Dennis Dixon is heading North!: Trail Clearing on Kilkenny Ridge Trail

Thursday, July 5, 2018 - This blog was supposed to be titled "Highest 100 - South Weeks", but it just didn't work out that way. But enough about me - how do you feel about hiking New England's Hundred Highest?

You can see that when you plot the upper-right hike I did May 29 (North Weeks [and Middle Weeks]) with my outing today (lower-left) that I never reached the peak-in-the-middle: South Weeks:

Wendy and Ellie are going to Falmouth overnight for a play, so I knew I didn't have to be home until late (10?, 11?). I had read about a lot of blowdowns on the 2.5 mile stretch of Kilkenny Ridge Trail between Mount Waumbek and South Weeks, so I was psyched to hike with my new battery-powered chainsaw in my big backpack. On my original hike of Mount Waumbek (June 10, 2015) I covered 7.4 miles in 3 hours 10 minutes; I figured adding 2.5 plus 2.5 miles would add another 2 1/2 hours, rounding up to 6 hours. I was overly optimistic - my backpack-plus-chainsaw weighs 15 pounds, and I carried an additional 10 pounds of water (which was the perfect amount for this hot day); my splits for the first 4 miles were 38-38-41-40 minutes respectively. For comparison, the same splits in 2015 were 27-30-30-32; this means that JUST THE HIKING was going to take 32% longer than my estimate - now 8 hours instead of 6!! Also, the sun sets late these days, but I still wanted to be off the mountain by 8 PM.

So I was already on a tight schedule (again) when I hit the trail at 12:10

After bushwacking etc., it was GREAT being on a REAL TRAIL:

I made it up to Starr King by 2 PM:

(my boot provides a little reference.)

Then the trail over to Mount Waumbek:

cute little American Flag on the cairn.

A little further to the "blowdown area with a view":

looking south, I think those are the Presidentials.

East of the 4000 footer Mount Waumbek, the Trail is still there but it is almost smothered by ferns::

And then I got to my biggest blowdown project:

I made it so you can go under this big tree. "Blowdown? What blowdown?"

I kept going, dealing with what I could, going around/under/over the rest:

Finally, around 4:30 PM, I figured that I was running out of time. I had gone just over 6 miles, and I was still going gently downhill. I didn't know it at the time, but I still had a mile to go (down-then-up) to get to the South Weeks summit. So I headed home. (Live To Fight Another Day)

I finished at 8, and was able to take a really nice picture driving through Jefferson, New Hampshire at 8:10 PM:

Gas fillup in Concord, NH. Got HOME at 11:15. WOW - Thank you God for these wonderful MOUNTAIN adventures!!

Today's driving music started with 3 albums by The Miles Davis Quintet:

Cookin', 1957

Relaxin', 1958

Workin', 1959

Heading out of Boston after my breakfast, I saw a big Dunkin' Donuts electronic billboard

So of course I had to listen to:

The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers, 1971

("Brown Sugar" is the first song on the album)

I then wanted to listen to another Stones album, Beggars Banquet, but it is not on my iPod (it is NOW!), so instead I listened to an EXCELLENT album by The Band - their self-titled second album from 1969