Carter Dome and Wildcat A from the South

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Joined
Jan 15, 2013
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Location
Vernon, Conn.
This year I've been trying to hold on to vacation days, so I've been doing backpacks where I start late Saturday and just hike out to where I'll camp and do a big hike Sunday. Last weekend was a good example.

I started out a little after noon on Carter Notch Road in Jackson and hiked out to Perkins Notch Campsite, mostly on the Bog Brook Trail. I had good weather all weekend, not too cold and no precipitation at all. There was little to no snow down that low. I didn't see anybody else on the trail or in camp Saturday.

Perkins Notch Campsite used to have a shelter, and is marked as such on my map, although I knew from researching online that it had been removed. It's a nice place, although it has no privy that I could find, and the water is from a lake surrounded by thick mud covered by thin ice. I didn't bother fetching water there, since I had enough and I knew I could replenish it on the trail Sunday before I got up high.

It was very windy Saturday night. I was in a tarptent, which doesn't provide much coverage from the wind, but I just burrowed into my bag when the wind got high and I was fine. To my surprise, though, when I got up in the morning I saw a big fir tree was leaning over my tent, having been pushed by the wind the night before. That was kind of scary.

On Sunday I started by climbing up Carter Dome on Rainbow Trail. There are three trails in the Whites I know of which have absolutely beautiful birch glades, the Engine Hill Bushwhack off of Rocky Branch Trail, Firewarden's Trail on Hale, and Rainbow Trail. The latter seems to be the least well known of the three, even though it's the only one which is an official trail. Rainbow Trail also has that nice exposed area, that I think of as "Rainbow Ridge", about half way up.

As I ascended Carter Dome the snow got thicker, but it was soft enough and shallow enough that I didn't put on my microspikes.

On the summit of Carter Dome I met the first other people of the trip, two guys who were doing a day hike loop from Wild River Campground (which is quite a ways away -- that's a longer day hike than I could do). Carter-Moriah Trail (the AT) was a lot more packed down than Rainbow Trail had been, so I wore the spikes when I started down to Carter Notch. I took them off then on then off for good probably less than half way down. While descending to the notch I met a man and woman ascending.

Down in the notch I continued on the AT and went up Wildcat A. A little before I got to the slide a helicopter came over the mountain and started flying around the notch. I later learned that it was a medical evacuation of someone on 19 Mile Trail who unfortunately didn't survive.

The final steep section of Wildcat Ridge Trail (still the AT) before the summit was the most challenging part of the weekend. There were extensive ice flows, but enough rock that it was not at all clear whether one was better off with microspikes or without. I did it without, slowly. I made it OK, though, and after a little time on the summit came back down the way I came up. On the way down I met a different man and woman coming up, making six the total number of hikers I saw all weekend.

When I got down to the notch I headed south and stopped in the hut to get water. I talked to the caretaker a bit there. The I headed out on Wildcat River Trail. It got dark before I got to the Wild River Trail intersection, but I was fine with a headlight.

When I had started out Saturday I realized that the first left turn Bog Brook Trail makes, onto a snowmobile trail, would not be easy to recognize on the way back, so I made sure to study the spot so I'd recognize it on Sunday. I did, but even then I wasn't sure at first I was right.

Carter Dome and Wildcat A were numbers 48 and 49 (out of 115) for my project of redoing the NE111 in my sixties.

Here are the pictures.

--

Cumulus

NE111 in my 50s: 115/115 (67/67, 46/46, 2/2)
NE111 in my 60s: 49/115 (38/67, 11/46, 0/2)
NEFF: 50/50; Cat35: 39/39; WNH4K: 39/48; NEHH 84/100
LT NB 2009

"I don't much care where [I get to] --" said Alice, "-- so long as I get somewhere," ...
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."
- Lewis Carroll
 
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