Flashes of Panic

I actually managed to break the first rule not once, but twice: first, I didn’t have the GPS on when we stashed my car in the Pinkham Notch Visitor’s Center lot on Friday night, and second, I forgot to waypoint the trailhead of the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail until we had already been walking half an hour. Fortunately, we didn’t need either, not getting off the trail by any appreciable amount; also, some wise souls had placed geocaches at or near some of our major stops (the Lakes in the Clouds Hut, the Mt. Washington summit,) so I had those waypoints near where our trips were taking us. (Fortunately, I say, since part of our “training” for this trip was reading Not Without Peril.)

I also discovered, in the breach, rule two: always have your camera battery fully charged. With the chance of it dying always in the back of my head, I didn’t take as many photos as I might have. I did manage to find 40 to put on Flickr, if you’re curious.

And I hit three geocaches. Would’ve been five, if I’d done my reading and arranged for someone to help us do the webcam cache at the summit.

My brother has unilaterally decided that we’re trying for all the peaks over 5,000 feet in New England. Since we toured the Lafayette Ridge before we were old enough to drive and did Katahdin last summer, we’ve actually hit a significant fraction by now, since we made a side trip to Mt. Monroe on our way up. I don’t know the list—honestly, I don’t want to become an obsessive peak-bagger and I know how easily I could become one if I let myself spend too much time looking at the official list of the 48 peaks over 4,000 feet in New Hampshire—but I think Boott Spur might count as well. (Apparently not…)

Still, most of the rest are there in the Presidential range. On our way back around to pick up his car at the first trailhead, he pointed to a sign for a trailhead with 2.5 miles to Mt. Jefferson and said, “Remember that. We might need it.”