Conquering Mt. Monadnock

Living in New Hampshire for the last 12 years of my life, I've surprisingly never gone hiking. I've walked through the woods many times, but I've never been on a legitimate hike with trails and a summit at the top of the hike.

This past sunday, my girlfriend Jen and I decided to hike up Mt. Monadnock. We got new hiking boots the night before at Dick's Sport Goods up on the Heights and had our stuff packed into our backpacks around 7am. We brought a ton of water, a lunch with our freezer packs to keep it all cold, our sweatshirts and hats. I didn't expect there to be a billion bugs there flying in my face, so next time I'll be sure to pack my bug repellant.

We got to the trail head around 8.30am and decided early on to take the White Dot Trail, which is the most direct route to the summit. Having never hiked before, this was pretty challenging but definitely doable. It was a gorgeous warm clear day, and the sun was out but didn't feel too strong. Going up was the easy part, as there weren't that many people on the mountain at the time, and we only saw maybe 5 or 6 people coming down and up there when we got to the top.

We had a really nice lunch and a brief rest before heading back down. It was so clear that we could see Boston, the John Hancock Tower and the Prudential. I took a bunch of pictures with my digital camera before packing up and heading back down the mountain. It took at a leisurely pace about 90 minutes to get to the summit, and we took the White Dot Trail again on the way back down, opting not to take the White Cross Trail because we wanted to gauge our time and see where we were at certain points.

There were a ton of people coming up the trail on the way back down, so it took about 10 minutes longer to go down. At a certain elevation, the bugs go away (on the way up) and the opposite when you're going down. That was by far the worst part of the entire expedition. There were people of all ages hiking and I'd have to question the sanity of some parents that think a 4 year old can hike it, especially because a large portion of it is ledge, and it's not necessarily a wooded, leaf covered trail. I feel a few times and know if I had a small child with me I wouldn't be the only one dinged up a bit. A lot of people we saw coming up when we went down also weren't prepared at all. Some had no backpacks or water, even just wearing sandals and a t-shirt. A few times we put our sweatshirts on because the wind gets pretty heavy at times and is chilly.

Here it is Tuesday and I'm still a little sore, but nothing major. I'm not sure what the next hike will be or when, but I'm looking forward to it.