I just discovered The Hiking Priest YouTube channel, featuring Fr. Marcel Martel from right here in New Hampshire. I see some familiar places! Enjoy the link.
Wapack Trail
Construction this spring at Miller State Park
A favorite tactic of mine for enjoying Pack Monadnock without crowds is going to Miller State Park midweek. That option will be on hold for awhile this spring, as major work on utility infrastructure in the park will begin in April. Read on the New Hampshire State Parks website about the project and its schedule.
Access to trails and the auto road will be limited at various times.
I won’t complain much about the inconvenience. As a southern New Hampshire resident, I benefit from assorted utilities and modes of communication whose infrastructure needs to be set up on hills. At the same time, I appreciate the fact that such set-ups are subject to public hearings and environmental considerations.
It’s a good idea to check out the state parks website before heading to any state park. A few are retaining a reservation system for parking, first established to manage last year’s COVID crowds. A few miles away from Miller and Pack Monadnock, Monadnock State Park requires a reservation AND a $15 parking fee (ouch!), which covers up to 6 people per vehicle. Know before you go.
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Golden Time
As Octobers go, this one has been a beauty in my corner of New Hampshire. We’re in that annual golden time, post-bugs and pre-ice. Literally golden, too. The trees are glowing.
October on Nashua River Rail Trail
Pulpit Brook Trail, Bedford and Amherst
Pulpit Brook trail, Bedford NH
I hadn’t visited Bedford’s Pulpit Rock conservation area in years. A recent mailing from the Bedford Land Trust advised me that the Pulpit Brook trail from that property now extends into Amherst and the Joppa Hill farm. When I compare a newer map of the Pulpit Rock area to my old map from 1997, it’s striking to see how much the conservation area has been expanded with the cooperation of area landowners. I like seeing a greenway linking towns.
Mid-October: some leaves are just starting to turn.
Silver Mountain, Lempster
The Forest Society’s Five Hikes in Five Weeks program led me to this unassuming little hill with fine autumn views. The drive in was a little hairy: Lempster Mountain Road is paved and fine, and from there South Road is unpaved and sort-of fine, until it isn’t. The last few tenths of a mile of road before the trailhead feature a single lane with deep ruts. It must be all kinds of fun in mud season. At least it’s dead-flat.
But after a couple of minutes of bouncing along…what’s this? A parking area with decorative stone posts. On a dirt road in Sullivan County, no less.
From the parking area, the woodsy walk up to the open summit of Silver Mountain is easy.
Autumn on Silver Mountain, Lempster NH
Silver Mountain summit cairn; Mt. Ascutney in the distance at right
Kidder Mountain, New Ipswich
Here’s another spot I hadn’t visited in ages, just off the Wapack Trail. I had hiked up to Kidder with my son about fifteen years ago, and I recalled it as another one of those easy hills with great views (like Silver Mountain, come to think of it). I’m sorry I waited so long to come back.
The summit vegetation has grown in over the past few years, but the views to the south and southeast are still satisfying. There’s a great view of the southern Wapack Range from Barrett Mountain to Mt. Watatic.
Southern Wapack Range seen from Kidder Mountain, New Ipswich NH
On my recent visit, I shared the summit with a young family. One of the children was a boy, maybe five years old. He surveyed the Wapack Range, and announced excitedly, “I see a volcano!” His dad took the news calmly. The boy wanted a livelier response. “I see lava!” At that point, I thought okay, I’ve got to see what this is about.
At right: Mt. Watatic, faintly marked with old ski trails that spark the imagination.
I moved a little closer to see what the boy was pointing at. It was little Mt. Watatic just across the border in Massachusetts. It had a ski area long ago, and there are still faintly-discernible ski trails. To a five-year-old, those old trails looked like lava flows. I hope I never forget the look on that little boy’s face as he watched Mt. Watatic expectantly, hoping against hope that it would blow its top and show those Monadnocks who’s boss.
Sometimes the best part of a hike isn’t the hike.
Happy October!
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Temple, January 1
I made my customary New Year’s Day drive out to the Monadnock region, deciding at the last minute not to do the fun little 5k race (walk, in my case) in Temple that would have set me back $20. Instead, I continued to the Wapack trailhead in Sharon. No trails or uphill work for me this day – lazy, out-of-shape, call me what you will. I did my 5k on local roads, blessedly free of traffic and ice.
Temple Road in Sharon; Mt. Monadnock in the distance
It wasn’t a brisk walk. I kept stopping to take pictures. Most of the photos are unusable thanks to midday’s harsh lighting. I like this one, though. My route today was flat, except for the gentlest rise on Temple Road where I got a glimpse of Mount Monadnock.
Have a wonderful new year, with plenty of Granite State walks.
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Ice storm recovery
The December 2008 ice storm in southern New Hampshire, now four months past, has become a reference point for all my observations of southern NH trails this spring. I recently visited Miller State Park and Pack Monadnock to see how recovery is going.
I can’t begin to speculate on how many people it has taken to return trails around here to usable condition. The auto road, still gated to keep cars out, is clear all the way to the summit. The road sports a new edging of wood chips and sawdust from all the overhangs and broken limbs cleared from ice-damaged trees.
The lower end of the auto road is now clear, with deadfall and snapped tree limbs piled at the road’s edges. Hardwoods predominate at the base of the mountain, and they took the brunt of the storm damage. The destruction must have seemed overwhelming to the first people who came by to check it out just after the storm. The cleared road testifies to a lot of effort since then. Even so, I was stunned for a few minutes when I got out of my car and had my first look around.
The few other cars in the lot when I arrived belonged to members of a trail-clearing party of Friends of the Wapack. The group’s web site says that there will be a work party somewhere along the trail every weekend this season, and this must have been Pack Monadnock’s turn. I heard a chainsaw being used in the woods off to my left as I descended from the summit later in the morning.
I decided to walk up the auto road, wondering just how blocked the Wapack and Marion Davis trails must be. I brought my camera in the hope of seeing some wildflowers growing low to the ground, but there has been way too much cleanup activity along the road to allow anything to sprout along the edges. I don’t doubt that there are plenty of flowers farther from the road and along the trails. I did see lots of buds on trees and shrubs, reminders that the forest will recover as it always does after one of Nature’s big events. One tree had lost its two main limbs and looked pretty sorry, but that didn’t stop a bird from working on a good-sized nest in one of the branches that was left.
The road’s a mile & a quarter long, and it rises 700 feet. Towards the summit, where evergreens take over from the oaks & maples & birches, there is much less tree damage. The evergreens seem to have shrugged off the ice and bounced right back. The last few hundred yards of the road have blue blazes on nearby trees, and that made me wonder if the Marion Davis trail has been re-routed for a distance.
The summit, without summer crowds, was a fine place to be. The view of Monadnock always pleases me, even on a hazy day. The cool morning was giving way to an 80+ degree afternoon, with a brisk breeze up on the landing of the fire tower. I later perched on a picnic table with my water bottle, looking over towards North Pack in its shades of green & grey. Close up, the woods show damage. From a distance, they look like they’ll be around long after I’m gone, which of course is exactly the case.
When I was here last fall, New Hampshire Audubon had volunteers at its raptor observatory near the summit, identifying birds in the fall migration. I was lucky enough to catch sight of a golden eagle that day. This weekend was different, with migration season long past. There wasn’t so much as a turkey vulture soaring overhead. I settled for chickadees in the woods.
One Subaru – or more precisely, one Subaru’s driver – drove around the closed gate to the auto road, surprising me on my way up. Aside from that, I had very little company: a half dozen dog walkers, one intrepid bicyclist, a lone runner. I was therefore unprepared for the sight in the parking lot when I finally got back down a little past 11 a.m.: more than 40 cars, with more coming in by the minute. That suggested to me that the Wapack Trail up the mountain must be in fine shape, since all the people from those cars had to be somewhere, and they weren’t on the auto road.
The ice storm left scars on the land, but recovery is underway. I’m grateful to all the volunteers whose work is bringing the trails back to life.
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Temple’s piece of the Wapack
I’ve dayhiked many times on bits and pieces of the 21-mile long Wapack Trail between Ashburnham MA and Greenfield NH, but for some reason I never had time until recently to check out the segment on the northern side of Temple Mountain. I always drove past the old ski area’s parking lot on 101 as I was on my way somewhere else. The ski area went out of business a few years ago, and there’s actually serious talk about making the property into a new state park, which would be great for — among other things — the Wapack. I finally made time to check the area out last weekend.
I didn’t expect that finding the proper trailhead would take awhile, but it did. This is hardly a remote area, with route 101 right there and Miller State Park/Pack Monadnock across the street. I figured I’d park in the old ski area’s lot and I’d immediately find the familiar yellow-triangle blazes for the trail. I saw a bunch of old ski trails, but no blazes. Other cars were there, so I knew someone had to be on the trail. I tried going up one of the old ski trails, but the recent rains had left them badly eroded and muddy. I don’t mind mud, but I was getting annoyed with myself for being unable to find a simple trail! I soon met up with a gentleman in the same predicament as I. He recommended walking out to 101 and picking up the trail right across the road from the Miller State Park entrance. That worked. A couple of hours later, on my way back to my car, I figured out the very simple (but unmarked) way to get from the parking lot to the trail without resorting to walking on the highway: from the parking lot for the old ski area, on the south side of 101,walk just past the gate (actually a cable strung between a post & a tree), turn right, and walk on the broad dirt road for less than five minutes. Those nice yellow blazes will soon be in sight.
The walk south to Temple Ledges was pleasant enough. There are few vistas on this stretch, so all the folks wanting to see the countryside ought to go to just about any other peak on the northern part of the Wapack except this one. Lots of birds — including what I think was a bobwhite, which I had seen before only in books! A bird’s a little thing, but I was delighted anyway. I encountered about ten other folks enjoying the day, all (even their dogs) sensibly dressed with something orange in this hunting season. Woods, stone walls, a group of cairns that could pass for a living room grouping, plenty of birdsong: not a bad way to spend two hours. This is not the place to wear sneakers, by the way. The approach to the ledges isn’t all that steep, but within a few days of any kind of rain, there is mud. You’ll get fair warning of that as you splash your way through the parking lot.
Granite State Walker 