Day-Trip Bonus - Mount Monadnock

My friend and personal fitness trainer, Fausto, invited me at the last minute to join him and his family on a hike up Mount Monadnock in Jaffrey, New Hampshire.  The weather was spectacular today, so how could I have said no?

Here's Fausto with his daughter tucked neatly into his pack, and his son in the lower left of the photo, examining one of the gypsy moth caterpillars that he carefully carried the entire trek up the mountain.

The trip by car to Mt. Monadnock took about 90 minutes, and it passed quickly with pleasant conversation.

We arrived at the mountain at about 11:00 AM, and we decided to ascend the White Dot trail which is the most direct ascent and provides some challenging obstacles.

Here I am near to the beginning of our climb.  Smiles and gusto.  The rocks you see are right in the trail -- we had to scramble over small and large rocks the entire 100 minutes to the summit.

The second picture to the right shows me on one of the larger rock outcroppings we had to traverse.  The white dot on the rock below my feet is one of the trail markers.

The weather really was spectacular.  It was about 73 degrees at the base of the mountain.  I smeared on plenty of sunscreen, but I decided to wait on the insect repellent until the bugs started to bite.  The buggers weren't too much in evidence, fortunately, and I avoided the yucky smell of bug
spray and came away from the day with a single bite.

According to the New Hampshire state agency which operates the mountain, Mount Monadnock is the third most-climbed mountain in the world, behind Mt. Fuji in Japan, and a mountain in China.  The mountain reaches into the sky 3,165 feet, and you can make out the skyscrapers of Boston on a clear day.  The day was so nice that we could indeed -- barely -- see Boston from the summit.

Today was beautiful, but New England was drenched with rain yesterday and the day before, so there was active runoff and very muddy patches along nearly the entirety of the hike.  When I returned home, I stripped down except for my socks and sneakers and hosed-off in the shower. My sneakers are drying in the shower as I type this.  I was a muddy mess from the calves down.

Here I am a little more than halfway up the mountain, at a convenient photo stop.  Note the, err, perspiration apparent on my shirt.  No, I am fully able to sip successfully from my water bottle without spillage, thank you!!

After much sweating, climbing, scrambling, crawling, and a little bit of whining, our party made it to the summit for a late lunch.

I had been brimming with gusto and bravado at the beginning of the trek, but I think the oxygen-deprived height made me positively giddy:

It was very windy and a bit chilly on the summit, and I donned my long-sleeve shirt for lunch.  We had sandwiches, nuts (the kids actually had pizza!), and we finished the meal with fresh slices of watermelon!  Fausto's wife had carried a small, whole watermelon in her pack the entire way up the mountain!

The descent (on the White Cross Trail) was actually more difficult in my opinion than the climb.  The soles of my shoes were slick with water and some mud, and it made scrambling down some of the steeper portions of the trail really difficult -- I even scraped my knee and performed an unintentional split.  I didn't know that I still had that kind of flexibility.  And the way my leg muscles are feeling now, as I type this, I don't think I DO have that kind of flexibility....

All-in-all a great day out, and the nearly 2,000 calories burned didn't hurt, either!

My Dad and I are still planning our trip to the UK this August, but I thought my loyal readers would enjoy something different and closer to home, and something they could try on their own for little cost.

More to come about the Grand Tour of Great Britain!