gwax's rumblings

Before I get into the meat of this post, right now I’m eat­ing a Beef Stick and sharp ched­dar omelette and let me tell you, it’s fan­tas­tic. I’m mak­ing this stuff for break­fast next time I go camp­ing with the guys.

Anyway, yes­ter­day, I decided I’d set out to climb one of the White Mountains today. Taking a hike struck me as a good way to spend some time and try out my new snow­shoes (Xmas loot, kind of). I was look­ing through my list of good hikes that I want to take and I decided to try to get up Mount Moosilauke (there’s debate between whether it’s pro­nounced to rhyme with rock or rocky, but I pre­fer ponounc­ing it as though it ends in uh). The plan was to set out around 7a today, get to trail­head around 10a, reach sum­mit before 5p, turn around, camp at sun­set and fin­ish up tomor­row. That I’m writ­ing this now means I obvi­ously didn’t succeed.

The prob­lems began when I pressed snooze until 6:40a, then I had to go get some food for my trip so I ended up with set­ting out at the equiv­a­lent of 8a which put me at the trail­head around 11a. 11a was still a pretty rea­son­able start time by my fig­ur­ing but then between there being a whole bunch of snow, the trail up Moosilauke being really steep and me being plenty out of shape, I hiked woe­fully behind sched­ule. By 2:00p, I had made it up 2/3 of the ele­va­tion and 3/8 of the dis­tance, which gave me 3 hours to make it the rest of the way and find shel­ter. Figuring I wouldn’t make sum­mit before sun­down, I fig­ured I’d turn around, so as to be able to sleep in a proper bed tonight. Also, it was really cold up there (def­i­nitely <20°F, maybe <10°F but cer­tainly >0°F), which had me a lit­tle con­cerned that my 0°F sleep­ing bag might not cut it. So I took the safer approach and turned back.

Coming down, as is always the case, was mighty quick, tak­ing under an hour to cover the pre­vi­ous three’s dis­tance. Seeing as there was a whole ton and a half of snow, going down was a mix­ture of glis­sad­ing and ass slid­ing almost the whole way. Also, the steep­ness that had been a bother on the ascent made the descent fan­tas­ti­cally keen. I almost wish I’d brought a sled with me, though that’s prob­a­bly the sort of bad idea that would have tossed me off a cliff.

In sum­ma­tion: I’m fat and slow; Moosilauke is really steep; I like my new snowshoes.

Afternote: The high­light of the hike was the won­der­fully amus­ing sign on a privy by the shel­ters where I took lunch that read some­thing very nearly, ‘THERE IS NO “P” IN THIS RIVY USE THE WOODS’.

Our camp­ing trip ended up being two days long instead of three and while parts of me are dis­ap­pointed, other parts are sore and glad to have woken up in a real bed. All in all, it doesn’t really mat­ter too much to me whether we went for one night or two, it just mat­ters that we went; I was glad to have some time rough­ing it and hang­ing out with some good friends.

The trip went pretty much like this: We left Sunday morn­ing at around 8:30a from MIT’s Random Hall. Taking I-93N to Ashland where we got onto US-3, which took us to NH-113, which in turn led to NH-113A, which led to Whiteface Intervale Road, off of which we found trail­head park­ing. Incidentally, the frost heaves on NH-113A are atro­cious (go too fast and you will likely kill your car). From trail­head, we took Flat Mountain Pond Trail up and into the Sandwich Range Wilderness. Hiking in was mod­er­ate at first with a packed trail but as the trail split, with one fork head­ing to Mount Whiteface and the other head­ing to Flat Mountain Pond, we were left with untouched snow. Snowshoeing on the unpacked snow is not bad at all but the trail started to gain in incli­na­tion and was mod­er­ately steep for a long while. At the end of day one, we were exhausted and camped a few hun­dred feet from the trail, near the north­east­ern shore of Flat Mountain Pond. After a night that got colder each of the three times I woke up, I found myself to be the first one awake after sun­rise. Being the first one awake, I decided to go about mak­ing a fire, which was fun and I man­aged with one match. Smalltime was the sec­ond per­son awake and he helped me gather some fire­wood. Eventually, every­one woke up, we gath­ered our stuff and set out. We were plan­ning to con­tinue along the Flat Mountain Pond Trail until what point as we felt like stop­ping, camp and fin­ish the next day but we ended up mak­ing it all the way back down on the sec­ond day. Making it down, we hopped in our vehi­cles and headed back, stop­ping at the Burger King in Ashland, NH as is tra­di­tional for these trips (and any­time I do any hik­ing in north­ern New Hampshire). Such was how the third annual spring break camp­ing trip went.

Now for the rest of spring break, I will spend a few days at home and then some time work­ing on my thesis.

This spring break will mark the Third Annual Misogynistic Camping Trip. Sam, Max, Hippo, Ian and I are going up to New Hampshire to be cold and “be men”. We will leave late Saturday, spend the night at Sam’s grand­par­ents’ place in North Conway and begin our hike early Sunday morn­ing. We will be in the moun­tains through late Tuesday and should be back in Massachusetts before Wednesday.

The rest of y’all can plan your lives (or vaca­tions) around that (or not).