Mounts Whiteface and Passaconaway: An Overnight SOTA 20 Pointer, Or How I Lost 30+ Pounds In One Weekend

We are pretty well equipped for backpacking. A mid-September hike in the White Mountains complete with dual Summits-On-The-Air activations of Mt. Whiteface and Mt Passaconaway seemed like a perfect way for AA1F and I to spend a weekend.

This picture of the trailhead map cuts off a little bit of the route. Essentially, our initial goal was to park in the Ferncroft lot, walk Ferncroft Road to the Dicey’s Mill Trail, take the Tom Wiggin Trail across to the Blueberry Ledge Trail, activate Whiteface’s summit, take the Rollins Trail to Camp Rich for a night’s sleep, continue on Dicey’s Mill to the top of Passaconaway and activate, and then come back down the Walden and East Loop Trails to rejoin the Dicey’s Mill trail and end up back at my van (affectionately known as “Limey”).

Having most of the necessary gear, we did decide to purchase a 20 degree sleeping bag for our dog Nellie. The forecast predicted temperatures in the fifties, but the mountains don’t necessarily read the weather reports. Furthermore, the chance of rain exceeded 60 percent, especially at night. And Nellie’s a softie who likes to snuggle up.

The other item we needed was a water filtration device. We had used the SteriPen (an ultraviolet water sterilization tool) for years, but eventually decided we wanted something else. In fact, lately we have been carting in water rather than treating it in the field. Because they were locally available, we purchased two Katadyn BeFree 1L squeeze bottles for this trip. The rest of our water system consisted of two 2-liter and two 16-ounce repurposed soda bottles. (Just a little trick, when you are filtering water out in the wild, drink from a tinted bottle…It helps to disguise the fact that your water may not be colorless! Ginger Ale and plastic Perrier bottles are perfect!)

We packed up Friday night and hit the road by 5am on Saturday for the almost 3 hour trek to the trailhead. There was no sky between the clouds and the ground this particular morning. We worried the trip would be derailed due to lack of parking. The early start was worth it, because we actually did get a parking spot at this popular trailhead on Ferncroft Road.

Here AA1F and Nellie pose somewhat impatiently at the Squirrel Bridge marking the beginning of our trek.

If you tally up the mileage of all the trails we planned to take, you get 11.4. Add in the walk to and from Limey, and you are pretty close to what we actually clocked on the gps, 12.3 miles. We started up the Blueberry Ledge Trail, deciding to forego the Tom Wiggin pass.

Blueberries always conjure up a sweet childish images of an endless summer to me. Well, and sometimes bears. And the beginning couple miles of the trek really were a lot like strolling through a park-like mixture of woods and bedrock. And there were certainly patches of blueberry bushes. We just should have paid a bit more attention to the “ledge” part of the Blueberry Ledge Trail…

We were more than a bit concerned by the weather rolling in. One day hiker we encountered, upon learning we planned to camp out, warned us “It’s going to rain all night.” As the clouds grazed us on their way by, we easily believed that would be the case. And since our combined 5 liters of water to split between two adults and dog was already running out with no water source in sight, collecting rainwater was becoming a viable replenishment strategy.

So, initially we wanted to take the Tom Wiggin Trail up, for which the signage says “Not recommended steep and loose”. All I can say is that if you encounter a sign in the White Mountains warning you not to take a trail because it is dangerous, it probably is.

Because, here is the trail that we did take. The one that was not designated “steep”. Notice that the trees in the picture are vertically oriented. That slanted slab of rock is the trail up.

The scrambles up the Blueberry Ledge Trail on Mount Whiteface were terrifying. For perspective, the picture below is taken by me standing up. Those tree roots are growing vertically down that rock ledge. I need to hoist myself up to a shelf behind those trees. If you look carefully at the bottom edge of the picture near the tree roots, you can see two holes cut into the rock. Once upon a time, there were ladders drilled into the cliff to assist the hikers.

Now can you make out AA1F? Do you see that break in the rocks about two feet above his head? He is looking at a near vertical rock wall that he needs to get his entire body up over. That break is the rock shelf he is looking to climb on to.

Here is a picture of AA1F now that he has made it to the shelf above the rock wall. If you look really closely, you can see a hand of a hiker getting ready to pull herself up over that wall.

Told you so…

Now, these scrambles would not have been a particularly big deal for Marc and I who were once avid rock climbers. But, don’t forget we had Nellie with us. And we did not have a harness for her. And, Nellie, once she realizes she cannot climb up the same way as us on her own, often takes it upon herself to look for another trail. And when the marked trail is already probably the easiest approach, we constantly worry that while we are distracted trying to figure out how to get her up, that the alternative path she sneakily tries to find is going to send her right off the side of the mountain. There was a lot of hysterical “Nellie, GET BACK HERE!!!” moments. Everything was made just a bit harder too by the bottleneck of hikers that arrived at these scrambles at exactly the same time. Not to mention the giant packs we were hauling (that I’ll show you later!)

Regardless, Nellie, AA1F, and I are pretty skilled hikers, and these certainly weren’t the first bouldering problems we tackled together. We all made it up safely and were treated with some impressive–though somewhat daunting– panoramic views.

We made it to the summit of Mount Whiteface. Or at least an area that seemed like the summit. There was no indication whatsoever of where the actual top of the mountain was. We were a bit shaken up by the stress of the scrambles, we thought we could hear thunder roaring off in the distance, and it was very lightly drizzling as the summit was encapsulated in a cloud. Humidity was at 90+ percent. And we were still almost 3 miles away from camp. We quickly set up the radio (my Yaesu FT-891A with a 20M end fed halfwave antenna on a 15ah bioenno battery and an LDG z-100 plus tuner) and chased 5 contacts each. We did not have cell service to spot a frequency for ourselves…and I gotta be honest, we were in quite a hurry to secure our 10 points and keep moving…

We headed down the Rollins trail toward the saddle between Mt. Whiteface and Mt. Passaconaway, where Camp Rich, the tent site we planned to camp at, was located. Essentially this is a tree-lined ridge walk. Which normally I love, but the continuous rolling thunderstorm off in the distance made me a bit on edge. As usual AA1F and Nellie were way ahead of me. We have taken to hiking with a pair of handi-talkies (Yaesu FT-4X) to keep in contact. We each like to hike our own hike at our own pace. Below is the a picture of the summit of 4019′ Mt. Whiteface, where we had just come from.

AA1F found this cute little fellow on the trail. What we did not find was a source of water to refill our nearly empty water bottles. I was quite worried we would run out of water. So far, it had not rained (a potential source) either. We were down to about a half a liter to share between the three of us. If we did not refill, our plan was to stay overnight at Camp Rich and walk the 4 or so miles out to the parking area in the morning. Essentially we would abort our mission to activate Passaconaway. And honestly? I was pretty thirsty…

We made it all the way down the Rollins trail and onto the Dicey’s Mill trail without finding water. And the sun was starting to go down and we were not in camp yet. In fact, Camp Rich actually no longer exists. At one time it was a 3-sided lean-to with a latrine. Now it was a place were there were some flat spots in the woods where people put their tents. A quick consultation of our screen-shotted maps showed that we should be encountering a spring. These moments can be very mentally taxing…we were thirsty, tired, responsible for the well-being of our dog, the sun was setting, and we had no idea where the mythical-seeming Camp Rich was or where a spring may be.

But then!!!!! I heard a trickling of water! Sure enough, an inconspicuous cascade was playfully splashing over a rock! This is the magic of the forest. I thanked God and Mother Nature for this gift, and we filtered out five liters of this magical liquid. We now were sure we would be able to finish our plans.

Pretty quickly after we smelled smoke and heard a bit of laughter. That had to be Camp Rich! Sure enough we ran into some tenters and they pointed us to the campsites. Nellie chose this spot to put up our shelter.

Here Nellie is presiding over the erection of the Tarptent Rainshadow II (by far and away my favorite backpacking tent).

In fact, I like this non-freestanding tent so much, that I won’t let AA1F anywhere near it to help set up. I am a bit particular about it. The ground cloth is a simple cut piece of plastic sheeting (6 mil I think). It has held up for many years. And I would have used it to collect rain water if I had to. (Though it wouldn’t have helped…it did not rain after all…not even a drop). .

The sun had set for good by the time the shelter was ready. And Nellie was its first inhabitant.

The Tarptent is a PALACE! It truly is a 3 person tent. What you see below are two backpacking air mattresses (AA1F’s and mine), and a full size sleeping pad for Nellie in the middle.

And you thought I was kidding about Nellie being a softie! Here she is zipped in to her 20 degree synthetic sleeping bag. Dog owners! One trick for doggies is to buy a bag with 2 zippers, one at the head and one at the feet. Open them both up so that you create a bit of a tunnel. If your dog is anything like Nellie, they can get in and out of the bags and turn themselves around in them. And if Nellie doesn’t have a bag??? She commandeers mine!

Now, let’s talk a bit about the size of our packs. These are the Hyperlite Mountain Gear 5400 Porter packs. They are 85L in size!!! They are extremely lightweight for that size framed pack. In fact, all of our gear is pretty lightweight. But once you add a 100W radio system (approximately 15 pounds of gear), AA1F and I were carting about 30+ pounds a piece. Our full water alone weighs 11 pounds.

Those bags look almost as big as the tent! One of the nice parts of carrying a bag that size is that you do not have to be too particular about packing your gear. We just shove it all in (no compression sacks for our sleeping bags, etc.) and go… (Do you notice that we also bring a bear can with us?)

Here is another view of our beautiful Camp Rich site.

Finding water meant our plans to hike Passaconaway would not be derailed! Here I am trying to show how steep the path up to the peak was. I don’t think I quite capture the grade, but I think I look pretty cool 😉

In fact, our site at Camp Rich was only about a 1/2 mile from the summit. Here was a lookout on the approach to the top. What a beautiful day!

Mt. Passaconaway’s summit is actually a little spot in the woods. There is a small cairn (which is in the picture below) composed of about five rocks. I borrowed the top one to help me throw the ropes over the tree branches for the antenna set-up. Don’t fret! I put it back!

If you look closely, you can see the 20M EFHW antenna unun.

We did have cell service and a sliver of cell phone battery left. We spotted ourselves and ran a proper SOTA activation (rather than just chasing stations) this time. Success! We made about a dozen contacts each, with quite a bit of qsb.

We lingered on Passaconaway’s cozy 4042′ summit for a bit, killing time, and quite frankly not really wanting to put those heavy packs back on. We still had a 4 1/2 mile walk ahead of us. We decided to backtrack Dicey’s Mill Trail, rather than taking the Walden Trail loop…well, because we actually forgot the Walden Trail was a loop.

The way back down felt relentless to me. Our food rations (consisting of 5 pieces of pepperoni pizza and 2 sleeves of poptarts each) had long run out and I was running out of steam. In fact, at one point, a sign indicated that we had more than a mile left to go, and I seriously wondered if I would be able to make it. I still had all of the radio gear in my pack, so it had not gotten any lighter. Fortunately, “mountain miles”, or what I like to call the signs in the mountains that tell you the miles between points, are frequently wrong. A half mile later, we made it back to the Squirrel Bridge!

And only a few minutes later, we had spotted Limey. Success! We had accomplished our mission and made our 20 SOTA points!

Now this picture really affects me. AA1F, Nellie, and I have been on so many adventures together. We have walked so many paths, both in the mountains and in life. We have learned that we will hoist one another up whatever scrambles we might encounter no matter what. We have found unexpected gifts flowing out and over many of life’s rocks and bumps. We have always managed to walk out unscathed. Wiser, a bit roughened up, a bit fatigued, and a bit scraped. But we have always walked out. In this life, I do not know if there is anything more important than trust and integrity in relationships with others (human or not.) You need to be counted on, believed in, and you need to be able to count on and believe in others. So as I reflect on this picture, on the terminus of yet another adventure with two of the most important beings in my life, I think of how lucky I am to know what happiness really is. Bliss comes from overcoming hardship. You need lows to experience highs. You need to climb both the peaks and valleys, nothing goes up forever. And even the seemingly impossible will be behind you with enough time and motion. Once you understand this, you will start to look in the right place.

Truly yours,

KM1NDY

(Oh, and I lost 30+ pounds by taking off my backpack!)