As I sit here having just passed my 85th birthday I am thinking back to all the fun I have had living and hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Here is a reposting of A November 2005 of a hike as a 65 year old. I was redoing a hike I made ten years prior as a 55 year old.
"Friday myself and Dr_wu decided to check out the old flagged route from Carrigain Bowl (Sawyer River) to the Captain and beyond, that I had run into about ten years ago while poking around in that area. We dropped a car off at the Nancy Pond TH, and drove to the barred end of Sawyer River road. We then hiked up the old logging roads to the far end of Carrigain Bowl (at least that's what are on the snowmobile trail signs). From there we whacked across to high up on the western slope of the bowl. Actually, the eastern edge of Hancock. After much climbing around we found the remains of the flagging that was there years ago. Some is so old that it is the original cotton twill used a long time ago. Anyway, the markings took us to the narrow flume which leads up to the verrry thick col between the Captain and Hancock. The flume was running very full of water so we couldn't climb up it as I had done those years ago. We bushwhack/scrambled up the left side and encountered spruce hell and continuous blowdowns. We tried crossing to the other side of the stream, and found it worse. Since we had not been able to use the flume, we lost the flagging which runs right up the inside of the flume. Consequently we floundered around for hours getting up to the slopes of the Captain. By this time it was about 1:00 PM and we were about an hour from summiting the Captain. Had we continued on to that objective we would have been bushwhacking with headlamps or benighted, neither of which we considered desirable. We than decided to continue contouring around NE in hopes of hitting Carrigain Pond at least. At this point we had not seen any old logging drag roads. When we hit Carrigain Branch we were well below the pond and were pushing to hit a trail or decent drag road before dark. We finally hit a pretty good but well grown in drag road and followed it down and east for hours. Dark fell and the headlamps went on, still without hitting a trail. We were looking for Desolation Trail. At 5:05 we struck Desolation Trail after about half an hour of headlamp bushwhacking (not fun). We continued up over Carrigain notch to Signal Ridge Trail, back out to Sawyer Pond road and a nice weary roadwalk back to our car. We arrived back at the start at 10:05 PM, fourteen hours after we had started, neither bagging the Captain nor Carrigain Pond. Today as I sit here with this creaky sixty six year old body. I am already planning how my next assault on those objectives will be formulated. PS We left a car at Nancy in case we decided to come out that way."
Cheers all, The Hillwalker
"Friday myself and Dr_wu decided to check out the old flagged route from Carrigain Bowl (Sawyer River) to the Captain and beyond, that I had run into about ten years ago while poking around in that area. We dropped a car off at the Nancy Pond TH, and drove to the barred end of Sawyer River road. We then hiked up the old logging roads to the far end of Carrigain Bowl (at least that's what are on the snowmobile trail signs). From there we whacked across to high up on the western slope of the bowl. Actually, the eastern edge of Hancock. After much climbing around we found the remains of the flagging that was there years ago. Some is so old that it is the original cotton twill used a long time ago. Anyway, the markings took us to the narrow flume which leads up to the verrry thick col between the Captain and Hancock. The flume was running very full of water so we couldn't climb up it as I had done those years ago. We bushwhack/scrambled up the left side and encountered spruce hell and continuous blowdowns. We tried crossing to the other side of the stream, and found it worse. Since we had not been able to use the flume, we lost the flagging which runs right up the inside of the flume. Consequently we floundered around for hours getting up to the slopes of the Captain. By this time it was about 1:00 PM and we were about an hour from summiting the Captain. Had we continued on to that objective we would have been bushwhacking with headlamps or benighted, neither of which we considered desirable. We than decided to continue contouring around NE in hopes of hitting Carrigain Pond at least. At this point we had not seen any old logging drag roads. When we hit Carrigain Branch we were well below the pond and were pushing to hit a trail or decent drag road before dark. We finally hit a pretty good but well grown in drag road and followed it down and east for hours. Dark fell and the headlamps went on, still without hitting a trail. We were looking for Desolation Trail. At 5:05 we struck Desolation Trail after about half an hour of headlamp bushwhacking (not fun). We continued up over Carrigain notch to Signal Ridge Trail, back out to Sawyer Pond road and a nice weary roadwalk back to our car. We arrived back at the start at 10:05 PM, fourteen hours after we had started, neither bagging the Captain nor Carrigain Pond. Today as I sit here with this creaky sixty six year old body. I am already planning how my next assault on those objectives will be formulated. PS We left a car at Nancy in case we decided to come out that way."
Cheers all, The Hillwalker
