White Mountain Hiking/History Quiz

The first half of Mike Dickerman's hiking column in today's Littleton Courier has the short quiz below. The second half gives the answers. Take the quiz on the honor system today. The answers half will be posted Friday morning. (Sorry, I thought I'd posted this under Q&A.)

Mike Dickerman
A quiz for White Mountains history, hiking buffs
by Mike Dickerman

11/30/2005 - On occasion I like to test readers' knowledge on the geography, history and lore of the White Mountains. There's no overall theme to this post-Thanksgiving Day quiz, but I will tell you that every answer can be found west of the Presidential Range and north of the Kancamagus Highway and Kinsman Notch (Route 112).

1. The trailless ridgeline between these two 4,000-foot mountains is one of the roughest, toughest, and least traveled in the mountains. (The ridge also serves as the boundary line between the towns of Lincoln and the Livermore, and all land immediately to the north is in a federal wilderness area.) Can you name the two 4,000-footers?

2. What trail up to a 4,000-foot summit near Twin Mountain is named for a newsletter once edited by the person whose name has been given to the aforementioned peak?

3. No weekly services are held on the shore of this picturesque 16-acre pond near the Albany-Livermore town line. Depending on whom you believe, the pond was named for either a lumberman or a painter, and for years it was often referred to as Deer Pond.

4. Owing to their proximity to the popular Bretton Woods area, long a haven for White Mountains visitors, it's not surprising that these three neighboring peaks are named for legendary local innkeepers.

5. Sometime prior to 1850, a group of Ivy League students exploring in the area discovered these falls a little south of the Franconia Notch region.

6. One of the great backpacking trips in the region is the so-called Pemi Horseshoe traverse, which begins and ends at the Lincoln Woods trailhead. Can you name the major summits usually included in this hike?

7. What body of water just outside the Pemigewasset Wilderness boundary line is considered by many to be the headwater of the Merrimack River?

8. If you walked along the Appalachian Trail between Kinsman Notch and Crawford Notch, how many 4,000-foot summits would you pass over?

9. How many peaks within the boundaries of the Pemi Wilderness once had fire towers or fire lookouts posted at their summits?

Waumbek said:

2. What trail up to a 4,000-foot summit near Twin Mountain is named for a newsletter once edited by the person whose name has been given to the aforementioned peak?

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Lend-a-Hand, Mt Hale

6. One of the great backpacking trips in the region is the so-called Pemi Horseshoe traverse, which begins and ends at the Lincoln Woods trailhead. Can you name the major summits usually included in this hike?

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Flume, Liberty, (Little Haystack), Lincoln, Lafayette, Garfield, (Galehead), South Twin, (Guyot), Bond, (W. Bond), Bondcliff. Peaks in parens are either on side trails or not official 4000'ers.

8. If you walked along the Appalachian Trail between Kinsman Notch and Crawford Notch, how many 4,000-foot summits would you pass over?

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South Kinsman, North Kinsman, Lincoln, Lafayette, Garfield, South Twin. All others (Liberty, Galehead, Zealand) are on side trails.

-dave-

Waumbek said:

1. The trailless ridgeline between these two 4,000-foot mountains is one of the roughest, toughest, and least traveled in the mountains. (The ridge also serves as the boundary line between the towns of Lincoln and the Livermore, and all land immediately to the north is in a federal wilderness area.) Can you name the two 4,000-footers?

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Carrigan to Willey

5. Sometime prior to 1850, a group of Ivy League students exploring in the area discovered these falls a little south of the Franconia Notch region.

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I'm guessing Franconia Falls

bobandgeri said:

Carrigan to Willey

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I believe this is Mt. Carrigain to Mt. Hancock that is the answer to the question. http://world.std.com/~Whites/Pemi.htm#H-C

Waumbek said:

9. How many peaks within the boundaries of the Pemi Wilderness once had fire towers or fire lookouts posted at their summits?

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Question 9:

1. Mt. Carrigain
2. Mt. Hancock, NW Peak
3. Mt. Garfield
4. Mt. Bemis -- Summit area is just outside the boundary;

-Dr. Wu

time to humiliate myslef

1) Hancock -Carrigan
3)Church Pond
4) Stickney, Oscar, rosebrook
5) Harvard Brook falls
7) Black Pond
9) one Carrigan only

Puck said:

time to humiliate myslef

9) one Carrigan only

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Actually, NW Hancock had a firetower, briefly, in the late 30's. Mike Dickerman (according to Steve Smith -- Puck, I think you were in the store when Steve was talking about it!!) actually met the former Firetower Operator. Also, Mt. Garfield, I believe, is in the Pemi Wilderness boundary. Mt. Bemis had a firetower but is not w/i the boundary but not by much. Part of its summit-cone is w/i the boundary.

-Dr. Wu

7. Profile lake

So Carrigain just misses it? I locked my thinking in to just 4000 footers.

I don't remember Steve talking about it. I do remember him talking about the camp of draft dodgers in the 60s. Would love to hear more about that.

Here are my guesses . . .

1. Hancock to Carrigain

2. Hale

3. Church Ponds (I cheated and looked at a map for this one)

4. Tom, Field and Willey

5. ?????

6. Flume, Liberty, Lincoln, Lafayette, Garfield(?), South Twin, Bond, Bondcliff.

7. ???????

8. South Kinsman, North Kinsman, Lincoln, Lafayette, Garfield(?), South Twin

9. One, Garfield?

sli74

Puck said:

So Carrigain just misses it? I locked my thinking in to just 4000 footers.

I don't remember Steve talking about it. I do remember him talking about the camp of draft dodgers in the 60s. Would love to hear more about that.

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No, Mt. Carrigain is on the list too. I just added to yours! FWIW, NW Hancock's is a 4000' peak. It's just not on "the list" but it is a peak no less (I've been there!! ) although it's on the Trailwrights List.

-Dr. Wu

When I looked at this earlier I just wrote my answers on paper. It will be interesting to see how well I do. I'm stuck on number 9.

Waumbek said:

4. Owing to their proximity to the popular Bretton Woods area, long a haven for White Mountains visitors, it's not surprising that these three neighboring peaks are named for legendary local innkeepers.

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Rosebrooks

Waumbek said:

1. The trailless ridgeline between these two 4,000-foot mountains is one of the roughest, toughest, and least traveled in the mountains. (The ridge also serves as the boundary line between the towns of Lincoln and the Livermore, and all land immediately to the north is in a federal wilderness area.) Can you name the two 4,000-footers?

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what's even crazier is that the Lincoln/Livermore line was surveyed by an attorney (George Morris) and a surveyor in the early part of the 20th century (in the 1920's, I think) to help settle a boundary dispute between the J. E. Henry logging company of Lincoln, and the Saunders of Livermore. The state in its wisdom decided the watershed boundary (technically not the ridge -- if you look closely you'll note Mts Lowell and Bemis are within the township of Livermore) would be the new town line; Lincoln used to be a boring old squarish township with the usual 6-miles-on-a-side convention. I just cannot imagine the trouble one would have to go through, in the field, to determine the watershed boundary. (Edit: note also that according to state law, the Lincoln selectmen, or their appointees, are supposed to perambulate this boundary every seven years.... somehow I don't think they comply. The state seems not to enforce it, either.)

Belcher's "Logging Railroads of the White Mountains" discusses this in part, citing and quoting from George F Morris's autobiography, "Reminiscences of a Yankee Jurist".

5.) Georgiana Falls????


7.) Ethan Pond I reckon


the rest are "easy"

Answers

With the Ethan Pond answer for #7, collectively you've answered them all "correctly" now, although some may want to quibble, so I'll pull the plug on this quiz and post what Dickerman gives as answers. Interesting that #7 was the stumper for longest; for the record, I did not have a clue. I don't have a mental blueprint of the North Fork of the East Branch of the Pemi in the way that I do of the Pemi.

Answers

[start quote] 1. The ridge between Mounts Hancock and Carrigain has long been the bane of off-trail explorers. The bushwhack hike to the 3,540-foot peak known as The Captain—situated halfway between Hancock and Carrigain—is among the fiercest in the Whites and should only be attempted by experienced trampers who are true gluttons for punishment.

2. According to authors Robert and Mary Julyan (Places Names in the White Mountains), the Lend-A-Hand Trail up 4,077-foot Mount Hale is named after a journal for charitable organizations once edited by Rev. Edward Everett Hale, the Boston pastor and author whose name lives on atop the previously mentioned summit.

3. Church Pond, just north of the Kancamagus Highway, lies in a basin believed to be the bed of an ancient glacial lake. Conflicting accounts claim the pond was named for either Charles Church, a lumberman during the mid-1800s, or nineteenth century landscape artist Frederick E. Church.

4. The Rosebrook Range peaks of Mount Oscar, Mount Stickney and Mount Rosebrook each honor names with significant historical ties to the Bretton Woods area. Mount Oscar is named for Oscar Barron, longtime manager of the Fabyan House hotel. Mount Stickney is named for Joseph Stickney, builder of the Mount Washington Hotel and longtime owner of the Mount Pleasant House. Mount Rosebrook is named for Capt. Eleazar Rosebrook, one of the earliest settlers of the area and proprietor of the first summer hotel in the White Mountains.

5. Harvard Falls or Harvard Cascades are in Lincoln, along Harvard Brook, but are more commonly known as Georgiana Falls, or Upper Georgiana Falls.

6. The Pemi Horseshoe traverse, which finds hikers traversing the Twin-Bond Range, Garfield Ridge, and Franconia Ridge, includes ascents of Mounts Flume, Liberty, Lincoln, Lafayette, Garfield, South Twin, Bond and Bondcliff. Short side trips allow hikers to also ascend the nearby summits of West Bond, Galehead, (and sometimes) North Twin.

7. Ethan Pond is a six-acre tarn at the western base of Mount Willey near Crawford Notch. Out of it flows the North Fork of the Pemigewasset River's East Branch.

8. An AT hiker walking this stretch of trail would pass over (or within a few yards of) the summits of North and South Kinsman, Mounts Lincoln, Lafayette and Garfield, and South Twin. Arguably, Zealand Mountain could be included in this group, though the true summit is several hundred feet north of the actual AT and is reached by way of a short side trail.

9. Mount Carrigain had an operating fire tower on its summit from approximately 1910 to 1948. Hancock Spur (or Northwest Hancock) had a lookout posted on its summit for several years following the devastating Hurricane of 1938. [end quote]

Good quiz! Got to it too late I guess.. - Matt L

Waumbek said:

9. Mount Carrigain had an operating fire tower on its summit from approximately 1910 to 1948. Hancock Spur (or Northwest Hancock) had a lookout posted on its summit for several years following the devastating Hurricane of 1938. [end quote]

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So, Mt. Garfield's summit is not in the Pemi Wilderness?

There are no remnants of a fire tower on NW Hancock (there are other artifacts there though including electrical wires) or any indication that there was one so my guess is that it was just a lookout post. Also, there was supposedly some kind of access road going to the summit for the operator but it's well swallowed up now it seems.

-Dr. Wu

dr_wu002 said:

So, Mt. Garfield's summit is not in the Pemi Wilderness?
-Dr. Wu

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No, technically it is not. The wilderness boundary does not quite extend upslope to the summits of Flume, Liberty, Lafayette, Garfield, Galehead, S. Twin, Guyot, and Zeland, although it does engulf the Bonds and Bondcliff.
It shies away from the top of the ridge, I assume, so that trail maintenance on the AT is less encumbered. Look at the Map Adeventures map or the Nat. Geo., which show more detail than the WMG map. Mike threw a nice curve ball on this one.

Answers said:

8. An AT hiker walking this stretch of trail would pass over (or within a few yards of) ... Garfield,

9. Mount Carrigain had an operating fire tower on its summit from approximately 1910 to 1948.

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8. I would have left Garfield off my list as it is on a side trail of measurable length

9. I believe that the Mt Carrigain summit was deliberately left outside the Wilderness so the tower would not be a non-conforming structure, certainly the sign is not at the summit but down the Desolation Trail. Any lawyers want to look up the statute?

Hancock Spur had an old firefinder stand among the debris while I was there, back when the logging camps on Cedar Brook were operating this peak was both useful and convenient.