Last day

On our last day we wake up late and I get to eat eggs and bacon again. Yummy. Camping is great!

After two good days of hiking, today we only do a short hike up the halfway house trail, so named because its halfway to the top and the site of a once famous hotel. Now it is just ruins, but there is still the road that runs up to the spot, parallel to the trail, and there is a private house at the end of the road (see pic. I wouldn't mind living up here!)

The hike doesn't start from our campsite-we have to drive to another spot to hike, which when looking at the mountain is the gently sloping side of the mountain. That being side, the hike is fairly easy, not steep at all, although I still am feeling it from the past two days of hiking. We only have to climb 500 ft and we make it to the ruins in 45 mins, eat our lunch, and walk the dirt road down, getting back in 35 mins. A nice quick hike, which is good, because we must leave that night : (

Back at the camp we play some more scrabble, and slowly pack up (sadly), but of course we make one more fire, with much trouble. Maybe someday I'll learn proper fire making techniques. Ha.
We leave the camp around 6:30, but make sure to stop and get ice cream on the way home. Have to have ice cream!!! A nice way to top of a good weekend of camping and hiking.

I just hope I will be ready for Mt. Washington this weekend!!

Here is what I learned on this camping trip:
Birch bark is excellent tinder
That being said, I still suck at making fires
Make sure Joy brings camera next time! The treo doesn't cut it (sadly)
Joy is really good at folding tents/canopies/tarps/maps etc, its exactly why I brought her along! J/k-I love you babe!
My new watch is pretty sweet, we'll see how the Suunto Vector stands up to Mt. Washington.
Ice can last a long time if properly taken care of. We still had a bunch of ice in the cooler when we got home. We put two bags in fri. morning and it lasted until late Sunday night before we dumped everything out.

Next year we are going to do an actual overnight (2-3 night) backpacking trip. Mr. Army, Kyle, my brother, wants in, so we'll see if he'll be up to it by then!

Day number 2

Saturday my wonderful wife cooked me my favorite Dunkin Donuts breakfast minus the dunkin donuts. She made me a bacon, egg, and chz on a cinnamon raisin bagel on the stove!

Hiking wise, we decided that we would not head UP so much, but instead head AROUND the mountain. According to the Map it would only be a 1000' elevation climb up, then 1000' down and then the same back. I estimated that it would be around 2.2 miles one way and was thinking it would only take us under 3 hours total. So we took the white dot trail, to the Cascade trail, to the Birchtoft trail (full of lots of birch trees naturally) which ended up at Gibson Pond.

The hike was a lot different from all the rocks you encounter going up the mountain. Instead, you walk on fallen leaves and pine needles, and over fallen trees and such. It reminded me of the woods in back of my parents house where I grew up-a very beautiful forest scene indeed.

Remember how I thought the whole trip (one way) would only be 2.2 miles? Well it turns out that the birchtoft trail itself was 2.2 miles, making the whole trip one way over 3 miles. Now, you might think, what is another mile? 2 or 3 miles is not big deal. Well it IS a big deal when you hiked a mountain the previous day and you are a little sore and you are hiking with a pack. Nonetheless we make it to the end of the birchtoft trail after about 2.5 hours. Looking at the map, we see that you can walk a short distance from the end of the trail and be on the main road, which would lead us back to our campsite. We decide, we might as well just walk the road back, it will be nice and easy and not so much up and down, and save us some time.

But of course there was some exploring to do first. We walked up from the trail to what turned out to be a construction site. There was a dirt road that lead down the site a little bit and we decided to follow that to see where it led, and thinking it would probably lead to the main rd eventually. After a few minutes we came to a path in the woods, with no sign or markings. By this point we were off my map, but what is camping without doing a little exploring, right? Of course Joy doesn't want to see where the path leads, she wants to start heading back to camp. I somehow convince her that we will just follow the path for 20 mins then head back.

I am glad we decided to take the path because we saw some interesting stuff. The path was single file and didn't look like anybody had walked on it in quite some time. There were lots of fern bushes and we crossed over 3 little bridges over little brooks. 3 different bridges-one was perfect, the second one had one broken plank, and the third was completely rotted but there was a pile of new wood right by it. There are plenty of forks in the path, but we always take the right fork, so that on the way back we can just take the left fork. No point in getting lost when these trails are not on my map! We did see a few signs saying XC-39 (or another number), which we think are for Cross Country Skiers, but are not sure. After almost 20 mins the path doesn't really lead us anywhere, so we head back.

On the way back I spot what looks like a small stone building on top of a hill that I hadn't noticed before. That is interesting. I climb up and find a stone chimney/fireplace structure, surrounded by evergreen-type trees, and in front of the fireplace, a wooden structure. You can see it in the picture at the top of the post. It is like a little lean-to, and the wood is held together by rope. I remember reading about that in the army manual. Very interesting, considering we are in the middle of the wilderness in NH and this little hideaway is on top of a small hill, surrounded by trees, barely visible from the path...

Well we finally make it back to the main road and walk the hour back to the campsite. 1 hour beats 2 hours hiking back mind you. Somebody did actually stop and ask us if we were lost and wanted a ride back, but I declined of course. So the total hike turned out to be 4 hours long and interesting enough. As soon as we got back to the campsite, we hopped into the Cruiser and had a wonderful camping dinner at Taco Bell back in town. Yummy taco bell. Mmmmmmmmmmm. Nice and easy cleanup!

Back at the site, round 2 for trying to get a fire going. Joy wins this round as she read in the army survival manual that Birch bark is really good for starting fires, so we get a bunch of that and have the fire going in no time at all!

To repay Joy for her resourcefulness, I beat her in Scrabble, even though she uses up all her letters and I'm stuck at the end of the game with a Q. A few turns before that I had a J and an X.
Nonetheless we go to bed sore from a good hike (my shoulders especially) on a night much warmer than the last...

Time to climb!

But Friday was not all about being armed to survive and sitting around. No, it was about getting into the wilderness and hitting the trails. And that is exactly what Joy and I did, we climbed Mt. Monadnock.

We started out at the Park Ranger office, elevation 1400', sunny, and 70 degrees. It was a beautiful day to climb to the summit of Monadnock (3165'). We took the White Dot Trail up and down, which is the most direct route to the summit, being about 1.9 mi one way. It was not too hot, and we hardly sweat. The fact that Joy and I had started exercising regularly after the wedding really helped us out. We were able to make it up to the summit in an hour and 20 mins, and back down in the same amount of time (only stopping here and there for a few mins). At the summit it was 66 degrees and windy and fairly clear. From here, you can see clearly in all directions (supposedly over 100 miles), which gives you a vista of NY, MA, and VT. Supposedly, on a clear day you can see the skyscrapers in Boston.

For those of you who have never hiked Monadnock before, you climb up almost 1800 feet and it is not all easy going the entire way. There is a fair amount of rock climbing, not like technical climbing, but spots where you must use your hands and feet to get up. Well most people need to use their hands. I always ascend no hands, which can be done with a bit of skill if you are tall. (Does this come from always riding roller coasters no hands?) That being said, the average hiker makes it up in a little under 2 hours, but it is fairly obtainable for most people and has a wonderful view to reward you at the top.

So it was a fairly smooth hike and I was able to test out the aforementioned Suunto Vector's elevation measuring aspects. According to the watch, it was 3220 ft at the top...off by 50 feet, less than 2%, which is not bad considering I never calibrated it at the beginning of the hike. A word about altimeters on watches-no matter what brand you buy, they always have to be calibrated at known elevation points, because they measure elevation by air pressure, which changes the higher you rise. The thing is, air pressure is always changing, depending on a million different things, including temperature (which they explain in the manual), but nonetheless, it is fairly accurate, all things considered, and is very helpful in figuring out how much more you have to go, cross-referencing with topo maps etc. (Now if you bought the GPS model for $500 your elevation would be spot on accurate AND you would have GPS coordinates, but this watch was expensive enough) Also, by the watch, our rates for ascending/descending were between 0 and 27 ft/second. Just another interesting measurement to figure out how much longer it will take to get down. (The Vector can also tell you the average rate for a particular time period if you ask it, say the entire hike, it automatically records your elevation for the past 24 hours (same with the barometric readings), or it can log it and save it for future reference. And it keeps track of all your highs and lows, like highest elevation, most elevation gain, etc.)

Needless to say, I was very impressed with the watch's first real action and will definitely make good use of it on my Washington summit this weekend.

Enough about the watch.

Back to me sucking at survival skills. We are camping, and that means we need a fire to cook our hot dogs and smores over. Honestly, I'm really not sure where Smokey the Bear gets off telling people about forest fires and how dangerous they are and always remember to put out your fire etc, because I can't even make a fire when I'm trying to make a fire. Dry wood, check. Lighter, check. Firepit, check. Tinder, plenty-check. Fire? No. How about now? No. How about 30 mins later? Yes. Wow that is hard work. Smokey the bear indeed.

After dinner I take over the world.

The entire world in a night, sounds like Santa Clause, but its just Michael Thomas and global domination.

I'm talking about RISK of course.

Exhausted from taking over the world, I head to bed with Joy in our 40 degree rated sleeping bags. Wow is it cold. Rated down to 40 degrees? It is chilllllllly. We make it to sleep. I wake up in the middle of the night and check my watch, it reports that its 52 degrees. 52!! Considering our apartment has been in the 80's when we usually sleep, that is a big difference. A 30 degree difference!! Good thing I had a warm body to cuddle up to...