Waking up at 5 am was wicked hard because it was a Sunday and Starbucks did not open until 5:30 am. I hauled my sleeping body out of my warm bed, grabbed my pre-packed day pack, and trudged to the car. Paula and I agreed that I would pick her up at 5:45 am so I snaked my way through Watertown at 5:25 am in order to avoid the construction on the Commonwealth Ave. bridge. At 5:45 am, we left Boston and drove down an almost car-less I-93. We made it to Hart’s Location, NH and onto the trail by 8:45 am.
We had a slight issue when we realized that we got lost not even 10 minutes into the hike. After bushwhacking through the forest, we reached a different parking and got some advice to catch the Frankenstein Cliff trail by not walking on the trail but rather the train tracks that ran parallel to the trail. (The portion of the trail near the parking lot was supposedly a mess.) The man told us to follow the train tracks and pick up the trail “on this side of the trestle”. Simple, right? It would be if we knew what a trestle was. (A trestle is a support structure for elevated train tracks.) We thought that “this side” meant the right side instead of “this side” of the valley. As a result, we walked on the service grates on the trestle and bushwhacked until we were able to get to the underpass built to protect hikers from falling debris.
After we got on the trail, it was completely smooth sailing with bright yellow trail markers every 10 yards or so. It soon became apparent that “in trail markers we trust” was going to be our adventure motto. The Frankenstein Cliff trail was rated as steep and it really was quite steep. However, with a light backpack and hiking boots, the trail was fairly easy to traverse.
Our end goal was to meet up with the Arethusa Falls trail to see the 140-foot waterfall (some say it’s 200 feet, but it depends on who you ask). The Arethusa Falls trail was rated as a family trail which meant that there was a lot of infrastructure on the trail such as steps. It was a breeze to hike and we made it to the falls by noon. The waterfall was spectacular, but not something to solely travel 3 hours north to the White Mountains to see. We made it out of the trail by 12:45 pm. The total hike was 5.5 miles and the GPS path on my Garmin watch hilariously showed where we bushwhacked by the trestle.
Our adventure did not end when we got off the Arethusa Falls trail. We decided to drive to Blue Job Mountain to see if we could pick some wild blueberries. Long story short, the access road was washed out so we had to navigate to the parking lot using long/lat coordinates that were posted on a homemade sign. The short 0.6-mile hike up was quick and there were a few blueberries that we ripe. Unlike Pitcher Mountain (a mountain in southwest New Hampshire), the blueberry shrubs were short compared to the chest high bushes on Pitcher Mountain. All in all, we ate blueberries and had a pretty good view from the top of the fire watch tower on the summit.
Upon returning home, I started looking up the Franconia Range which was going to be our next hike. We saw the parking lot for the trailhead on our way to the Arethusa Falls parking lot and at that moment we decided that we wanted to hike the roughly 8-mile trail. After researching Mt. Lafayette and Mt. Lincoln I knew that I wanted to start my new goal: hike all 48 4000 footers by my 21st birthday (July 8, 2019).
Grace's Adventures 