Moose Mtn S, Hanover NH 8/24/14

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RoySwkr

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Moose Mtn is a longish ridge near Hanover that runs N-S about ten miles between maintained road crossings. The Appalachian Trail runs along the N half over two named summits, while the S half has some 13 unnamed bumps of which only one has a 200' col, and a sketchy trail which circles most of them. Each half also contains a survey point from ET Quimby's triangulation survey of the 1870s but nobody has reported finding them in the past 50 years. I had hiked the AT portion years ago, and finally got tired of my plans for a second vehicle for the S falling through and decided to just hit the high points (hah!) by myself.

I started at the well-named Baum Conservation Area on what is called Goss Road in Hanover (and 2 other names in the 2 other towns it goes through). The trail map on the town website wasn't detailed enough to show whether the trails there actually connected to the ridge trail, and a less-detailed map at the trailhead showed the only connection to be yet another half mile farther N than I wanted to go, but I decided to start there anyway.
http://hanovernh.org/Pages/HanoverNH_BComm/conservationcomm/maps/se.pdf

I took the leftmost yellow trail leaving the clearing which went up and down on sidehill before beginning a gradual ascent. The trail is apparently mostly used for skiing as it is cut quite wide but there is very little footway. Where it leveled off I briefly followed an old woods road but finally just bushwhacked steeply uphill. There is like 200 feet of elevation gain in less than a tenth of a mile, but the cliffs are broken and with care there are several routes up.

The ridge trail appears to be more of a herd path in this area, with no markings and no recent clearing with moss on all the cut logs. It generally stays below the ridge crest usually to the W in spite of what the map says, although there is a short section where it runs along a clifftop with views E. It is generally easy walking but I think it would be hard to follow in fall or winter and there will be wet areas in spring. From the high point of the trail you need to bushwhack E across a small gully to reach the apparent summit if you are looking for the NH600, there are no views from the cliffs here at least not in leaf season.

Continuing down to the S, the trail bypasses a rock fin reached by a herd path and a gulch apparently not deep enough to show on the USGS map. The survey point was on the next bump which the map correctly shows well E of the trail. I wandered over and decided which ledge I would put a survey station on, and voila, there was the drill hole. The description didn't mention the usual chiseled triangle and I didn't see one either. One of the anchor rods was obvious to the SE but I didn't see the other until I started walking around, it was in the vertical face to the N and couldn't be seen sitting at the hole. I didn't see the name mentioned in the description but didn't dig up any moss looking for it. I unpacked the GPS I had brought in case I needed it and while the numbers were jumping around they sometimes matched the exact coords in the description.
http://www.geocaching.com/mark/datasheet.aspx?PID=OD1294
 
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