A "bushwhack" to Pliny and West Pliny 4/29

[peakbagger]

I was in need of a day off on Friday and noticed a Meetup group was heading to Pliny and In Jefferson. There are twin summits, referred to some as Pliny Major and Pliny Minor. They are located just south of the Starr King/Waumbek Range. We used the former Priscilla Brook Trail to access these summits. This is a very obvious former logging road that follows the east side of the brook until it starts to wrap around the NW shoulder of Pliny where the road starts to get far less distinct and splits into numerous old skidder paths. It is wet and swampy in spots. Once near the col between the Waumbek ridge and Pliny we headed roughly south through open softwoods that had quite a few large older blowdowns which required a bit of zigging and zagging to avoid climbing up and over the trunks of large rotted logs. The going was easy and we soon reached the obvious summit clearing equipped with a recent vintage Nalgene bottle with register hanging on a far older bracket on a tree which I suspect dates back to the 3" PVC summit register containers. There are no views from the summit. After a quick map and compass course, some of the newer folks of the group picked a bearing to Pliny Minor and we were off through open softwoods again. There were some very large Balsam Fir specimens along the way and in general this stretch felt like a very old patch of woods that haven't seen a logger for a very long time. We soon came down to an obvious col and then started heading up to Minor. In very short time we picked up a very straight obvious path heading to the summit. There was plenty of moose sign but not sure if this path was moose or a herd path. As we gained the summit, the woods opened up substantially and the views to the south opened up to views from Moriah all the way to Lafayette. I expect later in the season this area is covered with ferns and would be nice place to spend a night, except for lack of any nearby water. After a break we headed down the west slope and very soon entered open softwoods that rapidly transitioned to open older hardwood stands with frequent views opening up. We then crossed the remains of a logging road which obviously was the upper limit of logging on the mountain. The rest of the hike was through younger open hardwoods in various stages of regeneration. The canopy in these areas is not filled in and various types of undergrowth is present including blackberries and well trimmed hobblebush. This undergrowth wasn't dense but it was present and shorts are definitely not recommended. We crossed several old logging roads but generally kept going cross country as they tended to have more underbrush and blackberry canes. We eventually could hear Priscilla Brook and after encountering a blue blaze line marked as a state of New Hampshire Conservation Easement we dropped down onto the road.

At no point was there any dense bushwhacking encountered all day. When in the woods sightlines were always good and the views off of Pliny Minor were a big plus. It would be hard to get lost in this area and would be a nice place for folks getting into the bushwhack game. I happened to have a copy of the odd format 1982 metric series Pliny quad which still shows Priscilla Brook Trail. This version is the equivalent of two -7.5 minute quads placed side by side and I believe was replaced with the Jefferson and Mt Crescent conventional format maps. The 1995 Jefferson map which covers this hike does not show Priscilla Brook trail or any trace of it. I expect that many GPS databases are based on the newer UGSS maps and therefore Priscilla Brook Trail may not be shown. One of the somewhat annoying artifacts from the USGS ill fated conversion to metric is that the major contour intervals are 6 meters with the major intervals at 30 meters. It makes for some odd math compared with dealing with 100 and 500 foot intervals typical of conventional maps. The 1995 Jefferson Map also continues this format.