back to parking lot

back to parking lot
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

After I hit Old Mast Road, I only had one mishap. There's also a dirt road that diverges from Old Mast Road, and I managed to wander onto that. No harm, I wound up at the parking lot just the same. The dirt road is not described well in the AMC Guide, but you can see it on the map (Map #3, which comes with the Guide).

Speeding along, I was surprised when I suddenly saw my car up ahead. From looking at the trail map, I thought that I would need to do some walking along Ferncroft Rd to get from the Old Mast Road back to the Dicey's Mill trailhead. But it turns out that the two trailheads are at opposite ends of the Ferncroft Rd parking lot.

It was a pleasant surprise to make it back out at 4:30 pm, just around sunset. This photo actually makes it look a lot darker than it was.

I cut things close by taking an alternate route, but I'm still glad I did it. It's just more fun doing a loop and seeing different things on the way back. Too bad there's so little daylight this time of the year!

I discovered when I got home that I'd lost some skin on my heel, where the blister cushions had rubbed off - haven't had that happen before. I'm still feeling pretty sore today, but incredibly good nevertheless. There should be more days like this!

Entire Mt Passaconaway Trip Report

steep drop along walden trail

steep drop walden trail
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

As I traveled along the Walden Trail, I kept coming to one incredibly steep drop after another. After about an hour of travel, I convinced myself that I was, in fact, no longer on the Walden Trail; that I'd somehow missed the junction with the Wonalancet Range, and was now traveling along that.

However, I was wrong. When I finally hit the clearly marked junction to the Wonalancet Range Trail, it was about 3 pm. I must have been doing less than 1 mph on the descent from the summit!

Following the Wonalancet back down to the parking lot appeared to be tempting fate - 3.2 miles back from this junction, including a minor summit. Instead, I could continue another 0.9 miles on the Walden Trail till it hit the Old Mast Road at a 4-way junction, and follow that back another 2 miles to the parking lot. Old Mast is basically a logging road, with a light downhill grade, so it would be fairly easy to follow if it started to get dark before I got back. Pancakes being the better part of valor, I immediately switched plans accordingly.

True to its nature, Walden continued to throw some very steep droppages at me before I finally hit the junction. I admit that there was a little cursing to be heard in the wilderness, that day.

Entire Mt Passaconaway Trip Report

walden trail view

walden trail view
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

The AMC Guide (p 408) is pretty clear about the Walden Trail. There has been work done on it, but it's still incredibly steep and rough in spots. Nevertheless, I heavily underestimated it!

Entire Mt Passaconaway Trip Report

summit of Mt Passaconaway

summit of Mt Passaconaway
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

Right after the overlook, you come to a sign pointing to the summit of Mt Passaconaway, off to the right on a spur trail. I followed this to a fork; both branches of the fork petered out after a few meters. This spot on the left fork looked the highest, to me; I'm guessing it's the true summit.

At this point I was feeling pretty good. It was 1 pm; I'd made the ascent in good time, despite delays, and I knew that if I just returned the same way I'd come, I'd probably be out in two or three hours. But what fun is that? There are several other ways off of Passaconaway, all heading back towards the parking lot... so why not do a loop?

I studied the Guide quickly for an alternate route, and decided to try the Wonalancet Range Trail (p 409). To get there, I'd need to follow the Walden Trail down off the mountaintop, which I proceeded to do apace.

Entire Mt Passaconaway Trip Report

view from Mt Passaconaway

view
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

There's a lovely view near the summit of Mt Passaconaway. Even though it was a cloudy day, I still had a nice look out at mountains in the distance.

Entire Mt Passaconaway Trip Report

bouldery trail

bouldery trail
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

Here we are at the toughest part of Dicey's Mill Trail - the two-tenths of a mile of boulder clambering just below the summit. It's not at all difficult compared to the approach to East Osceola from the Kanc. Just be prepared to use hands and feet to get over it.

Entire Mt Passaconaway Trip Report

view down dicey's mill trail

view down trail
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

This is a view back down Dicey's Mill Trail just at the intersection with the Rollins Trail at 3.9 miles. So far so good, the ascent has been nice and gradual.

The Dicey's Mill Trail approach to Passaconaway is reminiscent of the Mt Tecumseh Trail approach to Tecumseh (probably the same whether you're going via Tripoli Rd or Waterville Valley Ski Area), which I've also done recently. It's really a pretty sweet trail. It leads you on pretty level ground for the first couple of miles, and then there's a gradual, steady ascent at a pretty bearable grade.

And then, you hit the part where you're climbing over boulders near the top. There's a lot more boulder climbing here than there is on Tecumseh.

Entire Mt Passaconaway Trip Report

dicey's mill boulder

dicey's mill boulder
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

This is the giant whale of a boulder near where Dicey's Mill trail crosses the Wonalancet River at 2.3 miles. Supposedly there are remains of the mill in the area. Unfortunately, I was too hurried at this point to seek them out. I'd like to come back some day for another look.

Entire Mt Passaconaway Trip Report

tom wiggin trail

tom wiggin trail
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

Dicey's Mill Trail meets the Tom Wiggin Trail at 1.9 miles. At this point I was thinking "yeesh, I'm going incredibly slow, and there's hardly been any elevation gain yet!"

You can take the Tom Wiggin Trail up to Mt Whiteface, another 4000-footer. In the back of my mind, I had been thinking about attempting Mt Whiteface on the way back, although I knew it would be tough getting out before sunset if I took that route.

The sign says that Tom Wiggin Trail is "not recommended steep and loose". The Guide says the same thing (p 416 - "...many sections of loose, gravelly footing that are particularly tedious on the descent"!). In the end I decided not to risk it. Mt Whiteface will get its own separate day!

Entire Mt Passaconaway Trip Report

blue blazes

blue blazes
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

Dicey's Mill trail is pretty well marked, with blue blazes along most of the way, and signs at trail junctions. Despite that, I managed to lose the trail about a half mile after entering the Sandwich Range Wilderness. I zigged when I should have zagged, and the trail just vanished! I thought I had missed a bend in the trail, and backtracked all the way back to the entrance to the Wilderness area, wondering whether my chances at summitting Passaconaway were blown by this little diversion.

It turned out that I had followed the trail correctly, and I should have just gone right instead of left at the point where I'd become confused. It was pretty easy to see when I came back to it, but there were no blue blazes at that point to help.

Later, after about an hour of hiking, I had to stop to apply extra blister cushions to my heels. I had started out with a couple to begin with, but it felt like they weren't helping, so I added two more (in the end these didn't help as much as they had in the past).

With these delays, I was not off to a promising start, time-wise! Despite that, I was really enjoying the hike.

Entire Mt Passaconaway Trip Report

entering sandwich range wilderness

entering sandwich range wilderness
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

Very soon after leaving the houses behind, you enter the Sandwich Range Wilderness. The boundary is clearly announced. First, there's this rustic wooden sign which reads "Entering Sandwich Range Wilderness White Mountain National Forest". Then there are two "bearing trees", marked with small yellow signs. Finally, there's a "land survey monument", which looks a bit like a giant nail with a head the size of my palm, surrounded by rocks that are spray-painted neon red. This last item has its own separate sign.

Up until this point at 0.8 miles, the trail is very tame and level. Beyond the signs, the trail begins to rise a bit.

Entire Mt Passaconaway Trip Report

no trespassing with bear dogs

no trespassing with bear dogs
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

I left the parking lot at 9 am. The AMC White Mountain Guide says that reaching the summit is expected to take 3 h 45 min (p 407). At worst, I expected the round trip to take 7 hours or so, which would mean little time for dawdling or getting lost if I wanted to make it out of the woods before sunset.

The Guide is actually pretty clear about how Dicey's Mill starts - you have to go through some private property first. Still, it's kind of weird to hike straight on past signs that say "No Trespassing", even if they are qualified with the words "With Bear Dogs" as these signs were. I'm guessing a bear dog is a dog that is trained to hunt bears in some way... presumably the signs are not referencing amphicyonids, but you never know.

In any case, I trooped on through, past the signs, past the house where some guys were working on the roof (oops, guess I did meet some people while hiking!), and off into the Sandwich Range Wilderness.

Entire Mt Passaconaway Trip Report

dicey's mill trailhead

dicey's mill trailhead
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

Here we are at the trailhead.

Dicey's Mill shares the trailhead with a number of other trails, many of them leading to Passaconaway in one way or another. The trails branch off from the parking area in two directions. I was in a hurry to get started, so I didn't check out the trailhead signs at the opposite side of the parking lot... which would have been useful, later on.

This is a very nice trailhead, with a lot of parking available (I'd guess there's room for about 20 cars). There's even a port-a-john at one end. What more can you ask for?

On this day, I only saw one other car in the lot when I started out, and there were two different cars there when I departed. Thus it was no surprise that I didn't meet a single person during the entire hike - sweet!

Entire Mt Passaconaway Trip Report

mt passaconaway - fourth 4000-footer

nearing the summit
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

Yesterday's hike: 5 h 50 min | 9 mi | 1.5 mph. The mileage doesn't count some backtracking that I did when I got slightly lost, or side trips, so my pace was probably better than reported. Also, I was carrying my backpack, weighing about 15 lbs or so.

The weather had been so temperate for the last few days that I decided to take a swing at another 4000-footer. I played hookie to do that yesterday. Even with the recent good weather, there still might be ice in the mountains... and without traction devices, I wanted to be as sure as possible that I wouldn't encounter significant ice. Some reports at Views from the Top indicated that south facing trails were in good shape, possibly because they get more sun this time of year, so I focused on those.

My choices were narrowed down also by the amount of time I had. With less daylight at this time of the year, I needed a route to a summit that was short enough that I could cover the round trip in six or seven hours. I finally decided to try climbing Mt Passaconaway from the south, via the Dicey's Mill Trail. It's 4.6 miles to the summit, with an elevation gain of 2950 feet, and reported to be a relatively easy climb.

Entire Mt Passaconaway Trip Report

Tank ninety-seven

Total miles: 34958. Trip miles: 274.1. Gallons: 5.053. Price per gallon: $2.579.

Screen mileage: 51.5 mpg. Tank mileage: 54.2 mpg.

One 140 mile drive, otherwise short commutes.

granary burial ground

granary burial ground
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

We took a walk along part of the Freedom Trail. There are several old cemeteries along the trail, in which rest some historically important people. This is a tombstone at the Granary Burial Ground. The tombstones here are really neat, many of them engraved with skulls of some sort.

cemetery on boston common

cemetery on boston common
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

In keeping with the Halloween theme, we visited some cemeteries in Boston on Sunday. This is the Central Burying Ground on Boston Common.

drum column

drum column by cal lane - detail
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

This sculpture by Cal Lane has some fun Halloween-ish details.

red berries

red berries
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

It was looking very autumnal at the DeCordova.

eternal presence by john wilson

eternal presence by john wilson
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

Last weekend - Halloween - my sister came for a visit. We went over to the DeCordova sculpture garden. The weather was fantastic, nice and warm, except for some insanely blustery winds.

A review of "The Golden City: A Novel"

The Golden City: A Novel

by John Twelve Hawks

This review contains spoilers, so don’t read on if you want to be completely surprised by everything that happens in The Golden City.

Way back in January, I reviewed The Dark River, the second book in a paranoid fantasy thriller series written by the mysterious author, John Twelve Hawks. Out of nowhere, several weeks ago, someone posted a comment in response to the review. The comment was from the author’s literary agency. I was offered a free copy of the third book in the series, The Golden City.

Wow! Being offered free goodies just for posting a review seemed too good to be true, and I wondered if it was a weird form of comment spam (or perhaps a ruse by the Tabula to get their clutches into me). However, it turned out to be genuine. I received a shiny new hard cover copy of The Golden City a few weeks ago. (Hopefully, writing about this clears me with the FTC.)

It took me a while to get started on the book, but once I did, I zipped through it in just a few days. This last book is consistently good, although it suffers from a few flaws, just as the first two books did.

Again, the MacGuffin – the threat of a Big Brother coming to control our lives – fails to inspire me with fear. The Big Brother organization here, the Tabula, would be fairly benign if all they did was spy on you all the time. But they don’t just do that – they also seem to be intent on killing the people who might expose them. This, it seems, is where the real danger lies – the fact that they’re an organization which thinks it’s OK to kill people to advance their cause. And since there are plenty of other organizations/people which are out to get you (terrorists, your average serial killer, and so on), I don’t see why the Tabula is touted as the greatest possible threat to all of mankind.

The entirety of Chapter 42 is a defense of the premise that the loss of privacy is the gravest possible threat, but reading it didn’t convince me. And I’m a pretty paranoid person! It seems to me that loss of privacy has its ups and downs, and humanity will learn to cope. Seriously, which is worse, the government snooping through your underwear drawer, or terrorists pointing your airplane at a skyscraper? Let’s face it, marketing agencies already know way more about us than we’d like – but does that alter our quality of life significantly?

Well, I already knew this was an issue from reading the two earlier books, and I was along for the ride. This book is just as fun as the first two, so if you enjoyed them, I think you will enjoy this one, as I did. If you enjoyed the Alias TV series, with its kickass strong female lead and its mish-mash of science fiction/fantasy paranoia, you'll probably like this trilogy.

I don’t want to reveal too much, but here comes a spoiler: I have to mention that Maya’s pregnancy was way too jarring – one minute, she’s being rescued by Gabriel, the next she’s preggers, with nary a mention of hand-holding in between, let alone shagging. At least a few shy kisses were in order to prepare the reader.

One more thing: the series is described as a trilogy, but the book is open-ended enough that there could be another sequel. I’d be happy to read more, but I’m also happy with the trilogy as it is. Good entertainment value! If John Twelve Hawks writes anything else, I’ll definitely take a look.

See more about The Golden City: A Novel

Tank ninety-six

Total miles: 34684. Trip miles: 401.4. Gallons: 8.398. Price per gallon: $2.699.

Screen mileage: 49.3 mpg. Tank mileage: 47.8 mpg.

mt osceola near parking lot

mt osceola near parking lot
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

Here I'm on the way back to the car, very close to the parking lot. In this area the foliage was still lovely. The rain made the colors very vivid.

Despite all the rain, and some trouble with ice, this was a really cool hike, exhilarating even! Hiking through all the water made me feel like I was being absorbed into the outdoors. I was also glad to bag my third 4000-footer.

The total hike was a distance of 6.4 miles. It took me 4 h and 40 min for a pace of 1.4 mph. Not so bad, given the conditions... The elevation gain is 2050 feet, according to the White Mountain Guide. I will have to go back some day, to cover the section of trail between E Osceola and Mt Osceola.

What a great day! I wonder if I will be able to do any more hiking in the Whites before winter comes in for real?

mt osceola trail stream

mt osceola trail stream
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

Here's another shot of the trail doing its imitation of a stream, on the way back down. It had only stopped raining while I was at the summit. All of the accumulated rain and melting ice was flooding the trail even more on the return trip. This meant I got to see some very beautiful waterfalls, some of which I had to cross through as they passed over the trail!

mt osceola summit ice and wind

mt osceola summit ice and wind
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

I walked out on the ridge just a little to get a photo... the wind was an incredible force! I just took this shot and went back.

Since everything was covered in ice, I decided not to take a break to eat something at the top - nowhere to comfortably sit! Instead, I immediately began to retrace my steps.

mt osceola summit ice

mt osceola summit ice
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

Once I got to the ridge, I was again faced with ice covered rocks. In addition, there was an unbelievable blasting wind coming in to the mountaintop here.

Fortunately, the temperature was well above freezing. so I could stand to walk around a little. But the ice and wind severely limited the exploring that I could do.

mt osceola summit is flooded

mt osceola summit is flooded
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

From the old fire tower footings, I followed the path to a clearing along a ridge. The summit was a strange combination of water and ice. The trail passed through the biggest pools of water I'd encountered so far. They were haflway frozen, with ice slabs standing on top. I could feel ice crunching under my boots as I walked through them.

mt osceola summit covered in ice

mt osceola summit covered in ice
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

As I approached the summit, the going got more difficult. Sections of the trail here are partially blocked with huge walls of sloping rock that give you little or no room to get by on the flat. There are many areas where you have to set your boots on a sharply sloping rock. And it was just around this area that most of the rocks had accumulated a slippery coating of ice, perhaps a quarter inch thick. Bummer!

Fortunately, it had been raining pretty much nonstop since I started, and there were streams of fresh running water going over the rocks. Wherever the streams rushed, the ice was gone. So I learned to just put my feet very carefully wherever there was running water. This got me most of the way. Very close to the summit I had some difficulty clambering up a few ice covered boulders, but I managed without slipping.

In this photo, I've reached the old fire tower footings at the summit. Here, the rocks were completely covered in ice! Not sure how well that comes through in the photo.

I took off my backpack and set it down here to look around, taking tiny mincing footsteps to avoid falling.

wet trail

wet trail
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

Most of the trail was extremely wet - literally running with water, like a stream, or covered in standing pools. By habit, I started out by trying to avoid walking in the water. But I quickly gave up and just went straight through the pools, often stepping into water that covered several inches of my boots. They remained excellently waterproof.

All my gear held up pretty well, actually, except my mittens got completely soaked - and I thought they were waterproof! Also, I continue to have the problem that water drains into my sleeves whenever I raise my hands up. Not sure what to do about that, but I'll have to find some solution. Overall, I stayed reasonably dry and warm despite all the water.

As I approached the summit, I passed the two guys who, I surmised, were heading back to their big black truck. One of them joked "I think I left the keys in the truck!" - guffaw! It appeared that I would soon be the only soul on the mountain... neat!

ice

ice
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

As I started out on the trail, there was a light rain. The car thermometer read 39 °F, but it felt warmer.

The Mt Osceola trail is pretty gentle for most of the way to the summit. There are a number of switchbacks which make the trail longer, but less steep.

At some point, I'm guessing about halfway up, I started to see bits of branches and red berries, coated in ice, apparently broken off and fallen onto the trail. Of course, I was wondering how much ice I'd find as I continued onward.

mt osceola trailhead

mt osceola trailhead
Originally uploaded by wereldmuis.

I finally made it to Mt Osceola today! This is the trailhead. There were some water droplets on the lens; it was raining lightly when I got there. There was me and a big black truck in the lot, that's all. Nice and quiet - amazing what a little rain will do to clear the trails.

I almost didn't go, but I'm glad I did. It was almighty hard getting up this morning, and as I sat around sipping my tea trying to decide what to do, I had strong misgivings about the potential for ice near the summit. As it turned out, there was ice, but it was manageable.

Tank ninety-five

Total miles: 34283. Trip miles: 369.1. Gallons: 8.167. Price per gallon: $2.599.

Screen mileage: 49.3 mpg. Tank mileage: 45.2 mpg.

Most of the tank was used in a round-trip drive of about 2.5 hours each way at 65 mph. But there was some dirt road driving and city commutes, too. It's getting colder, which accounts for the lower mileage.