Memorial Day weekend 2017.
What were we going to do with ourselves?
We weren't about to drive ten hours to bumble our way through another
Balticon
and get bullied by idiotic hotel personnel; we hadn't mapped out any
other roadtrips, and the longterm weather was a little dicey.
But a day-trip up a fairly popular nearby peak seemed totally doable,
and a nice optional challenge for our feet in the process.
Nobody would be obstructing our way on mountain trails saying that
we needed to have shoes on for "safety and security". Bah.
Barefooting Monadnock is certainly not a new concept; plenty of results come up from a search on "monadnock barefoot" and they all describe it as being pretty awesome fun. One account suggests that some of the park's own rangers even get their share of shoeless miles in. So we did a little planning and google-earthing, and figuring that it was likely to be a pretty crowded weekend up there, I endorsed the idea of a slightly longer but less-traveled route to make a nice loop of maybe 4 and a half miles. That might have been a bit ambitious -- not from anything to do with our feet, but just from hike length and elevation change. As it worked out our group split a couple of times; a subset headed back down via the green dots and another bypassed the summit via the blue ones. But bagging the peak wasn't the sole aim here; the idea was to get out into the woods and just have fun with it. There would be plenty of vertical to keep everyone happy. |
[Pic: hs] |
|
There's a small level-control dam at this end of the reservoir; we took a quick detour up top. The valve structure has steel plates loosely laid over it -- a little wonky to walk on. |
We found acorns trying to sprout and grow, but completely underwater in a tiny brook that crosses the trail. These probably weren't going to survive... |
And at the other end of the mighty oak's life, this sawed-down section just spoke "gnarly" to me. Big galls and significant core rot will sorta do that. |
Our little band of geeks, via a "timed selfie". Having a tiny Gorillapod attached to the camera helps with these. |
Flora & fauna
[Pic: hs] |
|
We started seeing a wide variety of moss and lichens, which only kept getting prettier as we continued up. |
A small toad sat in a pocket of rock and watched us pass. |
The rocks and trees form sort of a tunnel here, at the top end of which is a nice open knob. |
Along the ridge
Many of the rocks have this sort of weird surface feature. Almost like prehistoric diamond-plate. |
[Pic: sjs] |
And there are some of the aliens now, busily at work! |
From an overlook point farther on we could see more of those very flat faces in the cliff; this is a pretty common attribute of much of Monadnock's rock. |
These vista points had everyone juggling our various optical toys... |
The rest of us continued working our way up, up, and up. A lot of up. It's a mountain, y'know, and gravity sucks. |
As we worked up this steeper section, we started to hear voices. For the first time in the day, we *finally* met some people coming the other way. |
The day was also getting on, and we needed to consider our timing.
None of us particularly wanted to
be fumbling our way out of here with flashlights later.
But I really wanted to try and bag the peak, and figured I could go for it
in a fast blitz and not dawdle too long up top, and then catch up with
the rest on the down side.
I felt bad about leaving them but was assured it was an okay plan.
I headed off along Amphitheatre almost at a run; suddenly I had a lot of work to do in a short time and had to remember to get a few pictures in the process. My solo jaunt in the Blue Hills two weeks beforehand must have been good training, or something; I felt pretty confident to conquer that last big mound of rock. |
Soon I found myself on the White Arrow trail, which basically heads straight up to the top. |
[Pic: dhs] |
[Pic: sjs] |
Meanwhile, my companions were having a pleasant and somewhat flatter amble along the Smith Connector, with lovely stretches of slab and plenty more of that wonderful view. Pockets in the rock are full of azaleas and a species of rhodora that our attending bio-nerd had not seen before. |
Having been on the southeast side of this thing all morning, I could now finally get a view to the north. Despite the overcast, the air was clear enough to spot Mt. Washington. |
Further proof of presence could be had from a couple of the permanent USGS markers we often find on mountain summits. |
[Pic: sjs] |
[Pic: sjs] |
The others had reached the intersection with White Dot, and on pausing
for a picture they realized that they'd just spotted me on the peak,
mostly by silhouette and gait.
The peak isn't the highest thing visible here; it's peeking up from behind
some nearer rock but is still identifiable by people on top.
On closely examining a crop from the original picture I could tell where I
had been from the maybe three pixels' worth of my shirt color, and the
black backpack swung off my shoulder.
I had apparently just finished hunting down the survey markers, and at that
moment was either sitting down for a quick break or getting up from it.
[While it would undoubtedly sound archaic sometime down the road, at this point in time I still think it's insane how they've managed to pack a usable 12 megapixels into a *phone camera*. The pic on the right is a tiny 1:1 extract from the original, and while some of the in-camera processing artifacts are visible it's pretty crisp and not hopelessly grainy or oversharpened. Probably better than my old G9 would do.] |
In the process of hopping down the first stretch I didn't get more pictures;
I was concentrating on my route, staying just off-track enough to avoid
the oil slicks and make good speed.
The other nice thing about barefoot hiking, as we pointed out to many
people over the course of the day, is the stability and balance.
Like on my Blue Hills trip, people understood that but figured that they
wouldn't have anywhere near the conditioned sole toughness for it
themselves.
"Start slow around home and work up to it, it doesn't take long", I
assured them.
"Your body *wants* to work this way."
I jetted past any number of people who were cautiously slipping and shuffling their way down the tumbled slabs, and caught up with my companions only a few hundred yards past the target intersection. The timing had been perfect. |
As I looked down from this vantage, I realized that we could see the little reservoir and part of the parking lot from here. We still had quite a ways to go to get back... |
As the trail leveled out somewhat we were back into plenty of wet areas, all well-trodden into a muddy mess over here. |
Even late in the day, we had seen a few people still heading up.
Apparently there's a "sunset club" or the like, or just locals who know
the mountain well enough that they can blast up to catch the sunset and
pick their way back down safely in the failing light.
But then it got more interesting -- as we neared the bottom, various
rangers and official-looking people went steaming by at a good clip,
also going up, so I asked if they were chasing the "sunsetters" to
try and get them to not risk descending in the dark.
No, there had apparently been an injury somewhere along White Dot
and they were all piling up there to effect rescue.
After a couple of burly "red-shirts" and *two* guys carrying ENG-grade
video cameras went by, I figured this must happen fairly frequently
and the press wants in on it.
A little searching later found the relevant incident. The search results showed quite a few others at different times, too. This was apparently one of the easier ones to handle, not too far up the trail -- by the time we got back to the car and got ourselves organized and loaded to head out, the ambulance had already pulled up and they had the victim off the mountain. One ranger told us that some of those rescues, farther up, take six or seven hours far into the night, but it's one reason they're there. And of course the higher likelihood of mishap comes later in the day, when people are tired and stupid and trying to come *down* which is usually trickier than heading up. Something to always keep in mind on such trips. Monadnock itself is a bit deceptive -- people discover that it's more difficult than they counted on, sometimes with disastrous results. The four-and-some miles I had plotted became a bigger deal with all the vertical, but in our varying preferred degrees we got out and did it, never resorting to footgear at all, and overall it was a pretty awesome day -- completely in line with all those other searchable reports. We stopped at a pub in Jaffrey for a brief dinner, and then it wasn't too far back to home and a very welcome bed. [And exactly a year later, did the climb again!] |