Crawford, East Stairs, and a Ledge....9/13/12

As I've mentioned in my blog, I'm pursuing the NH200. Thursday I decided on East Stairs, a bushwhack. The normal route for this would have been up Rocky Branch South Tr. to Stairs Col Tr. But since RB south is closed I had to go for a much longer, tougher route. Davis Path to Stairs Col Tr. I had 2 other objectives in mind. First was to climb Crawford on a much better day than my only other visit, (HHH and big time bugs). Second was to do a shorter bushwhack on the way back to a nice ledge off Davis Path NE of Crawford.

Said Ledge

I Started out on Davis Path at 8:00am. Davis Path is nice but once it starts to climb it doesn't stop until you hit the spur to Crawford. This has been more noticeable on my 3 descents on this trail after a long day. But it has nice stairs, and views.

I reached the junction of the Crawford Spur and headed up.

Where you hit the ledges on Davis Path, and continuing up the spur to Crawford, can be a bit tricky. The blazes are faded and far between in some places so it's easy to take a direction on the ledge that dead-ends. I did much better this time. Got off trail only once. 8)  And hit the summit around 9:30. 

Greeted by this....

And one of my favorite profiles in the Whites....

I had a lot more to do this day but I could not resist lingering for a good half hour taking photos.

As much as I hated to I had to move on. I had roughly 2.5 miles to get to a point I wanted to start the bushwhack from. I got to the Stairs Col Tr in about an hour. This would be the first time I set foot on this trail which is always exiting to me. 

  

Stairs Col

Looking up the bottom step

Came across this bottomless tree

As I often do in planning a hike, I neglect to look at the contour lines over the course a my route. Did not see how much elevation loss I would have to get to my starting point of the whack and hence the very significant climb back up to the col.

On the way down I did spot my objective.

I reached my entry point to find myself in thick saplings.

It did open up pretty nicely but was very steep to the col between Middle Stairs (don't know what else to call it), and East Stairs where it was quite open.

Heading east to the summit from the col was very dense pencil woods. Moving through this stuff was a slow process. Not sure how long it took but it seemed like it took an hour to go .2 miles. I did make the summit though. After doing so, it was an immediate retreat to a fir-wave just below the summit that looked like I might get some views from. 

Sure enough....

Now it was time for the whack out and the climb back up to Stairs col. Yippy! Now it was easier walking once back on Davis Path. I'd one more thing I wanted to do and that was to bushwhack to that ledge I mentioned in the beginning. It's on a ridge heading NW off Davis Path about .4 miles, and about .4 miles NE of Mt Crawford. I got to that point and headed in. It was very scrappy at first but hit some ledge. Then more scrappy. It was here that the only real problem of the day occurred. I hadn't noticed until my pant leg was soaked that the bite-piece of my hydration bladder had been pulled off. I shut the valve but the damage was done. Probably close to a liter was lost (started full at 100oz.) because there was just a mouthful left. I had to end my quest for that ledge. I was just few yards from the first open ledges (400 feet off trail), so I did continue to those which had nice views.

Time to end this journey. I hydrate a lot when hiking, in general for that matter, so knowing I was out of water made me all the more thirsty.  And as I mentioned earlier, descending Davis Path is tough on tired legs. For me anyway. But all I could think of was getting close enough to the stream that parallels the trail to get a drink. 

Salvation! I was not concerned about drinking from this at all. Drank my fill. A good liter, at least.

I finished around 3:30. Much longer than I'd though it would take. I will be going back someday to just explore all the "Ledgey Goodness" in that area.

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Went "All the Way" on my second date. ;-) 8/1/12

Now that I have your attention 8-), I bushwhacked Greens Cliff Wednesday. Fresh legs this time but more important long pants, got me to the summit. I headed out the same way as last time, first on the Sawyer River Trail then took the first right on the snowmobile trail. Crossed Meadow Brook via a bridge and just headed due east from there.  Down low the woods are pretty scrappy, some hobblebush but mostly fairly thick young spruce. It did eventually open up.

I did come across several large boulders which never cease to amaze me. How they were carried for thousands of miles and just plopped down. With nothing for scale you really can't tell how big they are but they were huge. I love the ones with the split in them.

I came to an area that had a few caves. This is just one. Now these give me different thoughts. Is this the home of some Black Bear? Shhhh, be berry, berry quite. :)

I had a route in mind for my ascent but that went out the window as I just made a straight easterly assault. This was one steep B*%#$! As I neared the high point I found what looked to be a lightning strike. If not that, perhaps just spontaneous combustion from heat. It was wierd. It went from one tree, to another about 6 feet away. Could not step back far enough so this is what it looked like from left to right.

About 100yds. from there I hit the summit. Unlike the day I went to the ledges at 2200', my views were not that expansive. First there were no open ledges on the high point and it was overcast. I did have some though. I could have dropped down a couple hundred feet to more open ledge ( which I started to do) but had no inkling to do that. This was going to have to be good enough for views. Since today was about peak-bagging. :D  Here's some of the views I got.

This is perhaps Bear Mtn with the Moats in the back

Tremont and Owls Cliff

Church Ponds with Chocorua in the distance to the right.

When it was time to descend, I decided not to retrace my steps. Because not to mention how steep it was, I'd hit a couple pretty bad blow-down areas. And what doesn't show on the topo, several bumps. So I headed down the NW ridge then circled back to the east to head right for the Sawyer River Tr but maybe a half mile further in than where I started. This route was perfect, it got me from 2900+' to about 1800' in 15 minutes. It was that good. Then, the last .3 miles to get to the trail took at least a half. Thick as it gets young spruce. But I did make it out with one last stop at that beautiful spot on the Swift River.

This took me all of about 4 hours and as they say, "Another bites the dust".

Tracks

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Cashing in a Views...IOU 7/14/12

After having a couple views of the Bonds and passing the the Bond Cliff trail Monday, I said next chance to hike them on a decent day I will.

The reason for this is I've hiked the Bonds twice. Once in 2008 when there was a very low ceiling. Not much for views at all.

And once this past winter. Snow squalls and darkness. That's me giving the thumbs up.

I did make a return to West Bond a couple summers ago for views redemption. 

Saturday it was time for Bond Cliff, and Mt. Bond to redeem themselves. I got an early start (6:30 on trail) because it was predicted to be another hot, hazy an humid day. I wanted to beat the heat and hopefully some of the haze. Since I was not peak bagging, I rode my bike to the Wilderness boundary and stashed it. The only way to fly on the Lincoln Woods Tr.  I did not realize this but apparently the trail after the bridge over the Franconia Branch has been renamed do to the Pemi bridge removal. After the hike I wanted to talk to a ranger about something and he seemed lost when I said where I'd come from and was refering to the Wilderness Tr. He called it Franconia Brook Trail but my AMC online maps calls it Bond Cliff Trail. I do not have the latest addition of the guide so I'm not sure what it is for sure.

To make a short story even shorter, I reached Bond cliff about 9:30. And was amazed at what I saw. It would have been a shame not to return for this.

 Another reason for returning is I really wanted my obligatory standing on the cliff photo. And luckily there were 2 hikers up there already. Now I don't care for heights at all and knew this would not be easy. So wouldn't you know as soon as I got out there the wind started gusting enough to knock me off balance a bit. 

After catching myself I asked the guy to "please take the photo quick". He did and I got my shot. 

After That it was off for Mt. Bond. Along the way I was treated to some Alpine Flowers. This was a first this year for me. Not sure what they are as I don't have an identification book for these.

It was pretty hazy now ruining a the distant views but what I could see was awesome. I particularly liked the view back towards Bond Cliff.

Hazy but I'll take this any day of the week.

I spent a half hour on Mt Bond and the same when I got back to Bond Cliff. Headed back down around 12:30. Because of the layout of this trail, much of it is jog-able. That, and having a bike to ride on the last 3 miles, I was out by 3:00pm. Now I believe the only 4K that owes me views is Tecumseh.

And this is the only way to do the Lincoln Woods Trail. :D 

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Two Days in the Pemigewasset Wilderness 7/8&9/12

Trip objectives: I needed to get off my butt and do at least a 2-day backpacking trip and stealth camp in the wilderness. I wanted to try and find a couple of the most remote old logging camps. And I wanted to bushwhack to an alpine zone on Mt. Bonds east ridge. The idea was to backpack to an area on the Thoreau Falls Trail near Jumping Brook, set up camp, and start hunting for some logging camps. That was to be day one. Day two would be to whack to the east ridge on Bond.  At first I was going to get to this area by using the Zealand Tr., to Ethan Pond Tr., to Thoreau Falls Tr. But I'd only been on the East Side Tr. Twice. Once for just a short distance to start a bushwhack and the second time it was on a overcast-rainy day just past the Franconia Brook Tentsite. So after reading a couple reports on The Mountain Wanderer's Blog of the East Side Trail and wonderful views along the way, I decided to do a longer and perhaps more tedious route to my target area. So the route was to be East Side Tr., to the Wilderness Tr., Thoreau Falls Tr. On my return the second day I did ford the Pemi East Branch down stream a bit from the removed bridge where I found a spot that I could mostly rock-hop and just had to go through 6' stretch of knee deep water that was moving at a moderate pace. Pretty safe but did the usual unclipping of all the straps on my backpack just in cast I fell. Then back to Lincoln Woods via the Wilderness and Lincoln Woods Trails. That's the gist of it.

I only completed objective #1, the overnight at a secluded spot. Because of a glitch on the outset, a 7:30 start turned into 10:30. With the late start I wasn't going to be able to check out any logging camps between there and where I was camping. Which I'd be passing a few. And with the miles I had and stopping to smell roses along the way (not worth the effort of you don't) I didn't get to my target area until 4pm. No time or desire then for logging camp hunting. But I did spend 4 glorious hours before bed enjoying this gorgeous remote area. In the morning I really only had 3 hrs before I wanted to start the long trek back. I decided to give camp 23a a go. Some hints I may be close but no luck. From what I've heard, a LOT, more time is needed to find this one. On the way back when I got to the Franconia Falls Trail I said to myself no way you can do this with another 3 miles still to go and a 2.5 hour drive home with it now being 3pm. That quickly changed to, no way you can not go there. Hadn't been to the falls since 2007. After that, 3 miles on the said to be, most boring trail in the Whites. Wasn't so bad, all things considered.

Heading out.

Views along the Pemi near Pine Island.

View from the bank just past the the Franconia Tentsites.

Another view further up the East Side Tr.

Some of Irenes wrath on the Wilderness Tr.

All that's left of the removed suspension bridge other than a large cable not in this photo. 

Thoreau Falls Trail bridge over the East Branch. Looks like it could be next to go.

Once on the Thoreau Falls Trail I saw some wildflowers, a couple artifacts, lots of straight railroad grade, and more Irene damage. I had a good fall at that spot.

Shortly after this damaged section the trail seemed to turn into more of a herd path. I'm not sure but I think this was some sort of a reroute because I was climbing and slabbing the west side of Shoal Pond Peak. I was near enough to where I wanted to cross the North Fork so I dropped down and did so. And in a matter of  10 minutes found home. What luck.

This spot probably just makes the 200' rule. I'd have to call this legally, nonlegal. As obviously a trace has been left. But there was no way I was dismantling that thing when I left. So here it would for the night, not to shabby. And this spot I believe is basically on the side-track bed going to camp 23.

After a great evening here, and a peaceful nights sleep I broke camp and set out with a small pack to hunt for camp 23a. Once while having a conversation with someone know who does this as more than just a hobby, said, (I believe), it took him 40 hours to find 23a once he stated looking. Hey, I could have gotten lucky. All I found was this cool remote pond at around 2200' and a peek-a-boo view if Mt. Bond.

I'd gone past my turn around time so I had to head back to camp to get my large pack and head out. Instead of crossing back to the messed up portion of the Thoreau Falls Tr, I decided to see if I could follow the North Fork branch of the railroad bed. I found that pretty easily and first found this memorial. Then an easy to follow rail bed. Which got me passed the damaged section of the trail and easily crossed back to the east side of the North Fork when it ended.

Jumping way ahead now. I crossed the East Branch Pemi and am now on the Wilderness Tr. I guess I didn't need to go so far to see old logging artifacts.

As I mentioned, I decided not to pass on going to Franconia Falls. Can you blame me? 8)

Now it was just the 3 mile, so called boring walk, on the Lincoln Woods Tr. back to Lincoln woods. On the way I did something for maybe the 3rd or 4th time on the journey. I went to the edge of the bank to take a picture not realizing 'til this last time I was standing on earth that was undercut by the high water from Irene.

Not the brightest thing I've ever done. One of the dumbest though.

The long and short of it is, I was skeptical on whether or not I'd enjoy a mostly low-level trip. Well....

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