Mt Blue
Trail: Beaver Brook (part of the AT)
Date: Saturday 9/12/98
Attending: Gabe, Simone, & John Chicoine
Miles 6-mile back and fourth Time: 3 hours to summit. 6 hour total, add 1.5 hrs to get to Moosilauke.
AMC huts, / shelters / camping site: Beaver Brook Shelter/tent sites.
Weather: Stormy/drizzle and top half in the clouds.
To get there from Lincoln, turn onto Rt 112 West, 7+-miles to the AT sign. We started out this trail feeling adventurous. The sky was threatening; the trail has warning signs about it “not being for inexperienced hikers”. But we were no longer in that class of hiker; this was now to be our third 4K hike! The trail is as beautiful as everything written about it. “The most waterfalls within any one-mile stretch of river in the Whites.”
We met a Canadian through hiker traveling north, that fell off one of the ledges at the very bottom of the trail; he picked himself up, brushed off, and looking back at what he had just traversed and proclaimed that he had yet to encounter anything quite this difficult on all the rest of the southern leg of the AT. After talking to him a bit more, he told us that he had spent several days hiking with the 80-year old man that was through hiking. He wouldn’t doubt that he wasn’t going to make it, the old guy was experiencing quite a bit of trouble. (He did make it).
This trail is one of the few that has wood block steps spiked onto the ledges, Re-bar handles set into the rocks and ladders on the ledges. (Not so as to make this trail easy, but just to make it hike-able!) Funny, we all loved this trail too! We never did make it to Moosilauke and Mt Blue doesn’t have an official summit, but we did make it to the highest part of the trail on MT. Blue, just a 100 yards from its summit. This was quite an experience of hiking in the clouds. I think none of us will ever forget the serenity of hiking through the cloud mist as thin wisps like white ghosts moved silently through the high alpine forest. We will do this one again, I just don’t think we will ever have the same experience. Clouds are different than fog. Fog is thick and covers everything with an even mist; clouds have variations and blow through hilltops and forests in visible sheets.