automobiles on a highway overpass. Our tent, sheltered by the thick evergreens, was not affected by the wind and offered us a unique vantage to the readjusting pressure gradients above us. 

Zeacliff, Day 1

We awoke just prior to sunrise over the Willard Range to the east. The clear, dry air of the cold front had swept the Whites free of the mists that defined the previous day. What a difference a day makes! We struck camp after a quick breakfast and gained the summit of Mt. Guyot around 8AM. We were gifted with sweeping views at every point of the compass…North and South Twin to the northwest, Mt. Lafayette and the Franconia Range to the west, Bond and West Bond to the south, and Mt. Washington and the Presidential Range to the east. Just as impressive was the sweeping view of the vast forested Pemigewasset Wilderness. And to top it all off, the valleys were filled with morning fog that hid any evidence of humanity, save for the towers on the summit of Mt. Washington! Wild!

Zeacliff, same vantage point, 24 hours later.

A few short hours of pleasant hiking brought us to Zeacliff, where our view of Zealand Notch had been rebuked by fog just 24 hours earlier. The Pemi Wilderness sprawled out beneath us, framed to the east by the rock walls and talus slopes of Whitewall Mountain and to the south by the imposing massif of Mt. Carrigain. We watched a raven ride a thermal, gaining thousands of feet of altitude in less than a minute with nary a wing flap. We stood on the cliff, spellbound by the panorama, too engaged in our surroundings to remember to take off our packs for a brief rest. The utter solitude was punctuated only by the distant roar of the many cascades that drain the steep mountainsides. Zeacliff was the exclamation point to a great hike and a fitting reward for our fogbound travels.

The Twin Range expedition was a quick hit of wilderness that stoked the flames of passion for outdoor adventure. I once again shouldered a pack of trusted camping gear and wandered into the woods in search of… 

Absolutely Nothing. 

Low tide?

That's right!  Nothing!  An interesting development in my outdoor experiences! In years past I put a lot of emphasis on these adventures to somehow find or define myself, or prove something to myself and others. I think that even the Moosilauke hike a year ago was in a similar vein…the tumultuous account of that trip was a reflection of a transitional time in my life. But now that parenthood has settled in and my perspectives have changed, I find myself asking far less of my outdoor trips. I simply want to get out and enjoy them. By stripping away such expectations of "meaning", I leave myself more receptive to serendipity, and I come out of the woods feeling refreshed, and CALM.  Calm - there's a term I would never use to describe myself when I was in my 20s!

So, despite my lack of expectation (or maybe because of it), the woods once again taught me a lesson. 

Thanks for a great hike, Johnny.

 

Safe travels, all!

 

 
Backpacking Resources
 
The essential White Mountain hiking guide:


Thinking about getting into backpacking? Great! Read this book first before you head to REI or EMS and spend a fortune to outfit yourself with the newest backpacking gear. (Better yet, click on the Amazon and eBay links to buy gear and support the Woods Hippie!) The authors take a humorous, yet no-nonsense approach to backpacking equipment and techniques. Even experienced trampers will find some useful nuggets of wisdom.

 
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The Only Plan Is...There Is No Plan

The constituency has been clamoring for another blog post, so here goes. 

The weekend in the woods ended before it even began.

No, not in the sense that time flies when you're having fun, but in that my hiking partner for a three day backcountry trip bagged out two days before departure.  Not unexpected, but the turn of events left me adrift for a way to dispense with a free weekend.  What transpired was a Woods Hippie wandering of the finest sort - an adventure of motorcycles, tempests, summits and spirit that was rampant in spontaneity yet rooted in familiar terrain.

Rowell's Bridge spans the Contoocook River in Hopkinton, New Hampshire.

At the urging of Mrs. Hippie, who was anxious to rid herself of a moody husband, I packed the motorcycle with a kit of essential camping and hiking gear.  With tent, bedroll, stove, and clothing in the saddlebags and gasoline in the tank, I struck out in search of new roads.  I would like to brag that I was unencumbered with preconceptions and expectations and set out on an adventure of pure whim, but the reality was that the trip didn't immediately take a form because of paralytic indecision on my behalf.

Brooding.  Where should I go?  Irritable.  How about here (points a finger to a random place on the map)?  Frustrated.  No, I don't really want to go there.  Resigned.  But why not?  In the end, I settled on riding north into New Hampshire to camp at a Forest Service campground in Waterville Valley where I would stage hike of the Tripyramids.  Okay, fine, fair enough, it was enough to motivate me to put up the kickstand and hit the starter switch.  Friday morning arrived and I bid the family adieu, two- and four-legged alike.  The ride, all 260 miles of it, passed pleasantly if not unremarkably, highlighted by the waning colors of summer's passing days.  The spring and summer flowers have long wilted, leaving behind weedy hedgerows of goldenrod and aster to hue the fields, and the maples and beeches have taken on a tired grey-green tone to their foliage - perhaps the earliest signaling of the resplendent carnival of color to come.

As the bike carried me to the southern gateway of the White Mountains, mere minutes from my intended bivouac, more changes.  I was a mere 45 minutes from my family's mountain retreat, complete with a hot tub, soft bed, and a bottle of cheap whiskey.  That, and twenty miles of the sweetest sweepers and twisties in New England.  (Not familiar with sweepers and twisties?  Buy a motorcycle, immediately!)  The aches in my shoulders and posterior that had been building all day suddenly diminished and I nudged the black Suzuki on a northwesterly tack alongside the Wild Ammonoosuc River, an unrecognized foreshadowing of the following morn when I would hike to her headwaters high on a mountainside.

Settled with drink in hand and music pulsing form the stereo, I opened the hiker's guidebook to peruse some trail options and unleashed rolling, unstoppable changes to the plan, this time not at the hand of indecision but rather as necessary reactions to impending weather - a powerful cold front that was forecast to be the turbulent arrival of fall in the White Mountains.  All at once the wide open day was framed by very real considerations - squalls in the high mountains are significant threats and riding motorcycles in the rain is just plain misery.

The plan...those rolling changes...which mountain to climb?  The necessities - a short ride from camp, quick hike to a tall summit, off the mountain before the storm hits, majestic scenery, and superlative physical challenge.

Anyone want to donate to the Buy the Woods Hippie a Better Camera Fund?

My mind wasn't fully made until I awoke in the pre-dawn hour.  Clouds streamed above at altitude and the lowlands were crowded with fog.  Fools stay in the hills in such weather, so this foolish boy climbed Mt. Moosilauke via the Beaver Brook Trail, a short, steep, and physical footpath.  The trail and brook are synonymous - often occupying the same space.  Primal cascades slide down a laceration in the woodland that has exposed the bedrock heart of the mountain.  Vivacious, tumbling, medieval.  After a steady, meticulous climb on slick rocks, I emerged from the ravine and ascended into the summit meadow.  The unrelenting fog sparked thoughts of the delicate dance of water and life.  Having just returned from the desert canyonlands of Utah, I was acutely aware of the biotic struggles to acquire this essential fluid.  And here, surrounded by billions of somehow perceivable vapor droplets suspended on the wind, I could almost sense the summit vegetation opening their stomata and drawing deeply of the moisture-laden air, obtaining from thin air the lifeblood long denied by the hot and dry summer season.  On this grassy peak the hydrologic cycle began, or ended, or simply was.  All this vapor condensing on rock, soil, and plant alike, with the smallest volumes merging in the subterranean pores to create a saturated body sufficient to supply the cascade deep into summer.  Rivers from clouds.  The swirling womb of the Wild Ammonoosuc River.

The view from the summit meadow.  I wouldn't have it any other way!

My early departure, eagerness to climb hard, and trepidation regarding the approaching storm found me on the summit at 10am.  Plenty of time to enjoy the rockpile, or so I thought.  Food, water, and added layers of clothing kept the moist, cooling winds at bay for a half hour at best until a chill crept into my bones and beckoned me to retreat below treeline.  The descent had worried me on the ascent; the trail was quite steep and is notoriously wet even in dry weather.  However, the boot rubber did its job and ushered me safety down the mountain to the dew-streaked Suzuki.  I suited up in riding gear and ripped down Route 112 from the hikers' parking lot at the height-of-land of Kinsman Notch, again enjoying the curvy pavement that had treated me so well the previous evening.  Cool to think that half of that parking lot drains to the Wild Ammonoosuc and onward to the Connecticut River and Long Island Sound, and the other half drains to the Lost River and the Gulf of Maine.

Lest you think I take this too seriously, let me say this.  Despite all the bullshit prose I drop on this blog from time to time, I'm really just a goofball kid that likes to hike in the mountains.  The rest is just gravy.

The remainder of the afternoon was spent alongside the swimming hole on the Wild Ammonoosuc - a marvelous sequence of small waterfalls over polished rock - the view governed by the historic Swiftwater Covered Bridge.  Baptism in the vapors which had coalesced in my presence at 4,802 feet above sea level just that morning.  (I hope my post-hike pee was on the Gulf of Maine side of that parking lot...)  Bands of light rain showers rolled through and offered me the delightful interlude of temporarily abandoning my swim for the shelter of the underside of the bridge to write in my journal (waterproof geologist's field book, in case you're wondering).  Returning to the cabin, I briefly flirted with the idea of riding to a nearby forest service campground, but a check of the weather radar indicated a whole lot of red, so I instead spent an enjoyable evening weathering the storm with my cousin and her boyfriend who had also journeyed north for some rejuvenation in the pines.  Thanks, guys, for tolerating your vagabond hippie cousin on your weekend getaway.  Sorry about that.

Isn't it amazing what nature provides?  Steps in the rock!

And the storm, for all my worries and insistent media forecasts, was five minutes of fury and then gentle rain.  As a wild man once said, the earth refuses to be tidy.

Morning again - this time with sunshine sparkling and winds absent.  The night prior I had hatched a plan to tackle Kings Ravine on Mt. Adams in the Presidential Range, but I slept in and then realized the folly of trying (or wanting) to rush a hike that should be savored.  I mean, this ravine has hidden ice year-round and a crazy jumble of boulders among thousands of feet of vertical gain that beg for a day-long exploration.  Not suitable fodder for the day when I have to ride home.  So, I picked another local favorite, Black Mountain via the Chippewa Trail.  A short little mountain with a two mile ascent that packs a mighty punch.  Steep!  This mountain has one serious Napoleon complex.

The steepness of portions of the trail drew comparisons to the prior day's hike up Moosilauke.  My legs certainly took a while to warm up to the experience.  The fledgling autumn weather was a stark contrast to the meteorological witchcraft summoned on the Beaver Brook Trail.  The interesting thing was that these two hikes were unique in their details but I ultimately perceived them both as a continuum of thought and experience over the two days.

The coolest part of the hike was the lime kilns.

These kilns were operated in the mid to late 1800's to produce lime (the stuff you put on your lawn) from a low-grade marble that was quarried from the flanks of Black Mountain.  Alternating layers of marble and charcoal were piled in the kiln and were fired below from the brick fireboxes that were undoubtedly fueled by wood from the surrounding forest.  I can only imaging that the dense woodland surrounding me on this hike was a barren hillside during the kiln days, stripped of burnable materials to feed the kiln.

The figurative and literal foundations of our modern society.

I was struck by the primitive technology that was in use little more than a hundred years ago, during the lifetime of my great-grandmother who I knew well into my teenage years.  The moss-covered rocks of this early industrial structure brought forth memories(?), no, perhaps a shared ancestral experience(?) of some medieval forge on a Welsh hinterland.  Looking at the kiln and pondering the way of life that accompanied its operation, the inevitability of technological progression dawned on me.  We as humans are committed to technology at this point, regardless of the impacts it may have on the earth.  Through natural selection of our own device, we as a species are no longer fit for life in the wilderness.  And all this change happened so suddenly, within a few generations prior to my birth.  In my great-grandmother's time we went from stone kilns to space travel and the instantaneous global sharing human knowledge...an unprecedented rate of change. Why?  Think!  Energy.  Petroleum!  Man's endeavors prior to the discovery of oil were limited by the availability of energy - the amount of firewood that could be cut to fuel the kiln or the acres of hay that could be grown to feed the oxen to pull marble from the quarry .  Energy was tedium.  Oil changed all of that.  Energy was suddenly readily available and non-perishable, thus freeing our bodies from the physical act of procuring energy (read Joel Salatin's Folks, This Ain't Normal for more on this topic).  And the tidal wave of innovation that surrounds us today, this most massive application of our evolutionary intellectual advantage, is the direct result of this liberation.  As a self-described environmentalist, this thought resonated like an electric shock.  Is there any turning back?  Should we? Could we if we wanted to?  Are we destined for the confines(?) liberation(?) of pure mechanism, or will we find a harmonious balance of the wild and technological?  I hope for the latter...

I don't want to know a world where these wonders are paved over...

 Whew!  Some time alone in the woods can make a man think...

So, just as quickly as the little black motorcycle whisked me away to the northlands, it brought me back home. Ostensibly, a bit disappointing, until I got to experience the little guy enjoying a ripe tomato from the garden...

...which put the whole thing into perspective.  


Safe travels,

Woods Hippie

Summer!

Zukes!  Yikes!

Three Sisters.

Colorful mopheads.

Gettin' bigger by the day.  AKA - dog's eye view of the garden.

Keep doin' your thang, little bee.

Food is good.

The Art of Living Simply: A Backcountry Trip Report, Part II

My cousin Johnny G. was cool to share his photos from the backcountry trip.  Rather than typing some overly-worded essay on the ethereal nature of backcountry skiing (did I really write "Gaia's temple" in the last post?  Note to self, cut back on drinking and blogging), I'll simply post up the pictures and let them speak for themselves (well, plus some captions; blogging is by definition narcissistic so I can't help but impart some Woods Hippie flavor).  Enjoy.

Yup.

Dreamscape.

Camping and skiing here is one of the coolest things you can do without involving a 9-iron, pack of condoms, and some illegal fireworks.

We're, like, totally hardcore and all, but you can't argue with chowda' bread bowls and cold pints!

Long distance runner, what you holdin' out for?
Caught in slow motion in a dash for the door.
The flame from your stage has now spread to the floor
You gave all you had, why you wanna give more?
The more that you give, the more it will take
To the thin line beyond which you really can't fake.

Fire! Fire on the mountain!

Saturday was a tryst between orographic snowsqualls and an emergent spring sun.  While the cosmos had yet to declare winter or spring as victor , we as riders won big.

Dear couch potatoes.  It's okay, we understand that you didn't want to miss the next episode of Idol.  We made sure all this powder got skied.  And by the way, while you were letting the television rob you of your mind and an actual life, we were thriving in the woods and continuing the great survivalist tradition.  It's cool though, but don't get mad at us and those like us when this society goes to shit and we procreate with your girlfriend and inhabit the woodlands while you sit uselessly on the couch, trying in vain to click a remote control at a blank TV screen while wondering what the hell to do with yourself...

I should have waited one more week to shave the beard.  It was friggin' cold out.

Winter is but a distant memory here in CT, and Johnny G. is onto the next thing, along with the rest of us.  Marquis nailed a top-10 finish in his first MTB race of the season, and my running shoes have been hitting the trails on the reg.

A Winter Hike on Gothics

Climbing mountains in winter is indescribable.  I'll let the images speak for themselves.