THIS ONE'S A DOOZY.

THIS HIKE WAS THE BEST. WOW.  Monadnock is an awesome climb.

Keeping in the spirit of #tbt....For the first hike of the season this year we went on probably the best hike I've done in New England and one of the best I can remember doing. Living in Boston, or really anywhere in New England, is great because we're within a reasonable driving distance of a zillion mountains. (That's basically what got me thinking I could write about this for a decent amount of time in the first place - between the hikes we've already done and the innumerable amount of hikes we have left to do, there's stories aplenty and plenty to come.) Monadnock was Julie's idea (check out her awesome blog!), but she thought of it in the spring before we all scattered for summer break. So coming back, we decided to take it on! The view from the top looked incredible, so we did some research, got a crew together, and headed out.

Monadnock summit from the road

First off I'd like to point out that Monadnock is WAY taller than it looks from the base. Its 2149' feet to the summit, and it took us a few hours get to the top - though we did stop to take in the views every few minutes. There's a couple main trails  - the White Cross and the White Dot - but we decided to take a combination of the smaller trails to challenge ourselves and to avoid running into a bunch of people. (Just for the record, we took the Lost Farm trail to the Cliff walk and bald rock to the amphitheater trail to the Smith summit trail, and it was intense and beautiful). Monadnock is pretty popular, and there were a good number of families and other groups hiking the two main trails. Even on the smaller footpaths we ended up running into

a lot of people on our way up. The trails are steep and rocky at times, but there are plenty of places to stop and "look at the view" to give yourself a breather. Though the park people may not thank me for saying this, I really recommend getting off the trail a bit to get the full effect of just how awesome the views are all the way up the mountain. We did, and it definitely added to the perfection of the whole experience. We even sang some Pocahontas tunes off the side of the mountain at one point, and got some love from other hikers on their way down.

                 
As we got higher, hikers coming down started telling us to watch out for the "gale" at the top. When we started, it was literally the perfect day to hike. The sun was shining and it was around 60-70 degrees, so it wasn't too hot and wasn't too cold. The later it got, the cloudier it started to get. We made it to Bald Rock, which was probably about an hour from the summit, and the sky was completely grey. The closer we got to the top, the more we started catching on to just how intense this gale everyone was warning us about actually was ...

(I don't want to post too too many pictures, so there are more after the break at the end)

When we reached the summit, Miss Julie in all her glory had brought a loaf of bread from Clear Flour, fresh turkey, avocados, and tomatoes for a  sandwich picnic at the top. This might have worked better if it hadn't been literally so windy we could lean out over the edge of the rocks with nothing but the wind holding us up and if the clouds had not been sinking lower and lower the longer we stayed. But we found a little shelter behind one of the many many rocks on the summit and had ourselves a picnic. 

It started drizzling a little bit, and then all of a sudden we stood up and were literally in the clouds. It wasn't like we were just under them, or above them, but in them. Look off the edge of the mountain and you would see nothing, just fog. We had to wander around the peak for almost half an hour to find the trailhead of the shorter trail (White Dot/White Cross) back down the mountain. And when we did find it, it looked like this:

They closed the summit soon after...

               

The hike down took about an hour and a half or so, and we saw a lot more people since this was the more popular trail. We had a massive meal at Soulfire once we got back to Boston, which is a key part of the whole experience that I recommend not skipping - the feast and beer post-hike. There's about a zillion more pictures after the break, and I hope everyone climbs Monadnock one time at least. Bring friends, picnic, WATER - and enjoy the view.

Soulfire aftermath. (best chicken in Boston)