Hike #2 - Samoset-14(blue)-Pleasant-14(yellow)-Samoset

Saturday, February 16

Matt is visiting and would like to get out for a little snowshoeing.  Where can we do that close to home?  The Monoosnock Trail, of course.

Today, we'll make it easy, because we've got limited time before having to take Nathaniel back to school.  We'll start down at Samoset School and take the trail though some of the Sholan Farms property.  That's the plan anyway.  However, the snow made things slow going, so we had to cut our hike short.  We only got a little beyond Pleasant Street, before we had to head back.

I always like this section under the power lines.  What goes down, must come up.

(Pant, pant)  The snow was soft and plentiful, but made for slow going up to Pleasant Street.

We made it to Sholan Famrs.  I think Matt & Betsy (in background) would have preferred if I told them we're turning around before they got across that field.

I think this is part of the Samoset Nature Trail.  Not having a trail guide, I've no idea what #8 is identifying.

And we found these "QR" codes on the trees.  Something about Munzee.com.  Christ tells me that it's some kind of geocacaching with QR codes. 

Hike #1 - Granite-17-2-3-4-18-19-Granite

Admittedly, that is a crazy identification of this hike.  But just check out the map at right and it will make perfect sense.

I did this hike on January 1st, 2013 - what a great way to start the new year!

I also got a new camera for Christmas since my old one died.  I hope the pictures are just as good.

I did this hike solo.  It was a loop hike, a little over 2.0 miles done in 1:03.  Although cold, when you're snowshoeing, you get warm really fast.  The toughest part of this hike was getting my car up the end of the dirt road on Granite Street.  Fortunately, despite having 227K miles on it, the Outback is still going strong.

This map can be found at http://www.leominstertrailstewards.org/images/pdf/lh_monoosnoc_north.pdf.

At the beginning, there is a nice kiosk.

I was surprised to find water on the trail, as cold as it was.

This trail is very well marked, with these numbered markers so you can make sure you're going the right direction.

This is looking uphill at the K-Mark lookout (#2).  There've been others on the trail since the snow, but not too many.

The view from the top of North Monoosnoc Hill (985ft) is actually better in the winter than the summer.  In the distance, you can make out Mount Monadnock in Jaffrey, NH.

At 1:14pm, it's amazing how long the shadows are.  This part of the trail is typically very soggy at most times of the year.  Still some water, but not too bad.

Surprisingly, the traffic on the main trail appeared to less than the side trails.

I hope some of you can join me in this new adventure!

New Trail - Monoosnoc in Leominster

A good friend and blog follower was asked of me, "What's next?"

So, on was a brilliant winter day a couple weeks ago, I decided it was a perfect day to strap on the snowshoes and do a hike.  Fortunately, I have plenty of accessible hiking, right here in my home town of Leominster.  The Monoosnoc Trail runs from the Doyle Reservation up near Rt 2 south through Leominster State Forest and Sholan Farms, finishing up at Samoset Middle School on the south side.  I have previously done this entire trail, mostly with the Scouts, but never in the winter end-to-end, so that sounds like a great new goal.

Since everyone is already familiar with my blog name (midstate12), I will just opt to add my additional adventures here.  Like my previous hike, I want to invite any and all friends and family along to join me.  Because of its proximity to home, shuttling cars or getting rides should be much easier than it was on the Mid-State.  I do not anticipate this being as structured in this hike - it will just be a fun winter thing to do.

There are excellent maps for this hike to be found at the Leominster Trail Stewards web site.

Epilogue

To cap off my hike this year, Alex & Cassandra gave me a special Christmas present.  It is a hard cover photo book made to capture this adventure in case the internet explodes and all the content (including this blog) disappears.  This is a beautiful keepsake for me and will allow me to share it others when I am out of range of a wireless network.

The picture on the front cover can be found with the blog entry for the final hike.

Charts Are Here

As promised, here are the statistics from our Mid-State hiking in 2012.  Yes, it took me all Saturday afternoon into the evening, and yes, it does border on obsessive-compulsive, but it is fun to look at the numbers after it's all over.

Here are some interesting statistics.

• Total number of days to complete the hike:  238
• Average number of photos per hike:  11.7
• Average hike duration:  2:30
• Average start time (when recorded):  1:17 pm
• I count dogs and babies (in utero) as people.
• Most days hiking were sunny.  Two days had rain.  One day had fog.

Overall Mileage Per Person

No surprise as to who did the most (yours truly), however, it was surprising to see how close some of the other hikers were to each other.

Here are the actual numbers.  Note the spreatsheet total is 0.8 miles higher that it actually should be.  Clearly, I made some error in calculating mileages along the way.  That said, it is only an error of 0.835%.  Not good enough for a launching a missile, but good enough for me.

Steve	96.57
Betsy	31.77
Alex	31.74
Cassandra	17.01
Dominic	16.39
Tom	11.10
Baby Girl	11.10
Matt	8.66
Dave	7.12
Jim	6.21
Nathaniel	6.06
Brian	4.50
Amanda	3.50
Aaron	3.50
James	1.18

The average mileage per person was 17.09 miles, but the median mileage was just 8.66.

 

Number of Hikes Per Person 

I did all the hikes, but there were 13 other people and a dog hiking with me.  The average number of hikes per person was 3.27, but not surprisingly, the median was on 1 (I had a lot of people just come for 1 hike).

Another way to look at this is to see the number of hikes grouped together.

How Long Were the Hikes?

All hikes were between 3 and 9 miles.

When Did We Hike?

There are two aspects to this question, but both pertain to the calendar.

Who Kept Me Company?

I had to do one hike alone from beginning to end, but most of the time I had one companion.

This was a lot of fun to put together, but it was even more fun to do the actual hiking.

Thank you all!

The patch

It's official.  I have completed the entire Mid-State trail in a single season.  And now, I have the patch to prove it!  I love the little yellow triangle on the tree.

Hike 16 - Section #17

December 8, 2012 - The Finale

It is finally here!  The last hike of my Mid-State hiking goal!  I had originally planned to go last week, thinking that by December 8th, it might be snowing.  The irony is that it snowed last weekend, not this one.  Through a number of circumstances, this week just turned out to be better.  I was able to enlist a several hiking partners which made the walk all the more enjoyable.

This last section entirely in Douglas State Forest.  The trail was very nice for this entire section.  While it was raining when I woke up (in North County), it was all but gone in South County (yes, we are still in Worcester county).

We celebrated with a few extra photos, so enjoy!

In our classic "starting off" photo we have: Alex, Dominic, Cassandra, Tom, Betsy, Steve.

The terrain was pretty cool.  The trail wound between a "forest of boulders".

Alex has the baby.  Tom has Baby Girl.

Lots of interesting things to see on this hike.  Here's an old abandoned well in the middle of the forest.

         

This is an old railroad bed that is now a rail trail: the Southern New England Trunkline Trail.

Just off the trail and over a berm, we found this colorful swamp and pond.

At the 3.85 mile mark, Betsy & Brian hike .75 miles to join us from the parking area.

          

Betsy shows Cassandra and sleeping baby how to find her way back to the car.

Behind us is the foundation of a old center-chimney house.  We could see the base of the chimney, as well.

Yay!  We made it to the end!  Let's celebrate!

  

Here's the last yellow triangle I have to look for.

The stone marker proves I made it to the terminus.

The Mid-State continues into Rhode Island as the North-South Trail.  If we start here, it's only 78 miles to the ocean.

Backtracking, we take this trail back to the parking lot.  But we saw this same sign with the same mileage at several locations on the Coffee House Loop.  I guess if you're looping, you never really get to the end, eh?

This moss makes for an "artsy" picture like my friend Peter takes.  Now all we need is that cool Spyro Gyra "Morning Dance" music you get with Smilebox.

Beautiful Walulm Lake is beside a large picnic area back near the parking lot.  I think I can paddle into Rhode Island from here.

Wow!  It's a hike where we actually gained  people instead of losing them.
The most partners ever for one of my hikes.  Thanks for coming!
(My photo composition leaves a little to be desired.  Who put the shortest person at the lowest point?)

I planned this hike with three options:

• Option #1 - from Rt 16 to end then back to car = 7.6 miles (Steve, Tom, Alex)
• Option #2 - from Rt 16 to lower Coffee House Loop back to car = 4.6 miles (Cassandra, Dominic)
• Option #3 - from car to state line via Coffee House Loop and back = 4.5 miles (Betsy, Brian)

 We started at 10:07am and finished at 1:18pm, with lots of stops along the way.

The total hiking mileage including the turn-arounds at both ends was:

92.08 (book) +  2.44 (Watatic) + 1.25 (Wallum) = 95.77 MILES.

Thanks to everyone who accompanied me, or cheered me on, or just enjoyed reading about this adventure.  Feel free to post comments.

Next blog entry will be hiking statistics (with charts!).  Stay tuned.