Hoping for a nice dry hike
Oh god. Two separate hikers on The Cohos Trail Message board just reported getting off the trail early due to extremely wet conditions. Two weeks of wet boots is no fun at all. Luckily, as I child, I learned a magical incantation to keep storms at bay.
Rain rain go away
Come again another day
So there. Take that you crappy hiking weather! Hopefully by the time we leave, things won’t be so wet.
We’ve got a ride!
It looks like we’ve got a ride to and from North Conway. Super exciting! Craigslist is magic. We still have to figure out how we’ll get from the Canadian border back to our ride, but the long distance legs of this trip are all figured out. (A big thank you to Jeff for being part of our journey and helping us get to and from The Cohos Trail.)
I’m doing a little moose homework. The section in this article on moose & dogs sort of freaks me out. Apparently Moose hate dogs: “You may find yourself between your pet and 1000 pounds of irate moose that seems capable of kicking in four directions at once.”
This weekend we set up our Tarp Tent on Biana’s backyard porch. We seam-sealed it with silicon gook. We did this to keep the rain out & to reinforce stress points along the seams. We sort of followed these instructions. We might throw down another layer or two of sealant just for kicks.
Getting there
We’re brainstorming ways to get two small people with backpacks and one mellow canine to the trailhead in Notchland. Ideas? We could rent a car one-way, but it might be funner to hitch a ride. Anyone heading out that way in August?
Edit: Looks like one-way rentals to this part of New Hampshire don’t exist. We’re looking into other options.
Table Rock is one of the more well known geological features along The Cohos Trail. Standing at the edge, you can see 700 feet straight down. Photo via jhandelman’s Flickr.
Instead of heading deep into the popular Presidential, Franconia, and Carter ranges, the Cohos Trail climbs only one peak in the Presidential Range, Mount Eisenhower. Satisfied, the trail then heads off to lesser-known points.
In Coos County — this huge forested realm in New Hampshire’s far north — you enter a lost world. On the highway maps of the state, most of the territory up here is left blank. Cartographers simply don’t know what to ink into their maps.
There aren’t very many pictures of The Cohos Trail on Flickr, but I did find an awesome photo set by 5-points of the woods in New Hampshire. We’ll be hiking through alot of these same scenes. This picture was taken near Sugar Hill.
Important things to do before we start hiking
We’ll be hiking The Cohos Trail in August. In the mean time, we have some planning and preparing to do… Before we start hiking, we have to research, get in shape, plan our mail drops, buy and test out some gear, figure out how we’re getting to and from New Hampshire, and launch a blog (DONE!).
