Saturday morning bright and early at 8am (which let’s be real is probably earlier that most of us wake up during the week) a busload of us headed out for the White Mountains of New Hampshire to scale Mount Chocorua. The mountain is named after a Native American chief who tragically died on top of the mountain (see this spooky legend) and the White Mountains, well no one really knows why they’re called the White Mountains but supposedly it’s to do with the snow-capped peaks or the white-ish granite summits of the mountains in the range.
The hike was advertised as a 6 to 7-mile hike with a “moderately strenuous level of difficulty” and a “small stretch of rock scrambling”. It actually ended up being an 8-ish mile hike and depending on which trails you went on, there was actually quite a bit of rock scrambling. But all things considered, the hike was thoroughly enjoyable, not too taxing, and the views of the surrounding lakes and landscapes were absolutely stunning.
Our bus ride there was filled with many a game of ‘contact’ and ‘resistance’, probably not the best idea considering it was already quite an early morning for most of us. Once the bus dropped us there, we split into three groups (blue, red, and gold), headed out on different trails and we were off! I can’t speak much for the red and gold group but the blue group was clearly the best. I mean we did get to the summit first (not that it was a competition or anything), saw some cool wildlife (including a kingsnake), picked an ate blueberries along the path (no, none of us were poisoned, we’re all very much alive), carried rocks to the summit to build cairns, and only got off the track a few times (all of which were quickly corrected of course!). As a wildlife enthusiast I will say that the gold team was pretty cool since they got to hear some black-capped chickadees make their eponymous alarm call and the red team did get to see chipmunks and a bunch of other adorable critters… But before we knew it, it was 5pm and we were running down the mountain (quite literally) to get back to the bus in time and after a much more subdued bus ride, we were back in Cambridge, ready to hit the hay and call it a day!
Getting ready to go:
Highlights from the Blue team:
Highlights from the Red team:
Highlights from the Gold team:
Some cool nature shots:
And some panoramas:
:D
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