Mt. Monadnock used to, and honestly still does, serve as THE mountain to hike whenever I wanted a challenge, a view, a chance to be alone, a chance to connect with a friend, a place to work through my thoughts, and/or just a place to be happy. My relationship hiking this mountain exists in two chapters: pre-peakbagging and the current era. The current era encompasses most of the hikes I've done in the past few years of the mountain geared toward redlining all of the trails, or just hiking to get out into the woods. In the pre-peakbagging era, hiking Mt. Monadnock was a BIG event. I would get with a friend or two, plan our route, get a plethora of snacks (and drinks - we were in college after all), and make a full day out of it. I fell in love with Mt. Monadnock on my first visit in 2015, and now in 2024, that love has not subsided.
Hike #1: Mt. Monadnock via Birchtoft Trail with Ian
October 11th, 2015
https://civilizedhiking.blogspot.com/2015/10/vault-mt-monadnock-via-birchtoft-trail.html
Hike #2: Mt. Monadnock via White Arrow Trail with Emma & Grace
April 18th, 2016
My second hike to Mt. Monadnock was less than a year later with two great friends, Emma and Grace (yes, that's the Emma I still sometimes hike with today!). Our journey took us to the Old Toll House parking area on a chilly April. We started by hiking up the Old Halfway House Trail, paralleling the Old Toll Road. There were some temporary trail signs up near the end of the Old Halfway House Trail, directing us to the Halfway House site. We enjoyed a very partial view of the summit from the Halfway House Site, and a nice vista in the other direction (as of 2024, this vista is mostly grown-over).
Our journey got exciting once on the White Arrow Trail, and by exciting, I mean steep! By far the steepest hike I've ever done. There was also snow and ice in some rock crevices! Slowly, we dragged our bodies up the mountain, up and over rocks and slabs, but we quickly gained some beautiful views, which helped immensely. The summit grew nearer, legally speaking, but seemed to never arrive. We began to wonder if we were in over our heads, but then we noticed the people up top looking much bigger, and soon enough we had arrived! We cheersed our summit beers and Dunkin Donuts cheesy bagel twists to a job well done! This was the first time I had noticed the VERY old graffiti on top o fthe mountain, which was super cool. I was even super blessed to have two bumble bees land on my jacket mid... mid-adult encounter. I slowly removed the jacket, and it seemed that they kept on keeping on!
Our descent was slow and steady, but soon enough we made it back to the Halfway House site, where we found the mossy plaque from 1954 and Moses Spring. The plaque read: THE SITE OF THE HOTEL KNOWN AS THE MOUNTAIN HOUSE ALSO LATER AS THE HALFWAY HOUSE 1986 1954. We followed the Old Toll Road back to the car, and then stopped at Kimball Farm nearby for a delicious cup of ice cream as a reward.
Hike #3: Mt. Monadnock via Pumpelly Trail with Rachel
October 10th, 2016
My next visit to the Grand Monadnock would be with another great friend, Rachel. Rachel and I had hiked together many times in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts, twice in the Catskills (North Point and Sugarloaf Mountain), and would go on to explore Mt. Greylock together, plus a few hikes around the northeast. We decided we'd follow the longest route up the mountain, the Pumpelly Trail, on this windy October day. We parked on the side of the road along scenic Dublin Lake, and got to work!
Leaves down low were beginning to turn, but it was nowhere near peak foliage yet. The trail steeply climbed up the shoulder of the Pumpelly Ridge, offering some views, and then reached the "slablands" - where most of the trail is on hard rock slab for the following few miles. The views outward showed fantastic foliage with occasional peaks on the summit in the distance. Slow and steady, donned in our UMass sweatsuits, we eventually made our way to the beautiful summit and found a sheltering rock to enjoy our snack and summit beer from. Our return trip felt incredibly long, especially once we were back in the woods, but the hike went down as one of the most beautiful I had done to date!
Hike #4: Mt. Monadnock via White Arrow Trail with Gen
June 30th, 2018
We fast-forward a few years before I revisited my favorite mountain. June of 2018 was the end of my first year teaching, and I had not hiked since college. It was something that I missed, but as I was desperately trying to figure out my life, who I was, who I wanted to be, how to be a working adult, and everything that goes with it, hiking had just fallen to the side. After a particularly rough date I went on (and Gen later joined), we decided to get up at 5:00am and head over to Mt. Monadnock (the date did NOT want to join us for some reason...). We enjoyed a beautiful sunrise from Roslindale and made our way over to the Old Toll Road. We hiked up the Old Halfway House Trail, then the White Arrow, up to the summit. We were beat by the time we reached the top, and I remember yelling at one scramble (literally yelled AT the rock), but the views fully made up for it! We enjoyed our summit snacks and beers (naturally), and slowly made our way back down. I didn't realize it at the time, but this would be the hike that would slowly get the ball rolling to start my current obsession. This was my only hike in 2018, but in 2019 I revisited Mt. Tammany, hiked in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont for the first time (and saw the White Mountains for the first time!), explored the Blue Hills for the first time, and tackled some other local trails. The pandemic hit in 2020, and once we got to 2021, I was OFFICIALLY hooked!
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