Grow baby grow

One of the things I enjoy about hiking in the mountains are the micro environments that you see near or on the trail and the way that decay of one form of life feeds a whole lot of new life. The mountains are a hostile environment with a short growing season but there seems to be no shortage of plant life continually sprouting up. Perhaps continual wet weather is great for plants even if annoying to hikers?

Square Ledge

We stayed overnight at Pinkham notch and had wanted to hike either the Wildcat ridge or Mt Moosilauke. However the forecast called for rain and afternoon thunderstorms and as the Presidentials were in the clouds we decided to do a short hike that promised some views and then pray for a miraculous break in the weather. Square Ledge is a ledge that is 500 feet above Pinkham Notch. It is a short but quite steep climb that takes about a half hour. On a clear day you would see the east face of Mt Washington, Tuckerman and Huntington ravines and a couple of the Northern Presidentials.

We hiked up and stayed for about an hour or more and though the clouds lifted a bit we only saw glimpses of Madison and Adams (?) and the lower half of Washington. The white cloud cover was like a whiteboard so Mark and I debated as we pointed at certain cloudy bits and offered our opinions as to what was where. It was a nice spot and worth the trip up. On a clear day this would be a spectacular view.

On our return to the parking lot we met a thru hiker that we had seen previously at Galehead and I was able to donate all my remaining food to his worthy effort!

The Fog of ... hiking

Mark and I took a week off to go hiking in the White mountains. This was the 3rd such trip and also the 3rd time to be there the last week in June. Of almost two weeks spent at various huts over the last five years I have always had sunny clear days. This year, not so much. As we approached Franconia Notch we could see that Cannon mountain summit was in the clouds and about the top third of Lafayette was hidden. It was to be this way for the week due to a weather pattern from the south and east that was not moving other than rotating counter clockwise.

This year's goal was to hike into Galehead hut for a couple of nights and then to hike the Bonds which are a spectacular ridge that is surrounded by the Pemi wilderness. The various other ridges (Franconia, Twin) make for some great photography highlighted by Bondcliff which has long been a target of ours to duplicate its impressive photo.

We started up the twinway (1200ft up in .7 mile) in a cloud. It was welcome as it kept you cool during this "waker-upper" of a climb. The summit of South Twin was socked in and the wind was howling. Our summit photos look more like ghosts. From there it was a mostly downhill walk to MT Guyot and the Bonds trail. We hiked out as far as Mt Bond but as visibility was almost nil we decided to stop there. It was a shame that the weather did not cooperate but it was still fun to stay at the huts as you always meet some interesting people there and the hike itself was great.

We crossed paths along the way with a few interesting folks:

• a runner who was doing a 30 mile jog across the Bonds, Twins, Garfield and the length of the Franconia ridge before descending back to the Pemi trailhead. Note that he didn't say what he was doing AFTER lunch :-)


• a grouse that did not do the broken wing or attack Mark (I had the camera rolling). Instead it trotted along in front of us as if it wanted to join our crew. OK by me as it moved at my pace and we could always eat it if we got stuck out all night!


• the huttie we met in the parking lot after hiking out. In between hiking out a full pack of garbage from the hut and carrying in a full load (40-50 lbs) of food to the hut she went for a several mile run for fun!

No luck with the weather this time but we will be back.