Weekend of bushwhackiness. 6 peaks in two days with an overnighter up there. Too bad the weather turned to crap. This one wasn't over-amibitious, this one was literally all wet. Meeting in Bow at 6 AM, we drove up to Pittsburg and took some logging roads to a point southwest of the south peak of Deer Mountain. We meant to be west of Deer, but this got in the way.
And we started off in typical North Country woods.
Ah, what a great trip this would be! We were heading east, instead of the intended northeast direction to the summit, but no matter, we'd enjoy a nice ridge walk. The going to the ridge got steep with some ledges, but they were at least nice to look at.
We came to the ridge and better grades, and that was the end of the nice woods.
Blowdowns galore, deep holes, and thick woods. Misery. Very slow moving. What the hell? This stuff exists up here?! We were only a quarter mile from the summit, but it took a long, long time. Yuck. Got some views at least...
We hit the summit, which was rather clausterphobic with the three of us. We spotted a better way out, and had decent woods all the way down, coming out a little above the car, a whopping 3 hours after we started. OK, that crap's over with, a 9 mile drive to Route 3, and then over Cedar Stream Road with its nice views of (a low) Lake Frances. 12 miles later on a side road, we came to the closest point to the peak. As we did a family from Mass. drove by on this dead end road. I supposed they were looking for moose, but not a good time of day for that.
Good woods to start, then an endless procession of old, overgrown logging roads with chest high raspberry bushes (yummy!) followed by 100' of woods. Repeat ad nauseum.
We then hit woods full of ferns and hobblebush. You have to be careful in these areas, as trees, holes and mud can lurk underneath, but it's still easy-going. I've adopted an exaggerated leg lift to combat this, avoiding tripping and slowly putting it down to see what's underneath. Seems to work.
Boy, was it humid, though. We were dripping wet and getting sapped from this and the disaster on Deer. The woods turned to ferns and we made the summit easily. OK, this was more like it. We headed back down more or less the same way we came without incident. We had talked about summiting Kelsey down by Dixville Notch, but that was now out the window. It was getting late, and we needed to get to the campground and set up, shower and eat. Food! Glorious food!
We got to the campground, I went in and asked when they started serving dinner. 6 o'clock was the response. Crap! It's 5:50! She told us nothing was open in Errol, so Colebrook it would have to be. On a Sunday, I was worried about early closings, so we setup and showered quick as could be, got some chow, I had a couple beers at camp and we turned in early. We had escaped the expected showers today, so maybe tomorrow's weather would do us well. Ha ha. Oh, and trucks and some idiot's car alarm woke us up through the night. Can't believe I forgot my earplugs.