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Grafton Notch |
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Written by Andrew Freye
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Tuesday, 22 January 2008 |
 Grafton Notch
Good news all around on this weekend! I had two great days, and Hattie and another amazing race on Saturday! Friday night Hattie and I were able to just chill out and watch a couple episodes of "The Wire". Its an HBO TV series and it is awesome! I highly recommend it to everyone. My brother owns season two, and we were lucky enough to borrow it from him for a while.
 | | Top of the tower of Old Speck |
Saturday morning John and I were up early and packing up the car. We were going to go up to Grafton Notch and snowshoe on Saturday, crash at my parents place in Winthrop Saturday night, and then go to Sugarloaf on Sunday. The back of the Saturn was loaded up with all our gear and we were out of the house before 7:30am. After making a coffee break in South Paris we arrived at the parking lot around 9am. As we arrived a group of four hikers were going up the Old Speck Trail. No worries, John and I were confident enough that we would easily catch up and pass them in no time. We geared up, and were out of the parking lot by 9:30am. We decided to hit up the Eye Brow trail to add on some extra miles. I have never done the Eye Brow trail, but thought it would be fun. The trail has a lot more pitch to it vs the AT, and has some great views. Burnsy and I were flying up the trail and making great time. It didn't take long for us to loop our way back to the AT intersection and it didn't take long after hitting up the AT to fly pass the group that left the parking lot as we were pulling in.
As Burnsy and I were working our way to the summit some clouds were moving in, so we kept the pace up and pushed forward. We made it to the top and beat the clouds! The views were amazing and the temps were probably in the single digits with the wind chill.
After soaking up the views from the top of the tower it was time for lunch. As we were eating our lunch a Northern Jay stopped by. I was able to get the bird to sit on my hand and eat out of it! I think we might have given the bird too much PB&J!
After breaking for what turned out to be 30+ minutes our bodies got cold! So we quickly packed up and started hiking fast! We wanted to get the blood flowing which took a few minutes. Instead of heading straight back to the parking lot, we decided to keep on going and hit up Speck Pond, another 1.1miles away. We made our way down in no time. We were even the first people of the year to sign into the trail log!
After taking a 5 min break or so we heading back up to the top of Old Speck. I think we made better time going up the mountain than we did going down.
After reaching the parking lot it was a 5+ hour hike and covered 11+ miles. No complaints about that! We drove back to Winthrop where my mom had a great dinner waiting for us! Hattie had another track meet on Saturday. She competed at MIT and had a great day! She had a PR in the hurdles and ended up placing 2nd overall! I don't think her time is too far away from a qualifying time for nationals! She also placed 3rd in the 55m sprint! Her next meet is this upcoming Friday at BU. Its an open meet, so there will be some good competition to help push her. I will hopefully be able to go down and see her compete. I haven't seen her compete this year and I really want to be there to support her.
Sunday was another early morning. Up at 6:00am and out of the house by 7:00am. We made good time up to the Loaf, but still had to parking in Lot E. Since it was a holiday weekend we were worried there would be long lift lines. The bus driver on the shuttle to the base lodge said the temps at the top of the mountain were 4 F with no wind chill! Ouch thats cold! Turns out more people were sitting in the lodge then there were skiing, so the lift lines weren't even lines or waits! The skiing was awesome! I don't think I had one bad run. I even ran into an old friend from college, Matt F. John and I spent about half the day with Matt and his younger brother. I think Matt has to be the funniest kid I know. It was great to ride the chair lift with him and laugh the entire time. By noon the weather report was -9 F with out the wind chill on the top of the mountain! to make it worse the wind was picking up as the day went on! No worries though, I was sporting the heavy wool sweater and stayed warm for the most part the entire day! Wool is awesome.
Last night was an RA staff reunion get together thing in Gorham. Some of my best friends in college were also RA's on my staff, so Hattie and I decided we should go. This meant leaving the Loaf a little early, but it also meant John and I could catch the Pats game on the radio. Made it back home a little after 5pm, ate some soup real quick, changed and then headed off to Gorham. It was cool to see some old friends and catch up. Hattie and I actually ended up staying there for a long time talking to our good friends Forest and Jess. We don't get to see them to often now that we are not living in the dorms. We had a good time just catching up and how we have been etc... Made it into bed before midnight and had a solid night of sleep. today will be a clean up and organize the house day. Joy. This week will be an active recovery week! I love these weeks!
A
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; "Top of the tower of Old Speck")
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