East vs West

When we first went to Yosemite, we heard an experienced hiker comment on the chief difference between Eastern trails and Western trails. In the west, he said, trails wind up steep mountainsides in a series of switchbacks. This happened because of the amount of mule traffic, necessary because when you climb Western mountains, you're likely to be climbing a long, long way. In the East, especially the Northeast, the trails are good Protestant ethic trails that frequently go more or less straight up the mountain, regardless of terrain. Sort of like this:





Likewise, Eastern trails are likely to go straight down the mountain, disregarding whatever's in the way, like this:




Mules frown on this sort of terrain. It is only humans of a certain temperament who walk over this stuff voluntarily. This, said the hiker at Yosemite, is what makes a big mountain out of a small one in the East, and helps to make Eastern mountains good training for Western ones.

Now, this guy was hitting on an attractive woman when we overheard this, so he did skip a few items. One is that a climb from 1500 feet above sea level to 3000 feet above sea level, which we were doing on this Mount Monadnock hike, allows one to catch one's breath and recover one's base heart rate fairly quickly. Not so when climbing, say, from 7000 feet to 8500 feet. I know there are devices that allow athletes to duplicate high-altitude conditions when training at low altitudes, but they don't seem to have shown up at my gym. Nevertheless, that travelling hiker's observations allow us to take an optimistic view of our preparations for the next Yosemite adventure.

Those old names

Somewhere in these musings there may be some snarky comments about the origins of some so-called old Native American names. The name in play today has no such pretensions. The Wapack Trail, and the range it follows of the same name, is a contraction nearing its 90th birthday. The features run roughly north-south. It begins in the south, from Mount Watatic in Ashburnham, MA, to Pack Mount Monadnock*, in Peterborough, NH. One way, it's something over 21 miles, with a couple of thousand feet total climb (one goes down as well as up). From a distance (Monadnock) and a slightly higher altitude it looks like this:



So the name lacks ingenuity. It was coined in an inn in the 1920s. Ken Burns notwithstanding, we'll assume they had nothing but coffee to lubricate their creative faculties during Prohibition.

Although this is on my spouse's native sod, we've never done the Wapack. Its chief appeal has always been to hard core hiking and back country skiing groupies. However, last week we said "yes" to Em's proposal that we go back to Yosemite. Since we have a mere 11 months to get into shape, it seemed like time for an alpha test. We chose the Wapack section running south from NH 101 in the general direction of New Ipswich.

When one is on a one-way trail, the art of back-timing becomes very important. Recalling a Yosemite occasion when back-timing didn't go over so well, I got ironclad commitments to stop when we could still get back.

If one bones up on the route from something like Maptech Mapserver, one encounters a bright shining lie. Somewhere along the line, they moved the damn thing. The trail once went merrily up the slopes of the former Temple Mountain ski area, then followed valleys and contour lines along the ridgeline for several miles. Now the trail climbs each rise on the ridgeline, including two considerable peaks. Fortunately, everything is well marked, with blazes as well as the sweat of its hikers.

It's no wonder the groupies kind of keep this thing a secret. It's a lovely walk in the woods. The added climbs somewhat add to the delight. The tourist toys are totally absent; so are the privies. Despite the somewhat brutal peak climbs, hikers share the trail with mountain bikers. There seemed to be adequate mutual courtesy.

That was the weekend before last. Obviously we survived, ready for more, because yesterday it was back to Monadnock. Here we have another allegedly and perfectly apposite translation, which has morphed into a technical geological term: also the holy mountain of southwestern New Hampshire.

But this was not an occasion for my spouse, reared in view of the mountain, to worship it. We were there for a conditioning climb with an elevation gain of 1500 feet. (not much, you say? Go thou and do likewise.) We went up our standard route, the Cascade Link to the Pumpelly Trail. We were warned at the base that the Link was "wet." Well yes: actually, it seemed as if the mountain was leaking.


Observe the scenic flowing brook to my spouse's left. That is the trail. The State Park encourages hikers to stay in the trail no matter what, to avoid environmental damage, but there were moments that called for exceptions.

All of the lower sections were sodden, and all but the highest of the trail's six scrambles more nearly resembled waterfalls. This confirmed us in our choice of return routes. We'd never been on the Red Dot and so fulfilled our curiosity. It's busy, ledgy, and this day was also wet.

This was also no day to linger on or near the summit (we stopped about a quarter mile away and 200 feet below the summit), even though it was one of those legendary days on which one could see from Boston to central Vermont. The price of admission for that was temperatures hovering around freezing and a Force 8 gale. As we ate lunch I saw the inevitable naive young person clambering up in jeggings and a royal blue tank top. I supposed her skin would match her top in a few minutes.

Satisfactory trip. Our total height gain was nearer 1600 than 1500 feet, and we covered 5.2 miles in just under 5 hours, breaks included. And we're (sort of) mobile. If the weather cooperates, we should either do a slightly longer trip of the Wapack variety or a 2000 foot climb before winter drives us to his and her Stairmasters. Then we have to pick it all up again in spring and get ready in earnest for the Big Yo.

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* If "Monadnock" means "mountain that stands alone," how does one account for Pack Monadnock, since it stands not alone, but at one end of a range of hills over 20 miles long? Monadnock may actually be Abenaki for " that big hill over there." Pack Monadnock might be "that other big hill over there."

Trail marked, Mark Trail

Yesterday's event was a test drive for this pair of putative Yosemite hikers at Mount Monadnock. To appreciate this fully, you must understand that my spouse grew up within sight of America's Mount Fuji, where residents' interest in the mountain borders on worship. She has been up and down the mountain more times than she can count. My view of the mountain has always been more reserved, but it is the best thing to climb in an hour and a half driving radius.

Things change, and lesson 1 in such change came with our trail selection. We took our old favourite pre-kid route, the Cascade Link to the Pumpelly Trail. This is seven miles or so, nearly double the length of the two most touristy trails.

If you follow the links above, you'll read what a "gentle climb" this is. On the average, it is: just as the person with one foot in a bucket of boiling water and the other in a bucket of ice is, on the average, comfortable. When we first began using that trail, 30-odd years ago, we agreed with that review.

During the years since our last trip, someone added a large number of not-so-gentle sections that escaped our notice when we were under 30.

And apart from the aging of the hikers in question, there's a question of maintenance. Very few hikers do the Link for its full length. They bear off on one of the other trails that head to the summit. After the last of those turnoffs trail maintenance, especially of trail markers, has slipped quite a bit.

It was a relief to reach the altitudes where cairns took over from yellow markers. Until then, our progress was slowed by having to spread out now and then and find the trail.

Slowed, that is, until I observed the distinctive spoor of the contemporary hiker: the scratches left on rock by today's hiking staffs. (Take this detour to one example.) Part of this trip's purpose was to experiment with these gadgets, which are definitely useful.

More and more of these poles have rubber tips rather than metal points. As I understand it, the change is happening out of concern for the environmental damage the points may cause. On these two little-used trails, there wasn't much evidence that hiking poles had done any more damage than feet to soil and roots. But the marks were all over the rocks, as if some very well equipped family of paleolithic bears had been making daily trips up and down the mountain for centuries. This doesn't seem like much, in the balance of things. Do we care about scratching rocks? Well, my wife noticed that where the scratches were the lichens were often dead or dying.

The rubber tips on my poles were worn through before we had barely started. I replaced them this morning. I had "leave only footprints" borne in on me from an early age, and I try to take more human traces out of the woods than I bring in (more on that presently). Although the marks on the rocks helped us to pick out the trail several times, they struck me as the sort of lasting change on the environment that it's better to avoid.

It was balm to stiff muscles and various bruises to check the literature this morning and discover that we'd done the trip in six hours (minus lunch and summit worship), which is an average trip over this route for hikers of any age and condition. It was also a comfort to check the respective topo maps and find that the nasty bits of yesterday's trek are steeper than anything we plan to do at Yosemite. That lesson is "stick to the plan:" we will not be gulled into doing Half Dome, hanging by our eyebrows off El Capitan, or anything else that could involve the word "precipice."