October 7, 2022
With Susan Mutter
#38 Hale (4,054 ft.)
Susan and I snuck in this fall hike while Cynthia and John were in Europe. Easy hike up, and a beautiful trip along the Lend-a-Hand Trail between the summit and Zealand Hut. I met a group of guys resting at Zealand who I recognized from CT hikes. We stayed at the Highland Center afterward, and there was a deep crusting of early snow the following day. We climbed Willard in the morning alongside the building Columbus Day weekend crowd, and then we high-tailed it back home. The highway north through the Notch was a parking lot, and maybe a hundred people could be seen crowded onto Artists Bluff. We got out just in time!
September 9, 2025
Solo
#42 Isolation (4,004 ft.)
I drove up midday Sunday via White River Junction and spent the night at Joe Dodge Lodge for the first time since 2013. My bunkroom mates were a woman hiking up to Madison the next morning and a man from Texas who had just spent a week sectioning the Whites and was sheathed in a mud-splattered Kansas City Chiefs rain parka when he arrived. The next morning I hiked Boot Spur all the way up to the smaller trails leading to the hut. Lakes wasn't terribly crowded; I did two small watercolors of Monroe as seen from the hut and from the northern shore of one of the lakes. It was cold during the afternoon, night, and into the next morning, but eventually crystal clear with 90+-mile views. The next day I traversed over to the Davis Path and took it south to the Mt Isolation spur. I hiked back along the same trail to Isolation (East) and then down Rocky Branch with Mike Meade, whom I had met on the summit. Mike gave me a ride back to Pinkham Notch. My original plan was to hike down Glen Boulder, but I was tired and I didn't like the idea of descending the steeper parts of GB with jelly legs.
