52 With A View

Me on Jennings Peak last week. Jennings Peak is on the
"52 with a View" list as is the mountain behind me,Sandwich Dome

If you are an avid reader to this blog, you may have noticed that I have been trying to become a member of the 4000 footers club. There are 48 mountains in New Hampshire over four thousand feet. For the last ten years I have been trying to summit them all with my son. It has been tough to make the time to go to New Hampshire exclusively to hike. We obviously wanted to go on other vacations. Sometimes we'd plan a day and it would rain. now that DJ is an adult and has a job, it is almost impossible for us to get time off at the same time.

For that last reason, I hiked Tripyramid by myself three weeks ago. This week I was going to hike Kinsman, but rainy weather foiled that plan. Hiking Trtipyramid, I felt like I was betraying everything we had worked for. We have about ten hikes left to be in the club. However, the only chance either of us have of finishing all forty eight is to start doing them separately.

There are other challenges for New Englanders that have hiked all forty eight. There is a New England 4000 footer club that includes mountains in Maine and Vermont. There is a New England Hundred Highest. This is a tough one, because not all hundred have trails so there is some bushwacking involved. Also the Adirondacks have 46 mountains over 4000 feet.

To be honest none of these clubs interest me. I've told DJ before that once I'm done with the 4000
footers, I just want to hike for fun. If I feel like hiking Franconia Ridge once a year, I'm going to. It is a great hike with amazing views. I'm not going to worry that I'm wasting time not doing a mountain on some list.

Then just last week I found this list called "52 with a View" Some hikers put a list together back in 1990 for people that got bored hiking the same 4000 footers over and again. So they put a list together of fifty two mountains in New Hampshire UNDER 4000 feet that have views. To be honest, I have no idea how I had never heard of this list before. I read a lot of guide books and study maps. I check out hiking blogs, so how the phrase "52 with a View" escaped me for the last fifteen years amazes me. The best analogy I can give is; I listen to classic rock radio. Every day I hear the same songs. When they do the top 500 countdown its just the same songs I've listened to for years but in some order. However once a year or so I'll hear a song that I've never heard before. It will be great and it will blow me away ( the last song I can remember this happening with is "Never Been to Spain" by Three Dog Night) . That is the best way I can explain how I felt when I learned about this club.

Anyway, I got kind of excited when I found the list. To think that there are fifty two mountains with views that are already listed is awesome. No research needs to be done, just find the trailhead and go. I guess one requirement of joining the club, is you have to have hiked all the NH 4000 first AND the fifty two smaller mountains. So I have my work cut out for me, but I'm gonna go for it. It may take another two or three years before I become a member of the NH 4000 footers club, but after that I'm going after this club also. If for no other reason, I like hiking mountains with the reward of a view on top.

Post script: I didn't know it at the time, but I have hiked eleven of the fifty two so far.

Carping in the Heat

My "big boy" for the night

Yesterday was the first day of a really hot spell after what was already some pretty warm weather. I knew first thing in the morning where my friend Dave would be fishing that  evening. I might have known even before he did. When we get the hot summer weather, there is one place that the carp fishing is really good. It has been a semi tradition to fish at this spot when the thermometer spikes.

The catch... the carp are really small. Sometimes they are as small as eight to ten inches. Anything over four pounds is considered a good fish at this place. There probably isn't a fish over eight pounds.  Honestly, this is fine with me. The fish are very scrappy. We just want to catch fish and at this time of year, size does not matter.

He got to the spot first. However fishing wasn't that good, so we ended up fishing another spot just down the street. It was from the same river system, and the carp are the same small scrappy fish. We ended up having a very productive couple of hours. We ended up catching a total of six carp. We each got a really good one between 6-8 pounds. Those are trophy fish in this venue. So, considering how hot it was and the air was so dead, we were ecstatic to combine for six fish (  he caught the most). All in all it was a fun night. We will certainly be doing it again during this hot weather.

Broadmoor Wildlife Sanctuary

Knowing that it was going to be hot all week and that Monday would be the coolest day by far, I decided to go for a nature walk/hike instead of going fishing or to a movie. It seemed to make sense to be out enjoying the relatively cool weather and save the less energetic activities for a hot day that was surely coming (and is now here!)


I have been to Broadmoor before but it has been many years. I had forgotten how pretty it is. There are many types of landscapes from small mill ponds, frog ponds, white pine woods, open meadow and overgrown orchards. The sanctuary also borders the Charles River for a few hundred yards. It is a beautiful place. I challenge anyone to find a prettier place in Eastern Massachusetts that does not involve ocean views.

I started my hike pretty late because I thought it would take a lot less time to get there. I finally got out of my car at about 6:15. I walked for around two hours. I stopped a lot to look at animals, but I also walked at a quick pace. I guesstimate that I walked a total  of about 6 miles.

Leopard Frog

I did see quite a bit of cool wildlife. I saw a whole bunch of cedar waxwings. At first I saw a pair along the Charles, but then found a whole bunch in the overgrown orchard. In the field right near the parking lot, a bluebird family was feeding its young. One highlight of the night was a leopard frog. A frog may not sound like much of a highlight, but seeing a lot of frogs these days is becoming a rarity. I was happy to see my first leopard frog in quite some time.

 I saw four deer. The first two were does in a field near a frog pond. The other two were a little more special. I saw a mother with her month old fawn. The spotted little baby couldn't have been eighteen inches tall. They saw me near the orchard. The mother stared at me for ten seconds then they bounded across the field. There wasn't anything I could do not to scare them. I was actually going in the other direction when I saw them.

The admission to Broadmoor is five dollars for non-member adults. This seems a bit steep to me for a walk in the woods. However for a Mass Audubon member it is free, I apologize for my pics. I left my camera at home so I was resigned to use my phone. I would have loved to have had my zoom lens for

the leopard frog and deer.

Western White Mountain Pond Exploration

An island on Long Pond

I got a couple days off this week. I did what I do when I get two days off during the summer... I went to New Hampshire. On Wednesday after work I got to do a quick hike to Middle Sugarloaf Mountain. I went to bed thinking I'd hike the Kinsmans. However during the night it started to drizzle. I knew that when I woke up, the sky would be cloudy. There is no way I'm doing a ten mile hike up a big mountain without seeing the view. So I went to plan B.

Plan B was to explore some ponds in the western White Mountains. For my purpose, the western Whites consist of ponds west of I-93. I got up before 7 am and headed south. My first stop was a roadside pond off of North and South Road named Long Pond. The sky was still cloudy so if it rained I wanted to be in my kayak and not five miles from the car.

Long Pond is a long skinny pond. It is very pretty roadside pond. There is a large parking area, a boat ramp, and two handicapped accessible docks. There is a concrete dam that one can stand on. The pond is stocked with trout. However in my ninety minutes in my canoe I did not catch a fish. More surprisingly, I didn't even see a fish rise. I gave up knowing that I had other places to explore.

My next adventure was the Tunnel Brook Ponds. The trail through Tunnel Ravine is/was the trail I

One of the Tunnel Brook Ponds
Moosilauke in the background

most wanted to do in the White Mountains. The trailhead was only a few minutes from Long Pond on North and South Road. I packed my backpack and headed out under cloudy skies. It's only a couple of miles out to the first in a series of eight or nine beaver ponds. In a distance of about three quarters of a mile there is one small pond after another in the valley. To make the scenery even nicer, 4800 foot Mt. Moosilauke stands over them.

The first pond that you come to from the south is Mud Pond, which is the largest of the Tunnel Brook Ponds. From there, it is a chain of small lakes. I brought my small six foot fly rod on its maiden voyage. Wild brookies have been rumored to be in the ponds, but I hadn't heard of anything confirmed. Unfortunately, without waders it is tough to get to the ponds. The ones I explored have extensive grass covered mud for 20-30 feet from the ponds edge.

I did get to cast my fly line standing on two beaver dams. It was a precarious balancing act standing on logs and twigs with water rushing below me. However on one of the ponds I was rewarded with a fat eight inch brookie. It was my only fish, but I was happy to confirm the rumors. I did not get a picture since I didn't want to chance falling into the stream with my camera in my pocket.

I spent a couple hours at the ponds, but since I couldn't do much fishing I headed back to my car with plenty of time left in my day. I got out of the woods about 3:45. There is nothing quite like an early start to make the most of the day.

From the trailhead I had another short drive of only fifteen minutes to another roadside pond. This

Cliff over Oliverian Pond

one is named Oliverian Pond. This roadside gem has a huge cliff on Owl's Head shadowing it. I shoved off my kayak and paddled out a few yards. I decided to make a cast. To my surprise my rod bent almost immediately. I was even more surprised to reel in a rainbow. Almost all the lakes, ponds, and streams in the mountains have brook trout, wild or otherwise. I ended up catching seven more. This was easily the best fishing of the day for me.

The wind stopped and the water got flat calm about ninety minutes in. When this happened the fish stopped biting. I tried unsuccessfully for another forty five minutes or so before calling it quits. It was supper time and I wanted to make my meal by another roadside pond.

Surprise rainbow

I drove up Route 118 to Route 112 and went by Lost River. A few miles further west is Beaver Pond. This is another roadside pond. It is not stocked with trout. According to the guide book it has yellow perch and hornpout. I didn't fish at all but just enjoyed the scenery. I ate my Stove Top at the picnic table and looked at the cliffs. There were a couple kids fishing but it looked from a distance that they didn't get anything.

All in all I visited three roadside ponds and seven back country beaver ponds. The fishing was only okay, but the scenery was terrific. It was a satisfying day

Beaver Pond from my picnic table

Noon Hill Summer Edition

Over the early part of the winter I hiked a bunch of locations near the Charles River in the Millis- Medway area. I very much enjoyed these hikes. The one problem was that in December everything is dormant. I knew that I wanted to get back to some of these locations after the heat of summer slowed down the fishing.

So last week DJ and I went to Noon Hill. This property is one owned by the Trustees of the Reservation. It is a hike I did in December before the thick snow came. DJ and I got to the parking area about 6:30. This gave us about two hours to hike. Him being in great shape and myself in okay shape, we easily did four or five miles and returned with a little time to spare before dark. This property has a nice hill with a view towards Gillette Stadium. That was our first priority.

From there we did kind of a big circle of the land following parts of three trails. Besides the hill, the other highlight is a trail around a pond. The pond is only a hundred feet from the parking area. For us it was the last part of our hike. Walking around the pond listening to bullfrogs croak was a nice way to end the hike.

On our drive home we came across some deer in a field. There was a six point buck eating at sunset.

Welch-Dickey Loop

After hiking Tripyramid I had about four hours of daylight left. Normally I would fish after supper.
However, most of the lakes that would have been a short drive are kind of weedy to fish from shore. I could have used my kayak, but it was breezy, and would have been blown all over the lake. So after supper I chose to do another hike.

I had hoped to hike Welch Dickey on the Thursday I went up, but it was raining, so I went fishing. I really wanted to hike these little mountains so I decided to hike them even though I was pretty tired from Tripyramid. There is a loop hike that goes over these two small mountains. Welch Mountain is 2605 feet while Dickey Mountain is a little higher at 2734. The loop is about 4.4 miles with 1600 feet of elevation gain. Direction can be found on your trail map or online.

You have to take Upper Mad River Road off of Route 49, then follow the signs, I arrived at the trailhead at 5:30 pm. The first thing I noticed is that the parking lot is huge. It easily holds over 100 cars. Arriving so late, there were only a dozen or so cars in the lot. Within 15 yards of the lot, the trail

Tripyramid from Dickey Mountain
You can make out the South Slide on the most right
cone 

forks. I took the right trail, choosing to go up Welch Mountain first.

 The main draw of these mountains is the open ledges. The views are amazing for relatively little effort. After 1,6 miles a hiker reaches the ledges. Some of them are steep and if you are scared of heights, you might be a little uncomfortable. However, with common sense (and in dry conditions) they are perfectly safe. One cool thing is, that on these ledges is the southern most stand of Jack Pine in New Hampshire.The views are really nice. I enjoyed looking at Tripyramid since I climbed it earlier in the day. As I mentioned, I did Welch Mountain first. There is a steep drop to the col in between the two mountains, then a steep climb up Dickey Mountain. I can't say the view was better from either mountain. All in all with the open ledges, big views and overall fun, I understand the popularity of this hike

Jack Pine

The hike took me exactly three hours. Knowing that dark was fast approaching, I didn't stay in any one place to long. When I stopped on the summits to get a drink, I'd only stay for five minutes or so. I got down at exactly eight thirty and it was getting dark, especially in the woods.

Mount Tripyramid, NH

Going up to New Hampshire on Wednesday and coming home Friday only gives me one full day

One of the Waterfalls on Cascade Path

there. Thursday is the day I have time for a big climb without the worry of a three hour drive. I made the most of it hiking over five summits on two different hikes. I did 17.5 mile

The first hike was over Mt. Tripyramid. Tripyramid is one of the mountains that surrounds Waterville Valley. It is a 4000 footer. Actually two peaks meet the criteria to be official four thousand footers (North Peak and Middle Peak). There is a loop trail that goes over all three peaks. The trail goes up a slide on the North Peak and down a slide on the South Peak. By far the best views are from the slides. The actual summits are wooded without much of a view. 

The trail starts on Livermore Road in Waterville. I, however, started on the Cascade Path. There was rain the night before and the rivers were swollen. I figured that by adding an extra mile to my hike, I could see five waterfalls. So I made an already long day a little longer, but it was worth it. After I got past the falls, I cut over to the Livermore trail to make my assault on the mountain. 

Because of all the rain the day before, I could not do the normal loop. The North slide is extremely

steep with rock slabs. It is basically like climbing a cliff face. Descent is discouraged, and climbing it in wet weather is considered very dangerous. So I did an alternate plan. I climbed the South slide and came down a different trail called the Scaur Trail. This too, made my hike longer, but it also made it possible and much safer.

Going up the South Slide was fun. The view faces south and I could see Lake Winnipesaukee. The closest mountain is Sandwich Dome, which is on the top of my list of mountains to climb. When I reached the summit, it was almost disappointing, after such a cool climb, there was no view at all. 

From the top of South, I went down a col then up another rise to Middle Tripyramid, Again not much to see. From there I went to North. Even though I wasn't going to hike down the North Slide, I did plan on hiking down to the top of the slide to eat my lunch. It is a couple hundred feet down from the top to the slide. I got to the top of it and was awed by its steepness. The view was a full 180 degrees. I could see a huge portion of the White Mountains. From the south was Tecumseh (the ski mountain in Waterville) all the way to the Presidentials. I counted at least 20 mountains over four thousand feet. I stayed at the slide for an hour. The sky was a little hazy (as you can see by the pictures) but clear enough to enjoy the view. 

This is the top of the North Slide
Notice how it just drops off. It drops 1000 feet
blow this image

When I woke up, the sky was still cloudy. I did not have cell service so I could not check the weather forecast. I hoped the sky would clear. I climbed  the mountain hoping my view wasn't of fog. So a hazy day with great views was more than I could have hoped for.

After my lunch, it was about a mile to my next trail. From there, it was about five miles to the car. I was tired and my feet hurt but was pleased with the hike. 

Mount Carrigan

I found a picnic table on Route 49 and made some supper. After supper I had three hours left of daylight, so I went for another hike.I did the Welch-Dickey loop. I'll write about that one later.

My view from one of the peaks. You can see the
Waterville ski area in the background
(Mt. Tecumseh)

Welch-Dickey from South Tripyramid

A Birthday present of wild brook trout

Beautiful fish
Beautiful setting

I was up in New Hampshire from Wednesday afternoon until Friday afternoon. I had to be home about 4 pm on Friday. so I had to leave NH by 1 pm. On Thursday I hiked 17.5 miles and scaled five different peaks ( more on the hikes in upcoming posts).

 I was surprised to wake up stiff but not sore. I knew I wanted to get in another hike in the morning. My goal was to hike a little summit on Sandwich Mountain named Jennings Peak. I got to the trailhead at 7:30 and knew I had plenty of time to do the 5.4 mile round trip. I put on my backpack and headed out. Not a hundred yards from the car the trail crosses a river. Unfortunately, the river was cray from all the rain on Wednesday. I looked both up and down river but I could not cross it. I could have bushwacked up the river from a road crossing, but that would have chewed up a half hour and truthfully, I didn't have the energy to play games.

So I came up with a plan B. There is a small mountain pond in Waterville Valley I hiked twice before. I hadn't been there in over a decade. I thought it would be nice to visit it again. The hike in is about a mile and a half with 700 feet of vertical. It's short but uphill the while way. A hiker would consider it moderate, while a non hiker would consider it hard.

 The pond used to get stocked aerially by helicopter with fingerling trout. Apparently the fingerlings did not do so well so the pond was cut from the program. It wasn't been stocked in ten years. I brought my fly rod,,,just in case.

Once I got to the pond, I ate a quick snack of two granola bars and a banana. While I was eating I saw fish rising. I was pretty happy I brought my rod. I started fishing. Within minutes I caught my first brookie. In the next hour and a half I landed eight more along with just as many hits. They were all on a hares ear size 14. The fish were not big, the largest two were about 8 inches. Unless the state restarted aerially stocking fish and did not put it on their website, these fish are wild. I absolutely love catching wild trout. Size does not matter with these little treasures.

After ninety minutes it was time to leave. Catching those fish was a nice exclamation point on a great

This little guy is important for a successful fishery in the future

trip to the Granite state. And its my birthday!

p.s. You may have noticed I did not name the mountain pond. If you find it on your own by the hints I gave, great. Please do not keep any wild trout. If you want to eat some trout, catch them from stocked ponds where it doesn't hurt the population. Wild trout are hard to come by these days. Also if you do hike up, please clean up after yourself. I can say that almost 100% of hikers pack out what the pack in. Sadly, we all know just by looking at shorelines, not all fishermen do.