Date: 2016-06-06
From: NH 25

To: Lost River Road
Miles today: 9.3
Weather: fog

The game is called ¢Dodge the Weather.¢ We expected that it would rain yesterday (correct, it did rain a lot), so we switched the hike sequence. We did a shorter, easier hike yesterday in the rain. Today was predicted to be a much better day with no rain and warm temperatures (also correct). So we moved things around a bit and did Mt. Moosilauke today, a more difficult, demanding hike. It was unfortunate because Greatness (previously known as Howie), a former work colleague of Princess joined us today for a week and we started him off with a tough hike. Now we¢re trying to figure out how to fit Kinsman into the weather forecast. Kinsman is also a hard climb and longer than today with some exposed peaks. And the weather tomorrow is expected to rain with some chance of thunderstorms. So now we¢re planning to pick up Rt. 25A to Rt. 25, a shorter, less difficult hike at lower elevations. Then we¢ll figure out what the next step will be. We checked out of Dowds early this morning. The Dowd family is very nice and we hope to come back by this way in the future. The tavern they are building should be open in a month and it looks beautiful. Now with Greatness onboard, we have an three vehicles. We decided to hike Moosilauke SoBo, the same way we have done it the last two years. The AT on the northern face of the mountain is much steeper than the southern side and we prefer to climb the steeper face rather than descend it. Hudson at Bearded Woods suggested this two years ago and we agree. So we all drove to the trailhead at the southern end, we left 2 cars there, and piled into One More¢s vehicle for the drive around to the northern trailhead. Once there, we started up the Beaver Brook Trail. In the general area of the White Mountains, there are many trails and the AT runs along a number of the local trails as it passes through the region. The AT is not always marked or identified and hikers need to know the local names of the trails that it follows. Today, we started on the Beaver Brook trail, then switched to the Glencliff Trail, then to the Town Line Trail, the Wachipauka Pond Trail, and finally to the Ore Hill Trail that led to the southern end of our day hike. Mt. Moosilauke was tough as always, but absolutely beautiful. The climb up the northside follows a cascading stream. The rains yesterday afternoon and evening were very heavy and the streams were running quite full, so the waterfalls were gorgeous. We stopped from time to time to take photos, but the trail was so challenging that we had to focus mostly on the climb and it seemed endless. This is the third time that Princess and I have done it and we can see changes in the trail each year. It seemed to us that there are more wooden steps bolted into the rock than in the past, and also more ¢intermediate¢ steps positioned to break up some of the high rock steps into 2 shorter steps. We¢re not sure if the latter is true, but it seems that way. The climb took us about 3 hours to get up and over the top. If you¢re hiking northbound this is the first time above the treelike and the views are amazing. We took the obligatory photos are the summit sign and then hurried down below treeline, the wind was ferocious at the top and we were wet from the rigors of the hike, so we were freezing. Once we were back into the pine trees we warmed up again and the descent captured our attention. The descent isn¢t as steep as the climb, but it¢s harder and longer than the descents we¢ve had up to this point. Eventually the slope leveled out and we finished with a crossing of the Oliverian Brook.At the end, Princess and Greatness headed to North Woodstock to check in at the Woodstock Inn, while One More and I went back to the northern trailhead to recover his vehicle and then we drove on to N.Woodstock as well. Greatness did well today, he did a couple of practice hikes in Georgia with Ranger and he was ready to go. But all of us are feeling beat from the Moosilauke hike. So we¢ll likely go for an easier hike tomorrow and hope the weather improves later in the week.