Jacqueline and I drove up mid-afternoon on Saturday to Hancock Campground. It's still early enough in the season that we were able to get a pretty decent tent spot near the river. We got to use our new Keilty 4-man tent which is a nice space upgrade over my REI backpacking tent and a nice not-leaky-trashbag upgrade over my huge Walmart tent. The black flies were out in force in the late afternoon, so we headed to town to wait for them to settle down and grabbed a couple beers at the Woodstock Station.
Got back to the campground around 7 and realized that my lighter was out of gas. Rather than ask a neighbor to borrow one, I decided to do it on my own. I managed to get our fire going with nothing but my bare hands, and the flint in my lighter, and a newspaper, and a Duraflame firestarter, and some fatwood, and some aged kiln dried gas station firewood. Pretty much Tom Hanks from Castaway. We made a nice dinner over the fire-grate (chicken sausage and sliced potatoes) and got to bed early.
The trailhead is on an unmaintained road a few miles off of 302 near Crawford notch. We took Edmands path up to the ridge and then the Eisenhower loop trail to the summit. Below the treeline the trail is not particularly dramatic or difficult. Jacqueline and I had a pretty easy time up to the ridge. I apparently did not communicate the trail setup very well, because when we reached the ridge and sat down on a high spot to get my camera out, Jacqueline mentioned that the hike was not that bad. When I said "yeah, so far," she was disappointed to learn we had another 0.5 miles left to climb. We were pleased that it ended up only being another 15 or 20 minutes to the top and the views were awesome.
We backtracked to the base, and got down to the car around 2:30 and headed back to Boston. We had perfect weather and a really nice all around weekend. This was Jacqueline's 3rd 4K (and favorite so far), and my 24th.
24 to go.
Brought the SLR. Combination of iPhone and SLR pictures here: Pictures
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