Summer 2006

The 4th of July holiday was a last chance for the Scott and Phil to visit the mountains with Kevin before the latter moves to Texas. We decided to spend three days and two nights backpacking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, a little off of the best-known routes. Most of our trip was on the Davis Path, beginning from its foot at an altitude of 1000 ft.

We stopped for lunch where a trail branches off, scrambling up these rocks to the summit of Mt. Crawford.

at the summit of Mt. Crawford

Kevin and Phil invoke "Wind!" as in the Alladin movie.

At the Resolution Shelter, Kevin and Phil laid out their sleeping bags for the night.

Once prepared for bed, we made the short walk up to a ledge on Mt. Resolution at sunset. Philip lay on the rock and enjoyed the clouds. Behind us the two Giant Stairs can be seen.

The next day, we hiked over Stairs Mountain to Mt. Davis where we took a long break for lunch. Kevin said, “The wind's so strong it’s blowing my bread off my pants.”

The hike between the shelter and Mt. Davis was 5 miles each way, with June rains having produced plenty of mud. This part of the Davis Path is one of the less-frequently travelled in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains. We met only a few people, but did see fresh moose tracks in the mud. From Mt. Davis there's a marvelous view to the north of Boott Spur, Mt. Washington, and the Southern Presidentials. To the west are the mountains of the Pemigewasset Wilderness all the way to Franconia Ridge. To the south is the Sandwich Range, and to the east more mountains.

The woods were full of bird song, but the thick forest provided good cover and made the birds hard to see. Phil was asking Scott to identify the birds, but in some cases Scott was unable to pin it down to just one species. After a while, Scott got tired of saying "That's the one that's either a Tennessee warbler or a Nashville warbler," so we called it Nashasee warbler from that point on. Other songs we called the "Davis thrush" and the "Resolution warbler". On arrival at home we used our bird song recordings to resolve these as actually the Nashville warbler, the Swainson's thrush, and the Magnolia warbler.

The other most common bird songs were white-throated sparrow and blackpoll warbler.

Back at the Resolution Shelter that evening, we dined on 10 servings of "spaghetti with meat sauce".