Sunday October 23rd – The (Anti-Climactic) Aftermath

Posted on October 26, 2011 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

After the dust settled on the next day, activities included eating a gargantuan meal at Tilton Diner, paying off some school loans at home, a nap, more food, a bit of indoor biking to test out my bike trainer, and cookies/pie from my roommate’s mom :) all-in-all it was a good Sunday.

9:00 - Nothing like reading some Dracula over breakfast, for some reason reading about vampires makes me hungry. Generally just moving pretty slow and helping to clean up the Loj here and there.

10:00 - Heading down I-93 to Tilton Diner for breakfast and "eyeballing" epic amounts of coffee. If you don't know what eyeballing is, just youtube it for a video demonstration. I wasn't sure I had a ride home until this morning. However, getting stuck in NH for the weekend wouldn't have been the worst thing ever.

11:00 - Had a massive breakfaast; 2 pancakes, 2 eggs, 2 sausage, homefries, toast, and coffee, all for like $7.

12:00 - Back on I-93 heading back to Bean Town.

1:00 - Back at the apartment looking at college loan stuff to make sure I'm not defaulting on any of my loans. Also, I cut the last check to finally pay off one of my smaller but high interest loans, thank god. Still have thousands of dollars to go but it's nice to check one off the list.

2:00 - I set up my bike and bike trainer in the living room. I was feeling motivated to do some exercise, just didn't want to go outside :)

(I spent a few hours napping and then missed an alarm for a photo so I’m a few short today, my bad, but I don’t really feel THAT bad)

7:00 - Cooking rice, broccoli and chourico for dinner/lunch.

8:00 - Graham brought food back from home; loaf of homemade bread, an apple pie, chocolate chip cookies, and chocolate cookies with marshmallow and chocolate icing. Basically I told him he should go home every weekend from now on.

I managed to crawl into bed around 9:00 and P.T.F.O., I was caught in a dilemma between exhaustion and not wanting work on Monday to come any faster than it needed to, but sleep won this time.

Sunday October 16th – Mt Isolation, Peak #47 with Keith and Amy

Posted on October 19, 2011 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

Today we made a 14 mile hike to hit my 47th peak, Mt Isolation. As it’s name indicates, its kind of out of the way and it takes a while to hike it. The trail was fairly washed out due to the uncharacteristic amount of rain in NH this season. So there were 10+ river crossings and mostly flooded trails so it was a soggy day. It was also fairly cold (below 50F) so we changed out our wet socks about halfway through in an attempt to not get hypothermia from wet clothes in 40F and windy weather. Here are the pictures for today’s hike:

8:00 - Checking out the map real quick before heading out for the hike.

9:00 - The requisite pre-hike photo in case we are never seen again. Then if someone miraculously discovers our camera they'll have the last image of us :)

10:00 - A shot of the wilderness at the beginning of the trail. Most of the elevation was taken care of within the first 3 miles, so it made the next 4 pretty easy-going elevation-wise, not so much river-crossing-wise.

11:00 - The trail was pretty soggy due to the volume of rain we've had in the past week/month but we managed just fine. Amy managed to not fall in the water at all while Keith and I had one pretty good slip each.

12:00 - Keith making a technical maneuver across the stream. It was pretty uncrossable without taking our boots off so we found a tree to shimmy across on. In total we did 10 river crossings, 12 if you count the time we messed up and crossed for no reason, bummer.

1:00 - Still on the way up to the peak, less than a mile to go when this picture was taken.

2:00 - On peak #47! You can see the Presidentials in the background with Mt. Washington in the clouds as per usual. Isolation gets a really bad rap but it actually has one of the best summit views I've seen in the White Mountains. Pretty much a 360 degree panorama with the prezzies, owls head, hancocks, etc. Basically a fantastic view, it just takes 7 miles to get it.

3:00 - On the way down from the summit. 7 miles down, 7 miles to go.

4:00 - Getting some stream crossing beta from the hikers in front of us. Believe it or not I met this couple last weekend on Owl's Head. The girl just finished her 48 peaks today with Isolation as her last one, awesome. She seemed kind of burnt out and not too enthusiastic about it. It seemed more like she was doing it to get it done and to check the box. I plan on celebrating a little more than simply tagging a summit and heading out.

5:00 - More stream crossings, seemed to be the story of the day.

6:00 - On the way out, 13 or so miles into the day.

7:00 - Kind of a crappy photo, but the important point was that we finished around 7:00 and headed to the Woodstock Inn for a beer and some real food.

8:00 - Me driving to Woodstock Inn, trying to give Keith a break for a while because as the mountain's name indicates, the mountain is fairly "isolated" from civilization.

9:00 - Enjoying a bison burger and a Red Rack Ale from the Woodstock Inn before our trip back home. The photo was taken via Amy's iPhone because my camera and phone were both dead.

There should be two or three more pictures from today but not only did both my camera and my phone die before 8pm, I also passed out the whole ride home from NH. I’m lucky to have so many friends who are interested in hiking these peaks with me, without them I would be shit out of luck because I don’t have a car. When I made the goal of finishing my peaks by my 25th birthday I had thought that there would be at least a few weekends where I’d have to rent a car due to not being able to find a ride. So far it hasn’t been a problem, so thanks to all my friends for dragging my car-less arse around the state of NH to help me finish my peaks. Finally managed to get to bed around 1am for 5 hours of sleep before heading to work. Sore and tired on a Monday morning from a 14 mile hike the day before, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Only one left: Mt. Carrigain, #48 I’m coming to get you…

Sunday October 9th – Summiting Owls Head and Beer at the Loj

Posted on October 12, 2011 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

This weekend had easily the nicest weather I’ve ever experienced in the White Mountains; both days were 75F, sunny, and clear with a nice breeze and nights around 50F. It was also a great opportunity for Sarah and I to spend some quality time together. It was actually the first overnight trip we’ve done together (not counting the winter) and also the first time with the Osprey backpack I bought her for her birthday over a year ago (fail).

Life has been crazy lately with the distractions that come with school/work/blog/friends/city-life so we had a great time hiking, talking, hanging out at camp playing cards, and eating a ridiculous amount of food. Not having any time pressures was also great, there were no meetings or parties to run off to, nothing was on the to-do list, there was no internet, no texting, no facebook, no email, and no cell phone service. Basically it was fantastic and for the most part nobody got hurt, RIP my achilles tendon for a few days probably.

6:00 - Various foods for breakfast after sleeping almost 12 hours.

7:00 - Breaking down the tent so we can get the 13 mile hike started.

8:00 - What Sarah didn't know was that we were actually hiking to the gun show. Side note - the Osprey 40L is the most legit piece of gear I own, huge props to Osprey.

9:00 - The trail is used pretty infrequently and it hadn't yet been assessed for damage after Hurricane Irene so it was a mixture of a trail and a bushwhack (no trail).

10:00 - At the base of Owls head. I actually tweaked my achilles tendon pretty good on the way from the campsite so this is me putting on Sarah's bomber ankle brace. The 2nd hike in a row for her where she's used her ankle brace on someone else.

11:00 - Summit of Owls Head, not much of a view but the rock slide on the route up had some spectacular views of the Franconia Range.

12:00 - View of the Franconia Range from the rock slide on the way down from the summit of Owl's Head.

1:00 - Where we chose to eat lunch at the base of Owls Head before our 8-ish mile hike out. Thank goodness it was mostly flat because my achilles tendon was still bothering me. It felt like a crab had clamped down on either side of the tendon each time I stepped. The ankle brace helped a ton though (thanks Sarah).

2:00 - Sarah crossing one of the few dozen stream crossings over the past two days.

3:00 - The last 4-5 miles were almost entirely flat, pretty much a hallway of trees with a bedding of fall leaves.

4:00 - Leaf Peepers on the trail near the end, i.e. city-slickers that invade the country in the late fall in order to snap photos of the foliage (peep the leaves). A guy asked us in amazement, "Did you really camp out there?", we said yes, and he said "So you like pitched a tent and everything?!" and we said yes again and went on our way. A perfect example of a Leaf Peeper.

5:00 - Back at the Tufts Mountain Club Loj waiting for dinner and a ride home.

6:00 - A full chicken straight out of the oven courtesy of the awesomely righteous Peak Weekend Caretakers.

7:00 - Our ride was a bit late do we decided to make a beer run; Tuckerman's Headwall, some of the most legit local beer in the East.

8:00 - The woodstove from the 2nd Tufts Loj which may or may not have contributed to its burning down. We got a ride home from a Mountain Club Alum '74 who stops by the Loj pretty frequently. We stopped by his cabin that he and his TMC friends had built once they outgrew the Loj. Basically it's a super legit bachelor bad in the woods, a great place for dance parties or axe murdering depending on what you're into.

I’m super pumped about finishing out my 48 peaks, especially after having just finished a stellar weekend up north. I plan to do Mt. Isolation next weekend followed by my final peak Mt. Carrigan the weekend after that. Maybe after that I can get a life besides hiking in NH :)