Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway

6-26-2015 to 6-28-2015 Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway

Gear:

·                     ULA Ohm 2.0 pack

·                     Mountain Laurel Designs Spirit 48 Quilt

·                     Thermalrest x-lite sleep pad

·                     Hiking Poles

·                     Down Jacket Mont-Bel Ex-light

·                     Tarp and Bivy - did not use

·                     Rain Gear

The Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway is a 48 mile long trail going from the summit of Mt. Monadnock in Jaffrey, NH to the summit of Mt. Sunapee in Newbury, NH. The trail travels along hills, mountains, old backcountry roads, and beautiful wooded trails along southern New Hampshire. The trail has primitive three sided shelters and one tent platform approximately every 6 miles. Due to most of the land being privately owned, it is ask that hikers stay at the shelters.

Day 1

My first day on the trail started at the ever popular Monadnock State Park Headquarters. After I was finally able to get the attendant to understand what I was doing (hiking the trail and keeping car at parking lot) I started on my journey around 5:00pm. My plan was to leisurely stroll into the first shelter sometime before dark. This is exactly what I did. I have previously hiked this portion of the trail numerous times before so it was more of a workout rather than a trail experience. The summit was fantastic as usual thanks to the sunny weather and I enjoyed my two slices of spinach and feta pizza. J Thanks Babe!

Arriving at the shelter is one of the best experiences on the trail at the end of the day (8:00 after getting water at reservoir). After a long and hard day of stomping the ground you can finally plop everything down and relax. And what else!??! You get to eat food!! Everyone should eat well and hearty on the trail. You will be working at a caloric deficit every day. This means you’re body will need and appreciate every calorie you can give it.

For my first nights meal I wanted to sample a new brand of lightweight dehydrated meals. Good-To-Go brand Classic Marinara with Penne. I must say, this tasted pretty darned good! Just like if made at home. Make sure you boil the water and let sit for long enough though. After eating my food and studying the maps and guide book for a while, I went off to sleep. Anxious for a long day ahead.

Spiltoir Shelter

Day 2

I woke up several times during the night just as I always do. It was finally 4:45 am. The sun was about to rise. Time to start getting my ish together. I fired up my titanium Caldera Cone with Gramcracker esbit stove while I stay snuggled up in all my insulation and wrapped up in my quilt. Once I had the coffee good to go, I was quick to pack up and start on the trail.

There are always struggles to get past when it comes to backpacking. I will tell you about two of those. The first, is the struggle to finally get out of bed on those cold mornings. The toughest part is needing to remove your sleeping bag/quilt as that is what needs to (usually) be first packed down into the bottom of the cave you call a backpack. It takes a lot of will power to do this but once you do, the rest of the process is pie. The second struggle is for those of us who prefer dreamy air mattress called inflatable sleeping pads. I love my Thermalrest x-lite but I absolutely hate having to deal with it. Blowing it up at the end of a long day is tiresome and not something I look forward to doing and in the morning, the deflate and roll up process is even more tedious. Inflatable sleeping pads are a pain in my ass and I hate jumping right out of bed but those are just things one has to handle when out in the backcountry.

My day was off to an awesome and early, bright, sunny start around 5:30am. I passed by several bodies of water that had the early morning sun glaring down with the mist rising up.

After walking along some roads and some trail for a while I happened upon Nelson Center.

Very picturesque small town where Emmett greeted me with howling constant barks which reminded me of Dexter. I had no idea who this dog belonged to as I was the only one around. The dog was just wondering around barking at everything. He kept looking back at me to see what I was doing. Anyways, I had a lot of miles to cover. As I continued down the road and back onto wooded trail, Emmett continued to follow me. Actually, Emmett was LEADING me to the trail and stayed ahead 10-50 yards. He would look back every minute or so to make sure I was still following him.

After a couple miles of hiking I started thinking about how we were going to find the owners. I called Emmett over to me by kneeling down and enthusiastically calling for Emmett to “come over here.” There had his name along with a phone number sewn into his collar. I took my phone out, turned it off of airplane mode and into normal mode to kill some battery. Luckily I had a bar or two or service. I phoned the number several times but got no answer so I left a brief message explaining that I was hiking north and had Emmett with me. From there, I left my phone on normal mode and continued on. After a good period of time I checked my phone to make sure the volume was on and up. Not 2 minutes later, I got a call from Sandy the owner and we arranged a pick up at a road crossing not far up the trail.

I met up with Kip (or Kit) and we briefly chatted. He thanked me a lot as did Sandy and they offered a home to stay if I pass by at another time. It turns out they lived right in Nelson Center, where Emmett originally found me. In fact, several years ago Emmett tagged along with some other hikers and traveled all the way to the General Washington Shelter, some 14+ miles out (my intended destination for the day). Before we parted ways, I kindly asked for a picture of myself with Emmett <insert picture>.  EDIT: http://www.easternslopes.com/2010/07/16/monadnock-sunapee-greenway-the-long-march-part-2/ As found in the comments section of this trip report, it looks like these were the people who Emmett hiked with before. Haha what a coincidence!

If you do not care about talking about roads, please skip over the next paragraph.

After that, I had a lot of miles to cover through some beautiful terrain. These next many miles went through more road walking. I think I did learn something about roads on this trip. I walked on many different types of roads in old southern New Hampshire. First there are paved roads. These are obvious. Next, we have dirt roads and this is where is can get tricky. There are old town roads which could consist of old dirt roads varying in overall structure and levelness. There are also old woods roads. From what I understand, these are sometimes old roads from many years ago that were eventually abandoned and are now grown in. These were typically found in the woods in forest sections. Aside from the paved and dirt varieties of roads, there are also forest service and logging roads. These roads are in the middle of the woods and are often no longer marked or not marked at all on maps. Logging roads are sometimes active with logging operations (clearing trees) or more often than not, dormant or abandoned.

Continue here.

Aside from the many road walks, the miles covered on Saturday trekked through absolutely stunning open hill and mountain tops, countless viewpoints, cascade waterfalls, acres and acres of blueberry patches, ponds, beaver dams, and many more features to see that make hiking such an incredible experience. One of my favorite sections to hike here is the Andorra Forest. I’ll let the pictures take over: 

I ended my day around 3:30pm at the General Washington Shelter in Washington, NH. Apparently, this town was one of the first town to be incorporated in honor of the late General George Washington in the year 1776. This shelter was special. The caretakers of the shelter and part of the trail lived about 300 yards from the shelter in their own home. They allowed guests of the shelter to fill up with water at the spigot on the side of their house. Thank you so much Mr. Barker and family for all your support of the trail and it’s hikers at the General Washington Shelter! I had a wonderful Saturday night away from the torrential rain and wind. <insert picture>

I also made a scrumptious Steak Mac and Cheese meal for dinner. Yummy!

Day 3

Sunday morning was a tough one. I had to endure another one of those unavoidable struggles when backpacking. The weather. I had hoped the weather would stay clear throughout the weekend. Fortunately, I had been blessed with ideal and nearly perfect hiking weather the previous two days. Today I woke up to pouring rain and high winds. The weather sucked. I was cold and knew I would be cold and wet all day. I felt bad for my feet which, up to this point, had not had a single blister or sore.

Throughout the night when I woke up to rain and wind I had contemplated calling out to be picked up (by the best gf in the world) in the morning and I would return another day to complete the trail in better weather. Earlier in the day I had also thought about calling to have her come and maybe spend the night with me at the shelter since it was so close to a road. All of this was moot as I had zero cell reception at the shelter. Oh well!

My day started out dry around 6:45am for a few miles of road walking in the cold windy rain. I eventually got to some off road trail and between the overgrown bushes and grass and puddles/ponds in the trail, my rain pants and jacket were practically soaked through. They could both use a recoating of DWR as they are several years old. That’s fine. “As long as I continue walking at a brisk pace, I will maintain high enough body temperatures to be comfortable.” And that is what I did for the rest of the day. I stopped once to make a trail mix and peanut butter wrap and dry out for a good 20 minutes. This is also when I coordinated the logistics of my pick up and return home. For the remainder of the day I cranked out miles while skipping through the forest trying to avoid the streams running through the trail. That was all I could do. The trails were flooded. There were literally streams on the trail flowing just as much water as the actual stream ten feet to the left. The worst part was that because of the terrible weather there were no views at all. I actually stumbled upon Lake Solitude. I didn’t realize it was there until it was only 5 feet in front of me because I couldn’t see it. Once I realized it was there it was like a creepy horror movie with fog rising over the water eliminating any visibility from 20 feet on…

I made it to the top of Mount Sunapee around 1:15pm to experience some of the strongest winds in my life. The noise was frightening. The summit lodge was locked closed so I hurried on before my body temperature came back down. The summit of Sunapee is the end of the Greenway. I took one of the ski trails down the mountain and was at the bottom a number of hours before I had planned on being picked up. I looked around each building to see if any of them were open to get some shelter from the elements. Once again, I was blessed. Someone had been at the main lodge picking up some supplies. They had propped one of the doors open so I nudged my way in and sat between each set of doors. I eventually spoke with them and confirmed it was alright to stay there. I had a carpet floor, heat, and four sides to protect me until my ride arrived. I was safe, I had no blisters, and I was done. Another trail completed. Another adventure experienced. Another one to come.

I highly Recommend the Greenway. I had a blast!

Thanks for reading!