Hiked by: Tim and Valerie on July 15, 2006 - In honor of our nephew, Jackson, who was coming for a visit for the weekend. :-)
Conditions: Started at 8:30am. Lots of cars in the Crawford Depot parking lot, and the trailhead parking. Especially considering the forecast. HEAT WAVE is the word that the newscasters kept using. It was going to be a very hot and humid day.
Started out well, and walked up to the junction between the Jackson Branch and the Webster Branch. We had originally intended to do a loop over Webster and then over to Jackson, but to be quite frank, the guidebook didn't make it sound that great (words like "boggy" come to mind), and it was already a very hot, sweaty walk with lots of mud and bugs. No need to add to it. We'll keep that for another day. So, up and back to Mt Jackson it is! The walk up really wasn't bad. Near the summit, there were some interesting rock formations that we needed to scramble over, but we were over them and up on top relatively quickly.
Ate our lunch on the summit with a dozen girl scouts (maybe brownies, very young), and several other small groups. It was a busy summit!! Enjoyed the unusual view of Mt Washington, looking up the chain of the southern Presidentials - you can always see the smoke of the Cog Railway. We could see Mizpah Spring Hut out in the distance as well - about 1.7 miles away. Apparently, that's where the girl scouts had stayed the previous night. What fun that must have been for them!!
The views in the other directions were also very nice. Although the summit is not completely "bald", there is a lot of open rock, and you can see in almost every direction (maybe every direction, but I didn't explore that much). Looking towards Crawford Notch, we could wee Willey, Field and Tom (the last 2 of the three were our destinations just a couple weeks ago).
This was a trail where Val's mental toughness was challenged a bit too far. The bugs were making her crazy and she started swatting more than watching where she was walking. It could have been dangerous, but Tim made us stop and reapply the DEET in an attempt to calm the growing frustration and bug-swatting frenzy.
Out by 1:30pm. Washed off and changed clothes at the car. Felt much better after that.