NH MSG Section 6b and SRKG Section 1: Mt Sunapee

A brisk wake-up at Camp Galvin in 40° weather

Good morning from the Steve Galvin Shelter site on Sunapee Ridge! The previous night it was so warm I had a window fan blowing on me all night long and now it was 40° and I was sleeping in a winter coat. Welcome to the first day of Autumn.

Why is there no door???

What's up with shelter toilets that have no privacy? The 3-sided one at the Galpin Shelter did at least have the three sides, but why not just add a door? I assume there's some reason. While backpacking the Appalachian Trail in Connecticut early in the year, I found toilets than had zero walls. Just a big toilet standing there like a throne at the end of a very short access trail. Why? Seems like this would encourage people to not use the facility and go elsewhere, which would not be good for water quality.

Views along Sunapee Ridge

At any rate, this part of the trail continued to be outstanding as it followed the Sunapee ridgeline north. The ups and downs did get rockier and the footing a bit more tricky, but not bad. The trail was clear and easy to follow, but not over-used and eroded. Before long, I arrived at  Lucia's Lookout, a nice spot to sit and catch the morning's rays.

Private view

The amount of smooth, bare granite underfoot increases as you go north along the ridgeline, reminding me a bit of hiking at Acadia.

Lots of granite on this section

Spruce, fir, granite, and reindeer moss under a vivid blue sky. Sigh.

Granite and lichens

The trail is almost a sidewalk here

My favorite spot of the entire trail was the vista about a half mile south of Lake Solitude. Just breathtaking.

Favorite spot since Mt. Monadnock

There was Mt. Monadnock in the distance, where the M-M Trail ended and this one began.

Mt Monadnock, where this trail started

Confused Dogwood

The ironically named Lake Solitude was picturesque, but loud hikers ruined it. From the opposite shore I heard conversations about whether or not to take the trail around the pond and other things. They're standing right next to each other, but I could hear their conversation a quarter of a mile away.  A guy was out in the middle of the pond fishing in an inflatable gizmo. I felt sorry for his lack of peace. But what can you do. I put in some headphones and spent the rest of the hike listening to a podcast about aliens contacting a deep space station that is orbiting a star called Wolf 359.

Lake Solitude, ha ha ha ha

Several trails converge at the north end of the pond, including the Sunapee-Ragged-Kearsarge Greenway, which is a very long name and hereafter will be referenced as the SRK Greenway. The M-S Greenway and the SRK Greenway are co-aligned from the pond up to the summit of Mt. Sunapee where the M-S Greenway ends.

Blazes for the Sunapee-Ragged-Kearsarge Greenway

The SRK Greenway is marked with prefab markers tacked to trees such that the orientation of the marker indicates the direction of the trail.  There are almost no confidence blazes. Only turns and junctions are marked.

Pretty, but noisy

The trail continue on and upward for about another mile, and there was a steady trickle of hikers on this Sunday morning. This part of the trail is also called "Solitude Trail" ha ha ha. The trail then came out onto a gravel access road for the ski facilities and followed that steeply up the hill. A beautiful overlook of Lake Sunapee and mountains off to the northeast opened up below.

Trail joins a ski service road

From this point I wasn't sure where to go and asked a few people if they knew which way the M-S Greenway went, but no one knew. I continued up the gravel road and finally saw a white blaze on a rock underfoot.

Lake Sunapee

And there was the summit, with the ski lift running overhead and people meandering about the grassy top.  I continued along the road, casting about for trail info.

Alien spaceship at the very top

And there it was: The official end of the M-S Greenway. Whoohoo!

End of the M-S Greenway! 

So that's that. On to the next trail! Time to follow those SRK Greenway markers down the hill.

Now following the SRK Greenway

I missed a marker right up at the top and followed a treadway steeply down for a bit until it became dangerous.  Since there no confidence blazes on this trail, if you take a wrong turn, you may not realize it for a long time. As I stood there pondering this crazy trail route, I heard voices down below, and tracked their movement. Maybe I wasn't on the correct trail. So I scrambled back upwards and intersected the group as they came up. And there was the blaze I missed. Yikes. I was very careful the rest of the way down not to miss a single marker.

Don't miss a blaze!

The SRK Greenway was fairly steep going down, and deeply eroded in many spots. It was tedious going on wet, mossy rock. But eventually I got down to Old Province Road. Freakishly, my husband drove up about 30 seconds later. Incredible timing seeing as he was coming from Connecticut.

Back down at the bottom

We checked into the Sunapee Lake Lodge and a hot shower never felt so good. 

NH MSG Sections 5 & 6a: Washington Center to Galpin Shelter

The "friendliest town" award goes to: Washington Center

Welcome to Section 5 of the Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway. This section begins in Washington Center, which is my new favorite town. It was definitely the friendliest town I've encountered in my walks up from Long Island Sound. Every single person I passed either waved or cheerfully exclaimed, "Good Morning!" with one person adding, "Welcome to Washington!"

Road walk past a museum

It was a Saturday morning around 10:30 am and a small farmer's market had set up at the crossroads while a musician played some pipes out front.  After lingering there a bit and chatting with the farmers, I headed down the road past some historical monuments and a big old barn that is now some kind of museum.

Halfmoon Pond boat launch

This first section is a road walk, but not a bad one. Half Moon Pond Road goes past the boat launch for Half Moon Pond. A cold wind was whipping across the water, after a drastic cold front that arrived the night before. The first crisp air of the season.

Lovell Mtn Rd

The trail then turns onto a 4WD road and follows that for a good ways. It can be so easy to miss a turn off of a road like this, but it was very well marked. Thank you!

Effective turn sign

No more slackpacking this trail: I was carrying a fully-loaded backpack for a two-night trip in cold weather (it would turn out to be a one-night trip, but I think I had enough food for five days in there). Loaded packs always seem so much heavier than you remembered them being when you first put them on. Especially if you're going uphill.

Lots of cairns going up this mountain

After the trail turned off the road and became a real hiking trail walks, it wasted no time climbing Lovewell Mountain, about a 1,000-foot elevation gain. It was a beautiful hike, and even though it was a Saturday I only passed one set of hikers on my way up. Probably the cold wind kept the hikers away, but it was invigorating.

Reindeer lichen, spruce, and fir on the upper slopes

It was lunchtime by the time I got to the shoulder or false summit of the mountain. It had been a busy morning driving up from Connecticut before the hike, but I'd stopped at the Washington General Store beforehand to buy one of their delicious grinders. Now was the time to enjoy half of that. Mmmm.

Top of Lovell Mtn

The walk up wasn't overly steep, just a relentless path upwards through the spruce and fir, and eventually I was at the top of the world with some great views.

Nice job with the signs and trail register.

They've done a great job along this trail with signs, trail registers, maps, etc. Signs take a lot of work. Just installing a sign is a lot of work.

First moose tracks of the trip

It was an easy trip back down the other side, and I found myself at the Max Israel Shelter at 2 pm. I was expecting to spend the night here, but it was so early. And it there was a very cold wind ripping through the place, so hanging out at the camping area didn't sound like much fun. I decided to stop and eat the rest of my sandwich and ponder my options. The next shelter was about another six miles up the trail with another 1,000 foot elevation gain. Sunset was around 6:30 pm, so I had about four hours.  Yes. I could make it.

Max Israel Shelter

Invigorated with a new goal, I abandoned Plan "A" and the Max Israel Shelter (which, by the way, has zero cell phone signal) and headed down the trail towards the Steve Galpin Shelter.

Bog Brook

The trail continued down Lovewell Mountain, crossed Half Moon Pond Road (gravel) and Bog Brook, then began the climb up to the ridge that extends north to Mt. Sunapee. I counted four significant climbs on the map between me and the Galpin Shelter. That was the first one.

The first of four more hills

The next climb was Kittredge Hill. With my faster pace and heavy pack, this hill did me in. Good footing, though. No reason to slow down.

Gorgeous and peaceful section of trail

There were some other trails coming in from the west side of Pillsbury State Park, but there were no hikers to be seen. All was peaceful.

Miles of beautiful trail

Eventually I got over the remaining hills and came to Moose Lookout about a quarter mile south of the Galpin Shelter.

Moose Lookout

And there were plenty of moose track and moose poop right there at the Moose Lookout and all the way to the campsite.

Yup. Moose at Moose Lookout. 

Yay! I made it. Just in time to bundle up in layers of warm clothes, set up the tent, hang a bear bag, and cook some noodles before dark. Barely. I sat in the shelter for awhile, but abandoned that idea after hearing lots of animal sounds under the shelter.

Steve Galpin Shelter at Moose Lookout

Sitting in my tent after it got dark, I heard some animal do a deep snort-cough-grunt as it went down the trail. I don't know what that was, but I'm guessing it was a moose passing by, giving off an alarm after it smelled me nearby in the tent. Seemed like a good time to get back to that Stephen King book I was reading, so that's what I did.

No mice can run across my face in this tent. 

NH MSG Section 4: Pitcher Mountain to Washington Center

Climbing out of the fog on Pitcher Mountain

The Pitcher Mountain parking lot on Rt 123 was dark and gloomy in fog and we didn't expect to be able to see anything up at the fire tower, but my husband strolled up the white-blazed service road with me to check it out. It's about 0.4 mile to the tower with an elevation gain of about 300 feet, so it's a popular place to visit, but no one was there on a foggy Saturday morning. The fog began to thin as walked, though, and when we came to a big meadow with cows, sunbeams were casting fog shadows from the trees.

Fire Tower up above the fog

By the time we got to the top, which took no time at all, we were out of the fog an there was a brilliant blue sky above us. The view was mostly clouds, though, with only the very tip of Mt. Monadnock visible to the south and a couple peaks to the north. The closer one looked like it might be Mt. Sunapee.  Maybe the other one is Mt. Kearsarge.

Looking north towards Mt. Sunapee 

The trail meanders through some very open brushy areas, popular with blueberry pickers,  before heading back into the woods. There seems to be a minimalist approach to these areas, so you'll be wading through vegetation and getting wet if there's morning dew. There is a maze of berry-picking trails through the brush and it's possible to take a wrong turn, but I had no trouble spotting the white blazes on rocks when needed.

Signed trail junction on Mt. Pitcher

Methods for markings turns in the M-S Greenway vary as you follow the trail. For much of the trail, there will be two blazes, one directly over the other, to give you a heads up. And then that will be followed by an arrow tacked to a tree or post. This is a lot better than the New Hampshire portion of the M-M Trail, which just gave you two aligned blazes but no indication which way the trail turned. But why not just use the standard offset blazes, the higher blaze indicating the direction of the turn?

A different kind of turn blaze

Another kind of turn blaze I started seeing was different but intuitive. The upper blaze formed a right angle indicating the direction of the turn. Seems like more work to paint than offset blazes, but it's pretty obvious which way the trail goes.

This is just wrong

When I finally found some standard turn blazes, they were wrong. This was at a major four-way junction. The northbound blazes indicated a left turn while an arrow tacked above them showed a right turn. It was the same coming from the opposite direction. If someone were to tamper with the arrow and remove it, the blazes would take people the wrong way. There were more standard turn blazes further down the trail, but at this point I didn't trust them.

Long gravel roadwalk through Andorra Forest

Anyhow, after Pitcher Mountain the trail heads through Andorra Forest, which is pretty big. There's a hiking trail portion through the trees and then you follow a gravel park road for a good ways up to the top, which is another cleared brushy area like the top of Pitcher Mountain. The road ends and the trail just keeps going forward through the brushy hilltop for a quite awhile.

YEAH!!

An unexpected "MSG Half Way" sign put a big smile on my face. Yeah!

Bear been eating apples?

There were a lot of berries that looked sort of like highbush blueberries but not exactly. Chokeberries (not to be confused with chokecherries). Wondered if that might bring in the bear. Maybe I would see one. I didn't, but one had left a calling card filled with apples.

Lots of black chokeberries. May explain the bear. 

A very tall sign marked the top of Hubbard Hill, then it was a sudden transition back into the forest. Loved the contrast between the cleared hilltops and deep, dark forest.

And back into the forest

A nice trail walk and then yet another cleared hilltop, this one Jackson Hill. What a great hike.

Jackson Hill

A bit further on, a sign from 2016 explains that the trail head is being used as a logging road, but there is a blue-blazed alternative that might be more enjoyable. Decisions, decisions. The sign was two years old, so I figure the logging was probably done. I'd read about this section in the guidebook, which warned about a section that was sometimes flooded by beaver as much as 3 feet deep, also suggesting the blue-blazed alternative. This notice on the tree said the flooding problem had been resolved with the logging operations. You mean I don't get to use the water shoes??  I was almost going to take the blue route, but it said it was steeper, and the rock underfoot was wet, so I settled on the white-blazed route.

Decision, decisions

The trail soon skirted a small pond where a beaver had dropped a striped maple across the trail and had been cutting off the tips of the branches and dragging them into the water. Soon after was a small beech that had also been dropped across the trail, but the beaver wasn't eating this one.  Deer won't even eat beech unless they're starving. They can die of starvation with a belly full of beech.

Another beaver pond

I was glad I chose to stay on the main trail because on the way down I got to follow some moose tracks for a good ways. They take big steps. It was a good three feet between each walking footstep.

Moose tracks!

The logging road was still active and I passed some machinery, but it was a Saturday and no one was working. There weren't any big mudholes or tracks to walk through, which was my biggest fear. The treadway was solid. Looked to me like more than a logging road, though. More like someone was getting ready to build some houses.

Jefts Road - still a construction zone.

The spot that used to flood from beaver was still a bit flooded, with a water flowing across the road a few inches deep, but I didn't need to take my boots off.

Beaver Pond still flooding the road a bit

The logging road (called Jefts Road on the trail map) ended at Kings Road, an improved gravel road open to traffic. The trail followed this road past the "Mother Church" of the Seventh Day Adventists, a Protestant sect. There is hiker parking here and it was my original destination point, but I was making great time and texted my husband that I would head on to Washington Center.

Seventh Day Adventist Church on King Street

The trail followed the gravel road up hill and then turned onto paved Faxon Hill Road for a spell before taking a right turn past a gate into some open woods.

Finally turning off the road here

I almost missed seeing the left turn arrow taking me out of the cleared way, and the path leading from this area was pretty overgrown and hard to spot. But luck was with me this day.

Nearly missed this turn

Back into the cool, dark forest for a steady climb up Oak Hill and the first steep section since Monadnock. Kinda got used to all that easy stuff.

Steepest part of the entire weekend

The top of Oak Hill was partly cleared and brushy. More views. I tried to get a good view of Monadnock, but couldn't quite get above the tops of the brush to see fully in that direction. Great views to the west, however.

Oak Hill

Heading north along the flat open hilltop was a delight. I would have spent more time, but got a text that my ride was in Washington Center and so I needed to pick up the pace.

Northbound down Oak Hill

The hike down was lovely, although there was one open, overgrown spot where I couldn't locate a blaze or the trail tread, so I turned on my gps unit to mark my location before meandering through the forest looking for the next blaze. Found the trail pretty quickly after that, though.

Washington Center at the General Store

Down at the bottom there should be a law that all hikers have to stop at the Washington General Store, which is hiker friendly. We sat outside at the picnic table and ate some amazing sandwiches with so many fixings you almost couldn't take a bite. They also sell M-S Greenway hats, shirts, and maps. I got the hat. And then we hopped in the car and headed home to Connecticut.

Thank you. I'll take a sandwich. And an ice cream. And a Greenway hat.