The Wapack - Hike #1 - Section 1B

Augh, Spring!  Mud season - yuk.  Since ski season's over (boo-hoo), I have to do something to get outside.  And I would rather it not be yard work.  So with no pressing engagements, I decided to extend last year's hiking adventure with the shorter (albeit hillier) Wapack Trail.  The Wapack picks up near the northern terminus of the Midstate at Rt 119 in Ashburnham (see last year's Hike 1A).

Today, however, in order to save a little time, Brian and I started hiking at West Binney Hill Road.  FYI, this is a dirt road, and in pretty bad shape from the tough winter.  Lots of little potholes and a little rough on my 10yr-232K Outback.  Be that as it may, we left a car across the street from Windblown XC Ski Area, shuttled to our starting point and started hiking at 12:32pm.

 

Brian and I are ready to start at the mini-lot across the street from the ski area.

The scenery on this section of the trail was quite varied.

No blue sky but grand vistas and comfortable temperatures.

Brian is up at the shoulder (false summit) of Mt. New Ipswich.  On this section of trail we had to travel over 4 small mountains.  Nonetheless, they were still uphill.

A fine view of Mt. Mt. Monadnock in the distance.

At one of the summits, there was this relatively new dedication plaque.

We arrive at the boundary of Windblown XC ski area.  The trail travels the perimeter to avoid damaging the winter trails.

Late April, but still some snow left on this trail.

An XC trail sign and the Wapack sign share this tree.

The tree across the brook creates a natural reservoir and waterfall.

Our hiking time was 2:42, so Brian could make his next commitment.  We estimate the mileage to be about 5.8 miles, but the amount of elevation is unknown.  Let's just say that four small mountains definitely counts for something.

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.