diehard
New member
I met Alec Goodman at the Home Depot in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, at about 4:30 am, Saturday June 25, 2005, for a day of plotting geologic reference points on Mt Lowell in New Hampshire. The weather people were forecasting a hot day.
Several hours later we arrived at the beginning of the Signal Ridge Trail, which we followed for a little over one mile. At that point, there is an intersecting, north/south trending, fire road. We took the road to the right, which is not yet (?) overgrown enough, to no longer call it a road. Following it a bit over ½ mile, we decided to go off trail and start to bushwhack a bit. According to the “plan”, we hiked up the south ridge of Mt Lowell. It was easy going until we got near the 2,600 foot elevation. There we started to run into the stuff, which is the result of new growth coming up though the ice storm damage, of a few years ago. (I don’t know what to call that stuff, other than “NASTY”) At just under 2,500 ft, we encountered bedrock ledges, at just over 2500 ft. There encountered the contact of the Conway Granite with the Moat Volcanics. We turned to our left to start the traverse of the west side of Mt Lowell. Soon, because the going was so nasty, Alec ventured a bit down slope, while I went a bit up hill. I found, that if I could hug the cliffs, there was little of the really bad “nasty” stuff; however, I was in the area of only Moat Volcanics. Alec, in the meantime was having his own battles, in his lower level traverse. There we areas of talus, where every step you took, the whole area started to move downhill. Not a comfortable feeling. The two of us eventually met, at a destination point, nearly due west of the peak of Mt Lowell. I had risen to just over 2800 ft, and lowered myself down the side of a steep gorge, to get there, and Alec had to deal with the talus, to get there. At this point we made our GPS reading, and realized we were running low on water. We decided that it was time to call it a day. We zig zagged down the talus slope, bushwhacked a bit at the bottom, and encountered the Carrigain Notch trail, at about the 2400 foot level. From there it was an easy walk out to the car.
We had done about 8-1/4 miles, of which just over 2 miles was bushwhacking. The weather guys were right, it was a bit toasty on the hill, but when our wives say we can go, well….we go. It was a GREAT hike. OH, by the way, the trail conditions (where we were on trails) were excellent, and we saw evidence of winter blow-downs having been cleared.
Jim Cahoon
Several hours later we arrived at the beginning of the Signal Ridge Trail, which we followed for a little over one mile. At that point, there is an intersecting, north/south trending, fire road. We took the road to the right, which is not yet (?) overgrown enough, to no longer call it a road. Following it a bit over ½ mile, we decided to go off trail and start to bushwhack a bit. According to the “plan”, we hiked up the south ridge of Mt Lowell. It was easy going until we got near the 2,600 foot elevation. There we started to run into the stuff, which is the result of new growth coming up though the ice storm damage, of a few years ago. (I don’t know what to call that stuff, other than “NASTY”) At just under 2,500 ft, we encountered bedrock ledges, at just over 2500 ft. There encountered the contact of the Conway Granite with the Moat Volcanics. We turned to our left to start the traverse of the west side of Mt Lowell. Soon, because the going was so nasty, Alec ventured a bit down slope, while I went a bit up hill. I found, that if I could hug the cliffs, there was little of the really bad “nasty” stuff; however, I was in the area of only Moat Volcanics. Alec, in the meantime was having his own battles, in his lower level traverse. There we areas of talus, where every step you took, the whole area started to move downhill. Not a comfortable feeling. The two of us eventually met, at a destination point, nearly due west of the peak of Mt Lowell. I had risen to just over 2800 ft, and lowered myself down the side of a steep gorge, to get there, and Alec had to deal with the talus, to get there. At this point we made our GPS reading, and realized we were running low on water. We decided that it was time to call it a day. We zig zagged down the talus slope, bushwhacked a bit at the bottom, and encountered the Carrigain Notch trail, at about the 2400 foot level. From there it was an easy walk out to the car.
We had done about 8-1/4 miles, of which just over 2 miles was bushwhacking. The weather guys were right, it was a bit toasty on the hill, but when our wives say we can go, well….we go. It was a GREAT hike. OH, by the way, the trail conditions (where we were on trails) were excellent, and we saw evidence of winter blow-downs having been cleared.
Jim Cahoon
