July 17-20, 2007
At home on Tuesday morning, we had to abandon our plans to do an overnighter to Mt Isolation via Davis Path. The weather forecasts were just too bad. We quickly unpacked our full packs and readjusted for car camping at Dry River, with day hikes (hopefully around the impending storms).
It was a beautiful sunny day as we drove up to Crawford Notch. We stopped at the Irving in Fabyan and got sandwiches and chips, and then sat at a picnic table across from the Willey House Historical Site to eat lunch. Blue skies were gorgeous. The Webster cliffs were incredible. The ducks were dodging children but getting lots to eat. After lunch, Tim wandered around the pond to take pictures. Val just relaxed at the picnic table in the sun. Overall, it was a wonderful start to our vacation.
We arrived at Dry River Campground and set up the Green Hornet. This is a luxury that we would never have backpacking! Ha Ha! Tim also set up a tarp over the picnic table. This is a life lesson that he’s apparently learned well in the past. It’s much easier to set up the tarp and be prepared BEFORE it actually starts raining.
Once camp was established, we headed off to do the short hike up North and Middle Sugarloaf. We started around 2:30pm. View from the summit of Middle Sugarloaf was incredible. We lingered in the sun, on the rocks. Even found a few blueberries. Looking out over the valley, we could see the “pock-marks” from logging over the years. There was also some active logging, so that was quite a giant hole by comparison.
Lots of red-breasted nuthatches and even a black-throated blue warbler.
Once we returned to camp and got quick showers, Tim started a campfire. We prepared for tomorrow’s day hike by ensuring that our daypacks had everything we needed. We cooked buffalo chicken sausages on roasting sticks over the fire, and ate them with fresh steamed green beans from our garden. We chatted about childhood camping & backpacking trips until after midnight. It’s amazing that there are still so many stories that we’ve never told each other. It was a fun evening!
Sometime between 1am and 3am, a bear visited our campsite. We had thought that we were very careful about getting rid of all the trash and food, but he found our empty collapsible nylon cooler, which had, earlier in the day, had fruit in it. We could hear him just tearing it up. Tim got dressed to go out. Our rustling must have convinced the bear to move on – that and the fact that he hadn’t found any actual food.
Rain started sometime after 3am. We slept in until almost 8am. Needless to say, we got a late start. Wednesday morning, we drove up to the AMC Highland Center to check the forecast. Rain is predicted to last all day. Hmmmm… Well, we’ll just start our anticipated hike (Zealand Rd to the Hut) and if we feel like going to the Zealand Mountain summit, and time allows, we can do that. After all, the alternative seems to be to sit in the tent all day.
As we got out of the car at the Zealand Rd Trailhead, the skies opened up – from a slow drizzle to a steady rain. That was 10:30am.
The trail to the hut was easy and we made good time. We met a volunteer naturalist who had just spent three days at the hut. We talked at length about thrushes (Wood, Hermit, etc). She had seen several different varieties of thrushes up there, and we were lucky enough to see some too. The hut was FULL of hikers – not even any room for us to sit for a minute. Apparently, one of the AMC-sponsored week-long hikes was having a “down day” at Zealand Hut, and it was raining, so everyone was inside playing board games, etc. We sat for a moment at a bench on the porch and ate a snack. A group of hikers came down off the Twinway Trail (the one we would need to take if we wanted to get Zealand Mountain). Tim talked to one of the leaders and she said that the trail was reasonable. By this point, it was almost noon.
We set off with the expectation that we would go to the “view” – about 1.1 miles up the trail, and then re-evaluate the time. The view was excellent, despite the foul weather. The rain had decreased to just a drizzle, and we switched out of our steamy Gore-Tex to just light windbreakers.
We decided to press on for the summit. Most of the elevation gain had already been climbed. We had a nice walk in the drizzle over to the summit, where we actually found some breeze and chill. We took a quick snack, snapped a picture of each of us with the sign, and then headed back.
We made it back to the hut by 4pm. We chatted with a few people – a young lady from Indiana who was doing a traverse from Franconia through the Presidentials, and a mother with two children who were at the hut specifically to bird watch. We chatted with her about the opportunities to see Gray Jays, Boreal Chickadees, etc.
We walked the 2.8 miles back to the car, peeled off our outer layers, and collapsed about 5:30pm. Back at Dry River, we cleaned up and then (since it was raining even HARDER now), headed down to the Pizzeria in Bretton Woods. The pizza tasted good after our long day in the rain. We had done 11.4 miles – wet from the moment we left the car. Valerie has never hiked in the rain, so this was something that just needed to be done. This was a good hike for it, since so much of it was flat, and even the steep portions had good NH granite that our Vibram soles can grab well when wet.
When we got back to the campsite, we settled into the vestibule of the Green Hornet with our books. The rain never let up, so if the bear visited us that night, we never heard him. We both slept well, and when we awoke on Thursday morning, the rain had temporarily stopped.
Thursday, the forecast was even worse than Wednesday. We thought about those poor hikers at the Zealand Hut – some needed to get to the Highland Center, others to Nauman tent sites. Either way, they had a long day in the rain ahead of them. We set off in the car and decided to try the Pondicherry Wildlife Refuge. I think that at this time of year, the main inhabitant of the refuge is the deer fly. We did get a couple good pictures of some birds, but other than that, it was a bug-bonanza.
Also, we saw a female moose eating along the side of Rt 302. We didn't stop because she was being surrounded by enough tourists already. Some really let their very small children get way too close to a huge wild animal.
We ate lunch at a wonderful restaurant in Bethlehem, NH called the Cold Mountain Café. Very delicious. We would recommend it to anyone traveling in the area. We drove around quite a bit on Thursday – just trying to avoid sitting at the campsite in the rain. Spoke to the ranger at the Ammonoosuc ranger station. Drove over to Glen and Jackson, NH. Got some coffee/tea at a general store in Jackson. We ended up back at the campsite about 4pm.
Under the tarp that Tim so carefully prepared for us, he cooked a great dinner - sautéed chicken breasts and zucchini (again, from our garden) with a couscous side dish. It was delicious!
Later, we retired to the vestibule of the Green Hornet to read and pass some time before bed. Again, we slept well. No bears, but the rain didn’t stop. When we got up, around 8am on Friday, it was still pouring. Thankfully, the rain subsided by about 9:30am, and we got the very wet and muddy tent down and into the car. We packed everything up and headed home. What a mess! But we had a great experience and enjoyed our days away.