Ritzhikes

Where: Pemi Loop When: August, 1985 With: Solo A new tent, a new stove, and my first White Mountain Guide...time to go hiking. This was the end of my first MEDITECH vacation and a solo walk seemed in order. I packed homemade spinach pasta and headed north. I'm not sure how I picked the route, though I can see the attraction. A big circle on a ridge. I didn't realize that I was about to hike the Pemi Loop, a bucket-list hike for many, and begin what would turn into a multi-decade quest to climb all 48 of New Hampshire's 4000' peaks . This hike would be a good start, ticking off eight of the peaks on the list (I would later go back and tag three more that are commonly summited on The Loop - West Bond, North Twin, Galehead). But I didn't know about the list, or the Loop. It just seemed like a good route for a hike. The trail head was the Wilderness Trail (now Lincoln Woods) parking lot on the Kancamagus Highway and I headed in on the WT to the Bondcliff trail, wh...

Where: Long Trail When: August, 1985 With: Bill The start of a week's vacation...my first at MEDITECH, and I decided to kick it off with a hike with brother Bill. We elected to try out the bottom end of the Long Trail, so we drove over to Williamstown and went in from there. Found a place to park, then followed the AT markers along a couple of roads to the trailhead. If memory serves, the trail followed a stream at first. We didn't go too far that first day due to a late start and settled in at a primitive campsite (the Sherman Brook Campsite). Some interesting site-mates. Two thru-hikers were the most efficient campers I'd ever seen. Came in, one set up while the other cooked dinner, they ate, talked a bit and then went to sleep. One had some bad blisters and was using a cane. They said they'd had to get off the trail a couple of times to find a hospital. The other folks were a group of kids who came up to our fire at one point. They seemed interested in partyi...

Where: Mt. Cardigan When: mid-late 1980s With: Solo Another in my series of day hikes, most likely inspired by the purchase of a car. I recall very little of this trip. I know I went there and seem to remember parking further up the mountain than I expected. The summit was open and rocky, and I think I may have found some blueberries to eat up there.

Where: Prospect Rock When: Summer, 1985 (?) With: Chip Back to Prospect Rock, via another route. Up the Lye Brook trail this time. We figured to make it to Bourn Pond and then hike over to Prospect Rock. A good plan, but the trail turned out to be a lot longer than we'd expected. The Lye Brook trail seemed to go on forever, with a lot of false pond sightings to break the spirit. It turned out to be a 7.4 mile hike to the pond...maybe three hours of walking. After a short rest at the pond, we continued on the Branch Pond trail to the Long Trail and down to the Rock. That was another 5.1 miles. Most of the last 2-3 miles I had a roaring caffeine withdrawal headache and by the time we finally made camp I was pretty incapacitated. I set up my tent, crawled in, and just lay there. After a while, and a little food, and some drink, I came back to life and the rest of the evening wasn't too bad. The next day we were joined by a trail crew as we were breaking camp. They asked wh...