January 1, 2008
Happy New Year!! We're 9 hours into the new year, and it's time for a hike. Ed and Dave chose Cannon Mountain today. It's a good choice. It's a small hike and with a big snowstorm rolling in this afternoon, we need to finish early. Dave also lives in Maine, and we carpooled today for the first time. Dave said that this was most "green" of us. We met Ed and Jim at the Dunkin Donuts in Lincoln where we all booted up. We then met Bruce and Sue at the trailhead.
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That's a false summit of Cannon in the background.
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The six of us began our hike just before 9:00. It would be a short, but steep climb to the summit. Within no time, we were looking far down into the valley. We had partial views on the way up, but the higher we climbed the further we went into the clouds.
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This was my first time hiking with Bruce . . .
. . . and Sue.
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Here's the Big Three (left to right): Jim, Dave, and Ed.
These three combine for a huge number of New England 4000 footers (including repeats). Ed's closing in on 3000, and Jim has nearly 1000. I'm not sure how many Dave has, but he's been hiking the longest so I'm sure it is in the thousands.
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Out of curiousity, I decided to add up all my New England 4's (including repeats). I'm far behind with a mere 120. Ed has done nearly three times that just in this last year. Ed had his best year yet last year. I forget the number he quoted, but it was about 350. Had he known his total was going to be so high, he would have pushed for 365 to cover every day of the year.
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We layered up in order to fight our way across the windy, exposed ridge.
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Cannon is a very popular mountain year around. With a ski lift and tram to the top, it is shared with skiers, nature lovers, tourists, and autumn leaf peakers.
Dave joked, "Does anyone have a quarter for the viewer."
We then realized with inflation the cost was now 50 cents. Dave pretended to look through the viewer into the clouds while Ed pointed to his head signifying Dave was 'nuts'.
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We then reached the 4100' summit of Cannon. This was my 2nd time on Cannon and winter #10. Here's Bruce on the summit, his first official winter peak. Congratulations Bruce!!
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With high winds and no view, we opted not to climb the tower.
We shared the summit with the skiers.
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This is one summit where you can be pampered year around, so we went into the Summit Cafe.
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Here's our group 'roughing it' at the top.
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The bad part about having these luxuries, is that sooner or later, you have to go back out there. We began our descent over a slightly different route before rejoining the Kinsman Ridge Trail. Several sections of the descent were steep enough for butt sliding as Dave demonstrates below.
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I forgot to check my watch, but I think we finished around 1:30. It was a short, but perfect hike for the day. It was snowing quite heavy by now, so we had a long, slow drive home.
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