TDawg
Well-known member
Date hiked: Tuesday, 5/27/08
Special equipment: Deet, 40% worked well for me.
Trail conditions: Mostly very good, a few small muddy spots and a couple blowdowns of the "walk-around" variety. (Just looked at the DOC website, they'll be clearing these blowdowns on the 1st of June.)
Comments: Started from Rt. 25A at 11:35am, met a couple older hikers a mile in coming from an overnight at Smarts Mtn. fire wardens cabin. One warned me, "Cube's a nasty, nasty mountain." I smiled and I thought to myself how nasty can a sub-7 mile hike to a sub-3000 foot peak be? I didn't really believe him and it turns out the trail was pretty moderate, never really climbing directly up the slope. Lesson learned: take trail difficulty comments from guys 40 years older than you and wearing a bug net on their head (or anyone for that matter) with a grain of salt.
There were lots of trillium (Purple and painted), hobblebush, and trout lillies in bloom. Views were pretty good from the south and north summits, I liked north better looking towards the Whites. While exploring, I found some old carvings in the stone beyond the north summit ledges dating from the mid-1800s. Example, "So and so, from somewhere, 1855", pretty cool. Shows how resistant to weathering the ?quartzite? ledges on Cube are. Escaped the rain, was passed by a shower to the south, Smarts might have got rained on but not me on Cube. A couple spots where a four-wheeler has made it up and old road and into the AT corridor, tisk tisk. Nice day out.
Email: [email protected]
Special equipment: Deet, 40% worked well for me.
Trail conditions: Mostly very good, a few small muddy spots and a couple blowdowns of the "walk-around" variety. (Just looked at the DOC website, they'll be clearing these blowdowns on the 1st of June.)
Comments: Started from Rt. 25A at 11:35am, met a couple older hikers a mile in coming from an overnight at Smarts Mtn. fire wardens cabin. One warned me, "Cube's a nasty, nasty mountain." I smiled and I thought to myself how nasty can a sub-7 mile hike to a sub-3000 foot peak be? I didn't really believe him and it turns out the trail was pretty moderate, never really climbing directly up the slope. Lesson learned: take trail difficulty comments from guys 40 years older than you and wearing a bug net on their head (or anyone for that matter) with a grain of salt.
There were lots of trillium (Purple and painted), hobblebush, and trout lillies in bloom. Views were pretty good from the south and north summits, I liked north better looking towards the Whites. While exploring, I found some old carvings in the stone beyond the north summit ledges dating from the mid-1800s. Example, "So and so, from somewhere, 1855", pretty cool. Shows how resistant to weathering the ?quartzite? ledges on Cube are. Escaped the rain, was passed by a shower to the south, Smarts might have got rained on but not me on Cube. A couple spots where a four-wheeler has made it up and old road and into the AT corridor, tisk tisk. Nice day out.
Email: [email protected]
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