Monadnock Ends a Long Mountain Drought - 5/12/11

[mtruman]

After almost 7 months of being away from both the mountains and New Hampshire, this week we finally said "ENOUGH" and headed up to Mt Monadnock on Thursday. What's great about Monadnock for those of us in southern New England is that we can get there in a couple of hours less than it takes to get to the Whites (2 hours for us from RI) and still hike a "real mountain".

We had a perfect bluebird day with surprisingly few people on the mountain and even more surprisingly few bugs. Escaped without a single black fly bite! We did our favorite combination of trails - White Dot, Cascade Link, Spellman, Pumpelly, White Arrow, Amphitheater, Smith Connector, Cliff Walk, Lost Farm, Parker - and hardly saw another person all day (which is one of the reason we love these trails). The wildflowers on the Lost Farm trail were giving a spectacular spring show and will be even better in another couple of weeks. It was wonderful to be back up north and on a mountain again and are looking forward to the summer ahead with lots more time in the Whites!

My blog post with all the details and pics is here: http://theramblingsblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/monadnock-ends-long-break-5-12-11.html

Pumpelly trail to the summit on a bluebird day!

Hobblebush lining the trails

Painted Trillium on Lost Farm

 

[ksearl]

Mark,

Great blog posting and wonderful report! It seems you hit this mountain perfectly. No bugs, minimal trail traffic, blue skies, great views, wildflowers...who could ask for anything more! Your Hobblebush and Painted Trillium pics are fantastic. Looks like the Spellman and Pumpelly Trails are a ton of fun too! Thanks for sharing!

Karl

 

[Jimmy Legs and Little D]

Mark,
What a fantastic day you both had in the mountains. Wish we could make it up to southern NH in 2 hours. Everytime I see photos of Monadnock it reminds me so much of the mountains in Acadia (as does Cardigan). A nice network of trails for your loop. What was the milage for the day?
Nice work on getting your blog up and running again.

Donna

 

[mtruman]

Mark,
What a fantastic day you both had in the mountains. Wish we could make it up to southern NH in 2 hours. Everytime I see photos of Monadnock it reminds me so much of the mountains in Acadia (as does Cardigan). A nice network of trails for your loop. What was the milage for the day?
Nice work on getting your blog up and running again.

Donna

You're right Donna - we're very lucky to have this so close to us. The feel of Monadnock is definitely a lot like Cardigan and the mountains of Acadia (with the exception that there are no ocean views from the summits in NH <sigh>).

A little hard to get the exact mileage since I haven't found any maps or trail descriptions with segment lengths for all the little connecting trails but my best estimate is between 6 and 7 miles. Not too long but with the several areas of nice steep scrambles combined with beautiful open ridge walks and lovely woods it's pretty much a perfect day.

Glad you're enjoying the blog. There should be quite a bit of new content soon. Lots of plans for the next few weeks (and months). Going to start catching up on historical trip reports that never got written as well. Fun to relive all those hikes...