November 20th 2011: Mount Monadnock, Jaffrey, NH

Today was the first day I decided to conquer the various mountains in the New England area. I had previously gone up Mount Pisgah and Mount Wachusett in Northborough and Princeton respectively in Massachusetts, but I had not had a chance to hike any mountains in New Hampshire yet. It was getting close to winter, so I wanted to hike Mount Monadnock in Jaffrey before the snow came in.

My friend and I arrived at the park headquarters at 116 Poole Road at around noon, and started up the White Cross Trail after paying the $4 per person entry fee, with the route we took being shown below in pink.

This being my first real hike up a tall mountain, I actually thought that we would be able to make it to the top in an hour or less. The first part to the junction between the White Dot and White Cross Trails seemed easy enough, with it being completed in about 15 minutes. We decided to take the White Cross Trail instead of the more popular White Dot Trail, because it seemed to take a gentler path than the other trail. It seemed that we were right for some way, then it started getting really rocky. There were even several stretches where there would just be walls of rock that seemed impossible to climb. Along the way, while taking short breaks, we passed several places where there were great views to the south, shown below.

We often passed by people coming down as we climbed up, and by this time, around 1pm, we were already getting exhausted from the steep climb. Whenever we asked them how long more we had to go, they always gave the same answer: 45 minutes to 1 hour, even as we continued quite steadily up the trail. Even when we finally broke the tree line, the very top still seemed so far away.

It was also in this area that I started realizing that there were still pieces of ice floating in the puddles we passed by, indicating how cold it had been earlier in the day.

We were also told by people that it was exceptionally freezing up at the very top, with 30 mile per hour winds. We were to discover how true their words were when we finally reached the top after climbing the steep sheerness of rock leading to the summit, 2 hours after we started our trek. The views were fantastic all around, although I was in constant fear that the wind would blow me off the mountain.

After we had taken a whole lot of pictures to celebrate finally conquering the mountain, it was time to head down before the sun set for good. It had been my original intention to visit the other peaks shown in the map, but my friend and I were so exhausted that we decided to just head back instead. We had been told that the White Dot Trail was much steeper, so we just decided to stick to the White Cross Trail going down. I hate the thought of twisting my ankle going down too recklessly, so I went really slowly, still falling several times along the way down. Towards the end, I was so tired that I was just stumbling along, looking forward to the next junction in the road to indicate I was getting closer to the start point. As a result, we ended up taking about the same amount of time to get down as we did climbing up.

Relieved that our ordeal was over, yet happy that we accomplished climbing up the region's second tallest mountain in the region, we set out to look for dinner, but all the good restaurants in the area were closed on a Sunday night, so we ended up driving towards home. We finally decided to go to Cheoy Lee's II at 45 Sterling Street in West Boylston, where I stuffed myself on the dinner buffet for only $12.95, being starved after the long hike.

With that, our adventure for the day ended, with vows to do shorter mountains, at least in the near future.