July 12, 2008 Hike #1
Today I'll be hiking Peak Above the Nubble, one of my five remaining peaks on my New England 100 Highest List. I got a good view of the peak as I drove through Twin Mountain.
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I was joined by Dave Thompson. I met Dave last week when I bushwhacked Elephant Mountain. He has already completed this list, but is working on his 2nd loop of the New England 100 Highest. We met each other at the right time since we both need these peaks. I have hiked solo hundreds of times, but hiking solo on a bushwhack (trailless peak) is a different story, so I always wait until I find someone who can join me. We parked off Haystack Road where there were 3 large boulders blocking an old logging road. Shortly into our hike, we saw a porcupine who didn't seem to fear us. I guess if I was a porcupine, I wouldn't be afraid of anyone either. For a while it looked as if he was climbing to the summit as well. He finally skirted off the trail to the left.
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We followed this road for a little more than a mile before it petered out. No matter how much planning I put into a bushwhack, it never goes as planned. I thought this road was going to take us southwest. Turns out, it took us southeast. I checked my GPS, and we were only a little over a half mile from the false summit. We figured this was as good a time as any to start the bushwhack. We turned 90° and started up the mountain. We only bushwhacked about 20 minutes when we stumbled across a fairly well defined herd path which took us all the way to the false summit. From here we could see the summit which was only .3 miles away.
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There was also a well defined herd path from the false summit to the true summit with the exception of the last 100 feet or so where we had to go over quite a few blowdowns to reach the cannister which happened to be attached to a blowdown itself.
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Here I am on the 3813' summit. #96
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Here's Dave on the summit.
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We returned over the same route with the exception of continuing on the herd path a little further as we neared the old logging road. The path seemed to peter out again so we had to do a few minutes of bushwhacking before reaching the old road. Here's our track from the day.
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The trip reports I read for this hike varied in length from 4.5 hours to 7 hours. We sure hit this one just right as we stumbled across the herd paths. The roundtrip hike only took us 4 hours. We were quite pleased and proud of ourselves. There was still lots of day left. In case I had extra time today, I had a 2nd hike planned. I invited Dave along, and he accepted. Now we are off to climb Mount Tremont.
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Update - July 22, 2008
I later learned that the herd path we took to the false summit is considered 'illegal' by Gene Daniel. I'm not sure of all the reasoning involved here, but he highly discourages anyone from using it and goes as far as to request that anyone who uses this not apply for the New England 100 Highest Patch. Given the circumstances, that this was not stressed to me until afterwards and that I did not specifically go looking for this 'illegal' trail but rather stumbled upon it, I still plan to claim the summit. I have added this to my entry so that I do not encourage others to take this 'illegal' route to the top.
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