Last Weekend's Backpacking Trip: The Mahoosucs
Total Mileage: 14.5 or so.
Total Elevation Gain: 5,425' estimated, probably a little more actually.
This past weekend, Craig and I decided to go on another backpacking trip, since the last one was so fun and we were both available this weekend. The route we took was entirely his idea, mentioned awhile ago: The Mahoosuc range from Mt Carlo to Mahoosuc Arm.
An account of the trip with lots of pictures may be found below the cut.
We got a purposely late start on Saturday, since we only had about 7 miles to cover and didn't want to spend all afternoon at the campsite. Leaving Craig's new house in Westbrook around 10:45, we were on the Success Pond Rd a couple hours later, and along the way, gave a ride to a couple of hitch-hiking backpackers who had just completed the same route we were going to do. Craig said this was karma, as that would be us the following day, looking for a ride back to the truck.
We hit the trail around 1pm, and I must say the NH side of this hike was incredibly uninteresting. We started on an open logging road and then entered a large clearcut. We finally entered some trees just a few hundred yards before crossing the border into Maine. It was nice to be in our home state.
After 2.3 miles on the trail, we arrived at Carlo Col Campsite, which is not on the Appalachian trail but is not far from it, and is maintained by the AMC (which means Appalachian Mountain Club, or Appalachian Money Collectors, depending on your opinion of them), which generally maintains the trail in NH. From there it was a short hike to the junction where the Carlo Col Trail met the Appalachian Trail.
We then summited Mt Carlo, which had good but not spectacular views mostly to the west, in the direction of NH's Presidential Range. We then descended the col and climbed up Goose-Eye Mountain, the peak which provided the best view on the whole trip. Combined with a rare low-humidity day in August, we were treated to the sorts of views that you typically only get in the fall and winter.
Although we had arrived at the summit, we still had a few sub-peaks to climb over before we arrived at Full Goose Shelter for the night. The trail was well maintained and not too difficult, even with backpacks, and after going up and down 3 more sub peaks, a few ladder climbs and a bit of scrambling, we arrived at Full Goose Shelter sometime between 6 and 6:30. The site was very crowded, and though there was a bit of room left in the shelter itself, we preferred to have some more personal space and decided to seek out a tent platform.
Well, we found all of those occupied, so we then had to find a level patch of ground in the woods nearby. I immediately found this plot, which was the perfect size, soft, and perfectly level.
After making a much simpler dinner than I did on the last backpacking trip (just a Backpacker's Pantry "add boiling water to the packet" meal), we played cards for a bit to kill the time, and when it got dark, went to bed.
We woke up at 7:30, had breakfast, filtered some more water, packed up, and hit the trail. The trail up Fulling Mill Mountain starts climbing literally a few steps from the campsite, so there was no warm-up opportunity this day. No chance to stretch the legs before you made them do some climbing. Thankfully, Fulling Mill isn't a big climb from Full Goose Shelter, and we were on top in a relatively short amount of time. The views were OK, and afforded this fairly clear view of Mt Washington:
We encountered a lone thru-hiker on the summit, who joined us and chatted with us for the duration of the fairly steep descent into the famed Mahoosuc Notch, the so-called toughest mile on the entire Appalachian Trail. Craig had reassured me that it wasn't that hard, especially if you'd cut your teeth day-hiking in Maine and NH, and it was more fun than anything. Still, I wasn't exactly nervous, but I still figured it would be difficult at times especially since I'm so short and this would require so much bouldering.
Arriving at the head of the notch, I snapped this picture, and then we dove in.
Craig was correct. Going through the notch was a blast! Yes, I promptly slipped and fell hard on my rear just a couple hundred feet in, but instead of making me nervous, it just made me pay more attention to my footing. There were a couple places where I had no choice but to just jump 6-8 feet straight down, and I handled those by sitting down and slowly sliding off the boulder, hoping my body maintained friction on the rock for as long as possible before gravity took over. That worked, and the drop ended up being no more than 3-4 feet each time.
Just after one of those drops off a rock, I heard someone behind me ask how I'd handled it, looking for advice. Looking back to answer them, I saw two elderly women *backpacking * through the notch, and I think they may have even been thru-hiking. One was probably early 60s, the other late 60s or even early 70s, she looked pretty elderly! Good for them. At the same time, I figured at this point, "how hard can this be?" I couldn't let a couple of elderly women show me up :)
As we got further into the notch, Craig and I passed just about everybody we'd seen at the campsite the previous night. We were making seriously good time. A few parts required some tight crawls through caves, and I had to take my pack off a couple times. On one occasion Craig went ahead of me and shot a video of me crawling up the cave, pushing my pack ahead of me. I think it may have been this one:
A couple of the pass-thru's didn't require removal of your pack, though I left mine on in a couple places where I probably should have taken it off, as I was scraping against the sides pretty bad.
In any event, after lots of bouldering which really wasn't that physically demanding other than the arm workout it gave me, we completed the 1-mile notch in an hour and 15 minutes, well ahead of the book time. Was it the toughest mile I'd ever done? No way! I've done harder miles on New England (Katahdin's Cathedral Trail, and the last mile of Doubletop's Kidney Pond Trail are clearly more difficult, for instance), though to be fair, none of those are on the Appalachian Trail. I suppose that something to keep in mind is that "toughest on the AT" doesn't mean "toughest in the northeast."
Much more demanding than Mahoosuc Notch was the ascent up Mahoosuc Arm, which we had to do next. This was a 1,600' climb that we had to do in 1.05 miles. Ugh.
This reminded me somewhat of the climb up the Eyebrow Ridge on Old Speck, though there weren't any rungs or cables to assist with traction. It also reminded me somewhat of the North Tripyramid Slide in that my achilles tendons were a bit sore by the end, after being on my toes and pushing off over such a long distance. But it was truly similar to neither of them in terms of terrain. It resembled them only in steepness.
And to be fair, I need to revise that "1600' in 1.05 miles" figure, since that's measured from the end of the Mahoosuc Notch, and you really don't start climbing in earnest for another half mile or so...
Thankfully, Mother Nature provided an oasis of sorts at the exact spot where the trail starts to get hard, and to say that we found lots of others taking advantage of it is an understatement.
I counted 17 people there at one point, most of them (including us) electing to take the boots off and soak the feet in the cool, calf-deep pools there, and wash two days of accumulated mud off our legs. Upstream just a bit, just about everybody (again, including us) filtered some of the crisp, clear water into our Nalgene bottles, our last resupply which would see us through to the end of the hike.
Not being in a big hurry, we probably took a 20 minute break there, relaxing on the rocks with our feet in the water. Eventually though, we wanted to keep going, and keep going we did. Not far from this little oasis, the trail got tough. Very tough.
The last several hundred feet of elevation gain were done on top of some exposed slabs of granite bedrock. I would NOT want to do this when wet, and indeed, there were lots of side trails beside the slabs with heavy erosion. I think they need to install some rungs or cables at least in a few places here, similar to what is found on the Eyebrow trail on Old Speck. Thankfully we had a dry day though, and though the climb tested my lungs a bit, we made it to the top just fine, and had the weekend's last summit view while having a snack before we took the cutoff trail back to the Success Pond Road.
The view here is basically a look back at what we'd climbed since we started the day before, sort of forming a "C" shape if you were to overlay our route on this picture, starting with the ridge that goes off the right side of the top of the frame (the closer one, not the more distant Mt Washington and Adams).
Though we'd discussed continuing on to Speck Pond and Old Speck, we both agreed at that point that it was getting late enough in the day that if we were to do that, we'd get back to Portland much later than we wanted to. I wasn't disappointed, as I've climbed Old Speck from the other side four times, and I knew the view well. There was also a 40% chance of showers later in the day, which although they never materialized, factored into our decision at the time.
The hike back to the road was uneventful, and eventually became a well graded, soft path that was easy on the feet. Upon reaching the road, we were looking forward to a 4+ mile road walk, but were hoping to thumb a ride, which we managed to do after walking just half a mile.
On the way home, Craig and I stopped at Sunday River Brewing Co. and had French Onion soup, burgers, and beer, before driving back to Portland, somewhat tired, a little sore in my case, but extremely satisifed with how we spent our weekend!
Total Elevation Gain: 5,425' estimated, probably a little more actually.
This past weekend, Craig and I decided to go on another backpacking trip, since the last one was so fun and we were both available this weekend. The route we took was entirely his idea, mentioned awhile ago: The Mahoosuc range from Mt Carlo to Mahoosuc Arm.
An account of the trip with lots of pictures may be found below the cut.
We got a purposely late start on Saturday, since we only had about 7 miles to cover and didn't want to spend all afternoon at the campsite. Leaving Craig's new house in Westbrook around 10:45, we were on the Success Pond Rd a couple hours later, and along the way, gave a ride to a couple of hitch-hiking backpackers who had just completed the same route we were going to do. Craig said this was karma, as that would be us the following day, looking for a ride back to the truck.
We hit the trail around 1pm, and I must say the NH side of this hike was incredibly uninteresting. We started on an open logging road and then entered a large clearcut. We finally entered some trees just a few hundred yards before crossing the border into Maine. It was nice to be in our home state.
After 2.3 miles on the trail, we arrived at Carlo Col Campsite, which is not on the Appalachian trail but is not far from it, and is maintained by the AMC (which means Appalachian Mountain Club, or Appalachian Money Collectors, depending on your opinion of them), which generally maintains the trail in NH. From there it was a short hike to the junction where the Carlo Col Trail met the Appalachian Trail.
We then summited Mt Carlo, which had good but not spectacular views mostly to the west, in the direction of NH's Presidential Range. We then descended the col and climbed up Goose-Eye Mountain, the peak which provided the best view on the whole trip. Combined with a rare low-humidity day in August, we were treated to the sorts of views that you typically only get in the fall and winter.
Although we had arrived at the summit, we still had a few sub-peaks to climb over before we arrived at Full Goose Shelter for the night. The trail was well maintained and not too difficult, even with backpacks, and after going up and down 3 more sub peaks, a few ladder climbs and a bit of scrambling, we arrived at Full Goose Shelter sometime between 6 and 6:30. The site was very crowded, and though there was a bit of room left in the shelter itself, we preferred to have some more personal space and decided to seek out a tent platform.
Well, we found all of those occupied, so we then had to find a level patch of ground in the woods nearby. I immediately found this plot, which was the perfect size, soft, and perfectly level.
After making a much simpler dinner than I did on the last backpacking trip (just a Backpacker's Pantry "add boiling water to the packet" meal), we played cards for a bit to kill the time, and when it got dark, went to bed.
We woke up at 7:30, had breakfast, filtered some more water, packed up, and hit the trail. The trail up Fulling Mill Mountain starts climbing literally a few steps from the campsite, so there was no warm-up opportunity this day. No chance to stretch the legs before you made them do some climbing. Thankfully, Fulling Mill isn't a big climb from Full Goose Shelter, and we were on top in a relatively short amount of time. The views were OK, and afforded this fairly clear view of Mt Washington:
We encountered a lone thru-hiker on the summit, who joined us and chatted with us for the duration of the fairly steep descent into the famed Mahoosuc Notch, the so-called toughest mile on the entire Appalachian Trail. Craig had reassured me that it wasn't that hard, especially if you'd cut your teeth day-hiking in Maine and NH, and it was more fun than anything. Still, I wasn't exactly nervous, but I still figured it would be difficult at times especially since I'm so short and this would require so much bouldering.
Arriving at the head of the notch, I snapped this picture, and then we dove in.
Craig was correct. Going through the notch was a blast! Yes, I promptly slipped and fell hard on my rear just a couple hundred feet in, but instead of making me nervous, it just made me pay more attention to my footing. There were a couple places where I had no choice but to just jump 6-8 feet straight down, and I handled those by sitting down and slowly sliding off the boulder, hoping my body maintained friction on the rock for as long as possible before gravity took over. That worked, and the drop ended up being no more than 3-4 feet each time.
Just after one of those drops off a rock, I heard someone behind me ask how I'd handled it, looking for advice. Looking back to answer them, I saw two elderly women *backpacking * through the notch, and I think they may have even been thru-hiking. One was probably early 60s, the other late 60s or even early 70s, she looked pretty elderly! Good for them. At the same time, I figured at this point, "how hard can this be?" I couldn't let a couple of elderly women show me up :)
As we got further into the notch, Craig and I passed just about everybody we'd seen at the campsite the previous night. We were making seriously good time. A few parts required some tight crawls through caves, and I had to take my pack off a couple times. On one occasion Craig went ahead of me and shot a video of me crawling up the cave, pushing my pack ahead of me. I think it may have been this one:
A couple of the pass-thru's didn't require removal of your pack, though I left mine on in a couple places where I probably should have taken it off, as I was scraping against the sides pretty bad.
In any event, after lots of bouldering which really wasn't that physically demanding other than the arm workout it gave me, we completed the 1-mile notch in an hour and 15 minutes, well ahead of the book time. Was it the toughest mile I'd ever done? No way! I've done harder miles on New England (Katahdin's Cathedral Trail, and the last mile of Doubletop's Kidney Pond Trail are clearly more difficult, for instance), though to be fair, none of those are on the Appalachian Trail. I suppose that something to keep in mind is that "toughest on the AT" doesn't mean "toughest in the northeast."
Much more demanding than Mahoosuc Notch was the ascent up Mahoosuc Arm, which we had to do next. This was a 1,600' climb that we had to do in 1.05 miles. Ugh.
This reminded me somewhat of the climb up the Eyebrow Ridge on Old Speck, though there weren't any rungs or cables to assist with traction. It also reminded me somewhat of the North Tripyramid Slide in that my achilles tendons were a bit sore by the end, after being on my toes and pushing off over such a long distance. But it was truly similar to neither of them in terms of terrain. It resembled them only in steepness.
And to be fair, I need to revise that "1600' in 1.05 miles" figure, since that's measured from the end of the Mahoosuc Notch, and you really don't start climbing in earnest for another half mile or so...
Thankfully, Mother Nature provided an oasis of sorts at the exact spot where the trail starts to get hard, and to say that we found lots of others taking advantage of it is an understatement.
I counted 17 people there at one point, most of them (including us) electing to take the boots off and soak the feet in the cool, calf-deep pools there, and wash two days of accumulated mud off our legs. Upstream just a bit, just about everybody (again, including us) filtered some of the crisp, clear water into our Nalgene bottles, our last resupply which would see us through to the end of the hike.
Not being in a big hurry, we probably took a 20 minute break there, relaxing on the rocks with our feet in the water. Eventually though, we wanted to keep going, and keep going we did. Not far from this little oasis, the trail got tough. Very tough.
The last several hundred feet of elevation gain were done on top of some exposed slabs of granite bedrock. I would NOT want to do this when wet, and indeed, there were lots of side trails beside the slabs with heavy erosion. I think they need to install some rungs or cables at least in a few places here, similar to what is found on the Eyebrow trail on Old Speck. Thankfully we had a dry day though, and though the climb tested my lungs a bit, we made it to the top just fine, and had the weekend's last summit view while having a snack before we took the cutoff trail back to the Success Pond Road.
The view here is basically a look back at what we'd climbed since we started the day before, sort of forming a "C" shape if you were to overlay our route on this picture, starting with the ridge that goes off the right side of the top of the frame (the closer one, not the more distant Mt Washington and Adams).
Though we'd discussed continuing on to Speck Pond and Old Speck, we both agreed at that point that it was getting late enough in the day that if we were to do that, we'd get back to Portland much later than we wanted to. I wasn't disappointed, as I've climbed Old Speck from the other side four times, and I knew the view well. There was also a 40% chance of showers later in the day, which although they never materialized, factored into our decision at the time.
The hike back to the road was uneventful, and eventually became a well graded, soft path that was easy on the feet. Upon reaching the road, we were looking forward to a 4+ mile road walk, but were hoping to thumb a ride, which we managed to do after walking just half a mile.
On the way home, Craig and I stopped at Sunday River Brewing Co. and had French Onion soup, burgers, and beer, before driving back to Portland, somewhat tired, a little sore in my case, but extremely satisifed with how we spent our weekend!