Starting The New Year Off With A Hike
By Gary Moore
Despite the temperature and wind, Don Kollisch, Alexander Hartov and I hiked Tucker Mountain New Year’s Day.
Don a semi retired doc and I first hiked Moosilauke on New Year’s Day 2000 and continued to make the annual hike until recently when age and infirmities slowed us down and our desire to undertake an all day hike in winter conditions. In recent years, we have made Newbury’s Tucker Mountain our first hike of the year. It is much shorter and easier, allowing us to start the year off right.
We were joined this year by White River resident Alexander Hartov, a retired Dartmouth engineering professor.
Most times we are on Tucker we see other hikers celebrating the new year, but we saw no one this year. Perhaps the cold had something to do with it.
Going up Tucker Mountain Road was relatively easy except for the trees that had blown down across the road. It will take chainsaws and a lot of labor to clear out.
We reached the summit in bright sun but low clouds blocked the view of Moosilauke where we knew friends would be. It is tradition to wave to them.
It was windy so we spent little time on top but did break out the champaign for the toast to the new year before heading down via the Putnam’s Trail.
That was a mistake. Soon we were fighting our way through dense ice coated saplings bent to the ground. They completely blocked the trail causing us to crawl under and around throughout out the upper section of the trail.
It was good to be out, but hard slogging.
We celebrated our hike back at our house where Linda had made beer and cheddar cheese soup that is very thick and ideal for replenishing calories burned while winter hiking.
Alex, a dedicated hiker, was impressed with the many options and the network of trails and vowed to come back and explore them.
I sent him a link to the Windows To The Wild episode on NHPBS that Will Lange and I did right after covid to give him some background on the mountain and how the Newbury Town Forest came to be.
You can check it out at https://nhpbs.org/schedule/summary.aspx?progId=WindowstotheWild1610. I encourage you to explore Tucker and Bradford’s Wrights Mountain Town Forest just to the south. They are wonderful places now protected for future generations to enjoy.