Sandwich Mountains
Hiking Company
There was little portent of just those things to come as we pushed off
along Downes Brook Trail, just off the south side of the highway. Earlier
users of the trail had fashioned a foot-wide trench in the snow which we
gladly followed over the trail flatness. The pines, hemlocks, and birches
along the trailsides hunched together to pull us into the preoccupation of
walking.
The Mt. Potash Trail soon appeared, and we turned on to it, heading
southwest. Crossing Downes Brook nearby, we stopped to gaze at the quiet
surroundings of the stream. Rounded tufts of snow-covered stones and
boulders sat at the edges of the bank, looking like a white carpet strewn
with albino cannon balls. The scene remained in our minds long after we
left the spot.
Potash Trail began to steepen in its curving southeasterly climb of this
rounded mountain's jutting cone. Every once in a while one of us would hit
an icy stone and skid backwards for a second or two. Usually, the stick
jabbed into the snow just aft of the slide area would quickly arrest the
descent without further sweat. All of this sliding didn't perturb the
squirrels on either side of the trail. They only dashed up the beech
trunks, curling around behind the tree boles to keep out of sight of our
imagined pursuit of them. We only guffawed in emulation of the near-croaks
of some raven off towards North Hedgehog Mtn.
At the top of one of the first flat stretches, a view opened through
thinly-growing paper birches out towards Greens' Cliff, Mt. Tremont, and
the Bartlett Haystacks. We had worked up the first trail sweat from
steadily walking up that first slowly steepening pitch, and the
tree-dotted view gave us reason to rest for a second or three.
Near here, the path dropped into and out of a now-dry stream valley, with
rocks piled haphazardly in the old channel. The trail pushed on, and
upwards, from here, past stretches of beech just now showering the snowy
earth with the last of their crinkly brown leaves. We continued up through
the edges of spruce and fir growth (taking over for beech and most of the
maple here), and on past "Ike and Diana's" (letters in the snow..) Ledge
and its view towards Passaconaway's slide-incised north slopes. The sky,
graying up with lower altocumuli, showed the sun through as a faint golden
orb over Mt. Whiteface. We gazed over a ledge lookout below us to the
north. The snow gave the look of a brownish-white coat on the lumpy
"body" of the prostrate topographical ursine of Bear Mountain. Green's
Cliff and its two-tiered whitish ledges shined out further to the west. We
looked a little longer at all of this, and then we looked at each
other. We shook our heads, smiled, and then decided we had to pass
on.
The summit would be reached in only one-half mile, but the climb up to it
was hardly a mid-summer's carefree romp. The snowy underfooting rendered
the steeper pull-ups, creep-alongs, and hand climbs over slanted ledge an
eyes-open workout. We had to frequently bushwack around long ledgy walls
by grabbing gnarly spruces and pulling ourselves on through to bypass the
slanting snow fields over these ledges. The snow never lay at depths above
ten or twelve inches, but on these ledges, it could have been one-hundred
inches deep for all the trouble we had traversing the rocky expanses. A
few slide-backs and pull-on-ups later, we finally gained the summit, and
the views were truly magnificent, well worth the toll we had just
cursingly expended.
To the south through the west, Mts. Passaconaway, Whiteface, the two domes
of the Sleepers, and Mt. Tripyramid loomed above us relatively near at
hand. The Fool Killer showed its advance billing here as its slope
outlines blended almost imperceptibly into the bulk of Tripyramid's
mountain mass. Kevin and I sat down on a windswept ledge and contemplated
a hardwood slope on the east side of the Fool Killer. Here and there,
slanted blowdowns broke up the otherwise perfect composition of straight
dark trunks against a white field of snow beneath them. Just north of this
patch of beeches, maples, and birches, a large stand of spruces and firs
showed that diffuse dark green hue. Small tufts of snow sat in these
evergreen boughs, and they created a beautiful pattern of white, almost
like stars, against a dark-green "firmament".
We trudged a bit further over the north edge of the summit mound to get
the best view of Mt. Washington and the Southern Presidentials. They were
all frosted and splashed with a brilliant piercing white, from
Mt. Clinton's ledges, up to Washington and Boott Spur. The mountains that
provided a visual base for Agiochook were grayish white and beautiful in
their buttressing bulkiness-- Mts. Hitchcock and Huntington to the
northwest; Mt. Hancock and the Hoot Owl, Mts. Carrigain (a massive
prominence from Potash Viewpoint), Lowell, Anderson, Nancy and Bemis to
the north; Mts. Tremont and Bear and Bartlett Haystacks to the
northeast; and Mts. Paugus, North Hedgehog and Chocorua to the east-- an
impressive visual array for only about 2700 feet of altitude!
We contemplated the northern scene more closely over towards Washington
while we ate. I pointed out where alpine cirque glaciers may have formed
just before the Laurentide ice sheet swept over the area 20,000 years ago,
there in Oakes Gulf and just to the west of the gulf's headwall. These icy
relics only made the Presidential mounts seem all that much more rugged,
more a product of the "northern climes".
After a spiritual encounter with all the hills, Curly Jack Allen's ghostly
presence, and the memory of Metallak, we fairly skied down the slopes to
descend. Glissading down rock faces with one foot firmly held beneath the
body, we moved swiftly down the trail, making light of the ledgy "demons",
all snow-covered and obstructive, which had held us up so on the
ascent. It seemed like we hadn't spent that much time on the mountain, but
when we arrived at the car on the quietude of the highway, darkness had
begun to fall. We clopped the snow off our boots, slipped a David (The
Dawg) Grisman tape on the machine, and then pushed off down the road to
hit Freddie's for a couple of cool green bottles. Ahh! What these
mountains can do for your soul!