“It’s a range, not a ridge,” I reminded my friend Hilary as we sat on a rock, resting for a few minutes on our marathon 12.2-mile traverse of the Belknap Range in Gilford/Gilmanton, NH.
Hilary had just used the word “ridge” to reference our hike on this humid day in early June —a definite misnomer, even though sections did follow ridges. When we decided to undertake this adventure, I too had been thinking of the Belknap Range as a “ridge hike,” a long but fairly easy traverse over eight low summits. We could leave the Seacoast at 6 a.m., and be back in Portsmouth for a 6 p.m. dinner at Moxy and the outdoor concert at the Music Hall. Easy-peasy, especially since the Lakes Region is just over an hour away.
I soon learned, however, that viewing the Belknap Range trek as a walk on ridge underestimates the challenge of climbing up and over eight mountains in 12.2 miles, even if Gunstock, the tallest of them, measures only 2,445 feet.
But the effort involved in tromping up, down, and over eight low mountains was definitely worth the sweat and sore feet. The Belknap Range trail crosses an incredible diversity of terrain, offering a day of wonders: mountain views, mossy woods, wildflowers, critters and more. For a detailed description of the hike, see the the Belknap Range Trail description at BelknapRangeTrails.com, an excellent guide to all trails in the range. Although the Belknap Range hike is much easier to follow these days, thanks to markers placed along the trail, we frequently consulted the trail description during our hike, as we did not want to add more mileage by taking a wrong turn and backtracking.
After meeting up at the Mount Major parking lot in Gilmanton, we headed over to Gunstock Ski Area in Gilford, where we parked, and picked up the trail to the right of the ski lodge.
We left the Gunstock parking lot at 8:30 a.m. and reached our first summit, Mt. Rowe, elevation 1,680 feet, after about 45 minutes of hoofing it uphill. After Mount Rowe, the trail meandered through the forest on a ridge towards Gunstock Mountain. When we paused to look at some bird poop on the trail, my friend Annette looked up into the canopy and spotted a sawhet owl peering down at us. We also saw the first of dozens of the rare and endangered Lady Slipper plant. They were abundant in the forest — early June must be their favored time to blossom.
Checking out the view from the (closed) Panorama Pub at the top of Gunstock Mountain. The pub and its deck were closed due to COVID precautions during the winter of 2021. I look forward to a future sunny February afternoon sitting at a picnic table here with beer or coffee. Next stop: Belknap Mountain, 2,322 feet high, and 3.3 miles into our 12.2 mile day.
Salamanders, salamanders, everywhere! As we hiked through the woods over to Mount Belknap, we had to be careful not to step on these little critters, and saw many throughout the day. Mount Belknap has a fire tower and I forgot to take a photo because I was hungry and tired. We ate an early lunch in the tower, and then continued on towards Round Pond.We descended from Belknap Mountain on the aptly-named Boulder Trail, quite steep, and tricky to navigate, as the rocks were damp from rain the previous night.Peaceful and isolated Round Pond, five miles in. Lots of beaver activity here. We hiked along the shore of the pond until we reached a junction for the Mount Klem-Mount Mack Loop, and we began to climb uphill again.Heading towards the summit of Mount Klem, we could see where we’d come from: Belknap and Gunstock. At this juncture, we were almost half-way across the range. But I was beginning to think I might have to cancel my dinner reservation.
Mt. Klem summit, about 100 yards off the trail. Next, we headed down, and then up, and down and up, to the summit of Mack, about 7 miles in. I was feeling the distance by now, with some “hot spots” on my toes. But there was no turning back now, and we hiked on to Mount Anna, 8.5 miles in. By this time it was 3 o’clock, so I called Moxy to cancel my dinner reservation. But I was still feeling optimistic about making the concert!
After more ups and downs, we arrived at the Straitback. After mostly being in the forest all day, I enjoyed the wide open feel of the granite ledges.Major Celebration: We reached the summit of Mount Major, overlooking Lake Winnipesaukee, around 5 p.m. Another 1.5 miles to hike to the parking lot, all downhill. Would I make it to Portsmouth in time for the concert?
We arrived at the parking lot around 5:45 pm, beat up but satisfied with our long day in the Belknap Range. I rested on the 15-minute drive to Gunstock, where I picked up my car, changed my shoes, and threw on a clean t-shirt and a shift dress. My husband was waiting in Portsmouth with a beer and a rice bowl. The concert, with Erin McKeon, had been moved indoors due to the threat of thunder showers. I nestled into my cushiony seat to enjoy my first live music experience since the start of the pandemic, and I didn’t fall asleep — success!
On a recent spring hike, I learned about the joys of hiking Bartlett’s Mount Parker, which offers great views of Mount Washington with far fewer people than many other White Mountain trails.
While not not an easy hike at about 8 miles round-trip, this trek offers a variety of terrain, as the trail follows an old logging road to a stretch of open forest and then climbs a series of switchbacks to the mountain’s 3,004-foot ope summit.
But what intrigued me most about the day’s adventure was the mystery at the Mount Langdon trailhead: the lonely grave of Dr. Leonard Eudy, who died far too young, at age 34, while caring for patients during a smallpox outbreak.
Dr. Eudy’s grave is located at the Mount Langdon Trailhead in Bartlett, just to the right (south) of the trail, and surrounded by protective fence. The hike to to Mount Parker begins here, with a 2.5 mile hike up the Mount Langdon trail to the junction of the Mount Parker trail.
With the Langdon Trail beckoning, I didn’t notice the gravesite when we first set out.
The Mount Langdon Trail begins as a long abandoned logging road. The gravesite is at the trailhead, to the right (or south). On this spring day, we encountered soft snow about 2 miles in.
Dr. Leonard had been caring for smallpox patients at a Bartlett logging camp when he became infected with this deadly disease, which had a mortality rate of about 30%. There were many logging camps in the White Mountains, and I couldn’t find any specific information about where the outbreak was, or why Dr. Leonard was buried here, across from the Saco River. The woods below the Mount Parker summit look young, like the area was heavily logged. Was this general area the site of the logging camp?
Late April, on the Mount Parker Trail, in the woods between the junction with the Langdon Trail, and the summit of Mount Parker. The forest was open here, free of brush, with mostly beech trees.
Dr. Leonard, born in Bethlehem, NH, had left the mountains in 1862 at age 19 to enlist in Company C 15th Regiment of New Hampshire Volunteers, joined by his two older brothers, Emphraim and William. In Carrolton, Louisiana, horseplay with another young man took a tragic turn when Eudy’s gun accidentally fired, shattering the leg of his friend, who died after the leg was amputated. This accident haunted Eudy for the rest of his life. I wonder if becoming a doctor in a small mountain community was Eudy’s way of trying to compensate for the accident, or at least to live with himself. Or maybe the illness and suffering he witnessed during the war led him to medicine. Of the 71 men in Company C, only 40 returned home. Disease killed all but four of these young men.
Eudy Leonard is pictured here with his brother, Ephraim, in their Civil War uniforms (BartlettNHHistory.com).
After the War, Eudy Leonard enrolled at Harvard Medical School, and then returned to the White Mountains, moving to Bartlett in 1871.
Smallpox vaccination had been invented by Edward Jenner in 1796. During the first part of the 19th century, smallpox outbreaks were greatly reduced with the combined tools of vaccination and isolation. Memories of smallpox faded. By the 1840s, vaccination efforts had waned. When the time the Civil War erupted, smallpox had again became prevalent in the United States.
Both the Union and Confederate Armies required all soldiers to be vaccinated, so it is possible that Eudy Leonard had a smallpox vaccine, though its effectiveness may have diminished by 1877 (during this period, smallpox vaccines were considered effective for about seven years). But it’s equally likely that Company C was never vaccinated, as often the vaccine requirement was ignored in the rush to get troops to the front lines.
By 1877, smallpox vaccine was a small industry, with vaccine “grown” on calves’ hides at “vaccine farms.” After harvesting, the vaccine was stored in a glycerine solution, or ground into a powder that was applied to the arm through a scraping process (i.e. making a wound and rubbing in the vaccine). There was no regulation of vaccine, and quality varied greatly, but the vaccine was transportable. However, it wasn’t free. I’m guessing that by 1877, most locals in the White Mountains were not vaccinated because in the absence of disease, they felt no need for a vaccine that was probably expensive by local standards.
Irregular vaccination and variable vaccine quality was fairly typical until 1902, when the last major smallpox epidemic killed 270 people in Boston. In Boston, vaccination efforts immediately ramped up, along with resistance to the vaccination and to the city’s mandate to vaccinate all people in a specific area impacted by smallpox (no one was forcibly vaccinated, but they faced a $5 fine or 15 days in jail if they refused).
The Boston epidemic changed the game for vaccination, with new federal laws passed to regulate vaccines and the first efforts to use mass vaccination campaigns as a public health tool to prevent disease. By 1932, smallpox was a rare disease in the United States. By the early 1950s, it was eradicated in the United States.
If Dr. Leonard had survived smallpox, he might have lived long enough to witness the first stage of this public health victory. Like many doctors today working with COVID-19 patients, Dr. Leonard understood the dangers of smallpox and likely tried to protect himself, but the risks didn’t stop him from doing his job of trying to save the sick from dying. I hope that in his six-year tenure in Bartlett, he took a walk or two to the summit of Mount Parker, and enjoyed the view of Mount Washington from its ledgy summit.
Sources and resources
“Cemeteries.” Bartlett, NH History. https://www.bartletthistory.org/bartletthistory/cemeteries.html
Mountains in spring, breath clean oxygen. Listen: in the spruce, loving birds.
I’ve been working with my students on form poems, including haiku. Thus, I attempt to describe a recent hike with a combination of haiku, photos and text. Indulge me.
Taking a break on the trail up North Doublehead. The wide trail was built by the Saco Conservation Corps in 1934 as a backcountry ski trail, and makes for a great short hike in spring, summer and fall, about two miles to the summit.
Beckoning trails lead to destinations but feel like mystery paths.
The Ski Trail never gets very steep, and I’ve almost convinced myself that I could ski it next winter, in perfect conditions. But I’m sure it gets bumped up with ditches and mogul from avid backcountry skiers.
Long ago, young men dripped sweat, hauling rocks and logs to build a cabin.
The cabin on North Doublehead, popular with winter skiers and youth groups, is locked but can be reserved through the Forest Service. We discovered some lunch rocks with a great view of snow-covered Mount Washington.
The cabin was built by the CCC during the Depression and has been renovated several times, but still maintains many old features, like the stone foundation and chimney covered with a slab of rock. The cabin includes two small bunk rooms and a small community area with a wood stove.
On the ridge, young trees erase old scars, wilding land buzzing saws stripped bare.
Doublehead offers several looping options. At this junction, we had to decide whether to continue on for a longer hike to South Doublehead, and then double-back (or descend from South D. on another trail that exited about a half-mile from the car). We opted to wait on South Doublehead for another day. This turned out to a good decision as the route down the Old Path was steep and icy, and required care and our full attention, even with micro spikes.
Mountains in spring: two worlds, the barren forest plus forgotten winter.
After stepping down the sometimes treacherous “Old Path” trail, we stepped into spring on the lower half of the mountain. The Old Path is fine for experienced hikers but I do not recommend taking children on this piece of the journey in spring. Out and back on the Ski Trail is the easiest route.
From the back porch, spring sunsets on distant mountains until trees unfurl.
At the day’s end, a view through the trees to the mountains and the sunset.
Note:
As of Friday, April 24, the White Mountain National Forest closed down many popular trailheads to try to spread out hikers prevent the spread of coronavirus, but many lesser-known trails remain open. I feel grateful that I’ve been able to do some hiking this spring. The adventure described here met the guidelines for New Hampshire’s stay-at-home order.
The Arctic Vortex last week offered a good opportunity to hunker down and work on one of my New Year’s projects, which is to improve this blog. To that end, I am participating in the Word Press “Zero to Hero” challenge of daily “here’s how to enhance your blog” lessons. Today’s lesson included commenting on three blogs (done) and then taking the exercise a step further by writing about three blogs. Hence, I present a trio of hiking blogs: Girls on the Way, 1 Happy Hiker, and Live Free and Hike: A NH Day Hiker’s Blog. All three include links to other good hiking blogs, but I always tell my students that three examples are enough for illustrating a point or idea, and I’ll stick with that advice here.
Girls on the Way is the blog of Patricia Ellis Herr and her two daughters, Alex and Sage. Trish Ellis Herr first started writing the blog when Alex was five, and Alex decided that she wanted to hike all of New Hampshire’s 48 four-thousand footers. These efforts eventually became a neat little book titled Up: A Mother and Daughter’s Peak-Bagging Adventures. I loved the book, both for the descriptions of approximately 15 hikes and for the way the author took each chapter and turned it into a lesson, e.g. “Some Things Will Always Be Beyond Your Control”.
I don’t want to give away too much, but I will say that while reading the book, the chapter titled “Mistakes Can Have Serious Consequences” took me back to 1982 when, as a college sophomore, I followed the news about two teenagers who had lost their way while doing a winter climb of Mount Washington. They encountered whiteout conditions on the way down and lost their way. Both survived, but one boy lost both of his legs. Another young man on the Search and Rescue team was killed in an avalanche during the search. Today that teenager who survived a terrible ordeal is Trish’s husband and a world-renowned scientist. It was eerie to read about him telling his story to daughter as a cautionary tale–and to recollect my vague memories of the event, and of fellow students who had undertaken similar adventures but had better luck.
Some readers may wonder if Ellis-Herr pushes her daughter to do these hikes, a point she addresses in the book. As she observes, a parent can’t force a kid who doesn’t want to hike do the arduous hikes that Alex undertakes; doing so is just about impossible (unless you are willing to carry said child up the mountain). Children have boundless energy and the question of physical stamina isn’t a problem for most; instead, kids often lack the mental stamina needed for lengthy hikes. Alex definitely had (and has) that mental stamina, and her sister Sage follows in her footsteps. (For the record, even though my son is a good hiker, I would never attempt to conquer the 48 4,000 footers with him unless a helicopter or water slide was involved). Maybe someday my son will surprise me and announce that he wants to conquer the 48 summits, but until then, I will hike most 4,000 footers on my own.
Since the publication of Up, Trish and her daughters have had many other adventures, including several months in Spain hiking the 500-mile El Camino de Santiago long-distance pilgrimage. This summer, they hope to hike the John Muir Trail, and I hope they get to go, because hiking the JMT is also on my hiking bucket list.
Another hiking blog I like is 1 HappyHiker. The Happy Hiker’s blog is very simple in appearance and he doesn’t share much information about himself, but he is a good writer and has archived many posts about adventures in New England and beyond (not to mention that his blog has a great title, a little corny, but who isn’t happy when standing on a mountaintop?). Lots of solid well-researched information and ideas for hikes in the region. This blog often comes up on Google searches related to hiking in New Hampshire.
Finally, I’ll give a short shout-out to Live Free and Hike: A NH Day Hiker’s Blog by Seacoast resident Karl Searle, who writes about hiking and outdoor adventures, including many that are family-oriented. The blog has a great title and good content about adventures within striking distance of the Seacoast region.
Readers, if you have any ideas for a revised blog title, please send them my way! “Random History and Offbeat Trivia” is okay, and reflects the fact that sometimes you just need to put the fingers on the keyboard and start typing. But I am trying to devise a title that more effectively captures the essence of this multi-faceted blog: hiking, adventures, travel, history.
