Between a Notch and a Mountain

We spent this weekend in the white mountains; specifically, Lincoln, New Hampshire off of the Kancamagus highway. The Kancamagus is 34 miles from Conway to Lincoln, NH and has dozens of trails of varying difficulty all the way along it. This is great because you could stop at any trail head and have a great hike, but it also makes it hard to remember which ones you've done and which ones you've liked. I was looking for a specific one that I recall doing many years ago with my family. I remember it being way more difficult than others that we had done, with more of an incline and more potential for death AND an amazing view when you reach the top. My Dad said, "Just look for the one that has the sign at the trail head that says "Do not proceed if you value your life". He told me that it might be called "East Pond", but after googling that one, I decided he must be wrong.

Based on a rough guess, a little research on the interweb and purposefully rejecting my Dad's suggestion, I settled on "Hancock Notch Trail". When we began hiking, I immediately knew this was not the hike I had done in the past, but ultimately didn't really care. It turned out to be less strenuous overall, but with some points of steeper inclines, muddy/bumpy/challenging terrain, and kept us on our toes.

 

 

The hike was 2.4 miles (x 2, to get back) and we were in the wilderness for about three hours.  Throughout our adventure, we I kept wondering, "Is it going to end with something?". As in, I was totally not transcending time and space and embracing the nature around me. Instead, I was thinking about what I was going to win at the end of the trail. A mountain view? A cliff? A bobcat? A big sign that says Hancock Notch? Also WTF is a notch. Well, we would soon find out.

 

 

 

Oh right, we also had to cross some rivers and lots of mushy mud piles. I only had about 5 shoe-in-mud fails. Pretty good for Messy Jessie.

Around mile 2 or 2.2 ish, the sound of rushing water was totally gone, it felt significantly cooler with less sun, and everything I said (I say a lot of things) was echoing really loudly. Now, we had essentially been covered by trees with the occasional stream on our left, but now a large mountain which had been pretty much hidden by trees was now sitting directly on our right. This is difficult to explain because the trail literally stopped; that is, became untraversable, covered in brush and puddles so we couldn't go any closer to this giant mountain... but it looked as if it were just 30 feet away from us.

In part, it was sort of weird that the trail completely ended but on the other hand it ended with us running face first into a mountain. Which is exciting.





According to Wikipedia,


A mountain pass (also gap, notch, col, saddle, hause, bwlch, brennig or bealach) is a route through a mountain range or over a ridge. If following the lowest possible route, a pass is locally the highest point on that route. Since many of the world's mountain ranges have presented formidable barriers to travel, passes have been important since before recorded history, and have played a key role in trade, war, and migration.

So, it turns out, I should have expected that we'd run face first into a mountain given that we were following a bealach (notch, gap) this whole time. I just thought 'notch' was a word I could throw around to mean mountain, cliff, nature path, Astro-Crag, etc.

Indeed, our hike was "daunting and terrible", but you know what they say: Totes worth the 3 dollars!