Scar Ridge

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Dunbar

New member
Joined
Dec 19, 2010
Messages
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Location
Lebanon, NH
So I pulled out the map earlier this week and saw three bumps that are on some list and are close together so I figured why not? When I mentioned my plans Jason starting hinting that it might be harder than I thought. So I figured I better get some help and recruited Jason. At the mere mention of some silly bushwhack Cory D soon signed on for the trip. A perfect trio? A stupid trio?

We met up in Lincoln Saturday morning under a light rain. At least it was above 40 degrees. We dropped a car at Lincoln Woods, one near Big Rock campground, and then headed to the East Pond TH. The rain had stopped and started up the trail. We stopped a little below the saddle and switched into bushwhacking gear. Cory led off and we found pretty open woods as we pushed up toward the summit of East Scar. We quickly found ourselves on top and thought it was awfully easy. We signed in at the nalgene-can before realizing we were actually on the false summit. No problem, we turned north and headed through mostly open woods to the true summit. Right at the top it got a bit thick - low young spruce trees with plenty of blowdown scattered around. Cory took the honor of blasting through the water laden trees, but we were all pretty wet before we found the canister on East Scar.

From there we proceeded west along the ridge, generally favoring the north side of the ridge. We managed to stick to more open woods for much of the ridge. We skirted the first bump to the north side without much trouble. We then descended toward the col SE of middle. We ran into a little trouble here as we skirted through a series of small cliffs/drop-offs. I think Cory fell and slid down a couple? We soon got through the col and found a herdpath that got us on top of Middle with ease. Cory was having trouble getting the canister open and was soon whacking it with a stick. I then showed him that the bottom screws out quite easily. We didn't make fun of him at all...

We continued across the ridge and found reasonably open woods down to the col before starting up West. We hit a few thicker sections though nothing too bad. We pushed through another young spruce section where I took the brunt of the soaking. Not that it mattered much - all the woods had been wet and it was raining off and on so we had all gotten soaked through much earlier in the day. We reached the false summit of West and checked the register before moving on toward the true summit.

Before we had started the bushwhack we had been discussing that it could rain and be unpleasant up on the ridge. Jason mentioned that at least we wouldn't have to hike through sleet. Well as we approached the summit the sleet started. Not too heavy but enough for a good laugh. Did I mention we were already soaked? What's a little sleet? We didn't stay long before we got moving. The general thought was to get the heck out of the woods. It was pretty chilly so we kept the pace up. Thankfully the woods were pretty open as we proceeded down the NNE ridge toward the Kanc. As we got lower the rain stopped and we actually saw the sun for a few minutes. We dropped steeply down into the valley and found an old slightly overgrown woods road that took us out toward the road. The stream crossing at the end was easy - just a good opportunity to wash the muddy water out of our shoes.

The overall 'whack wasn't too bad. On a dry day it would be a fairly easy trip. It was just a little rough being wet and cold for most of the trip. I had been planning to camp up there before Sunday's hike, but decided to drive home and get a hot shower and dry my clothes before driving up again Sunday morning.
 
If it had only been a few degrees colder, and a little bit rainier, this would have been a perfect hike.
 
If it had only been a few degrees colder, and a little bit rainier, this would have been a perfect hike.

As long as you have the proper gear..that's all that matters.

Just a touch over 7 hours car to car.:cool:

Steve, remember when we were following that good open route across the middle bump and that crazy kid came out of nowhere wearing a 1984 US Olympic jacket and started running down hill in the wrong direction trying to find the thickest stuff he could? That was normal in the Whites.

We signed into 4 of the 5 jars/canisters and signed in Jason with like 6 different names. If that is even possible. We tried to get him to sign into the more eastern jar on the West main peak but he whined it was too wet or couldn't remember his Facebook password or something.
 
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