THE COHOS TREKKER

President's Message

A lot of work is getting done on the northern end of the trail despite the persistent rain. The Falls in the River Trail is complete except for some blazing and signage. The Moose Alley Trail and Idlewilde Spur are complete and now the Round Pond Brook Trail has been cut end to end. It now simply needs to be signed, blazed and cleaned up.

I want to take this oppurtunity to thank all the people that have made this trail possible. Without these people, this trail would not exist in the north country. Thanks to: Sandy Young of the NH Dept. of Resources and Economical Development, John Steward and Joe Daley of Land Vest, Bob Ward of Trans Canada, Bill Rioux, Dana Bartlett, Cynthia Bartlett, Hylie Marquis, EH Roy, Yvan Guay, Tom and Ellen Kolb, and all the landowners that have granted us permission.

I would also like to welcome our newest board members. Please welcome Adda Robbins of Jefferson NH, Mary Sturtevant of Sugar Hill NH, Ray Chaput of Twin Mountain NH and Chad Pepau of Stark NH. They are all a great addition to this association.

We are still in great need of volunteers and trail adopters. Please contact us if you can help out. We need labor, materials and dollars.

Donations are slow in coming this year. Without your support, it becomes very hard to accomplish what needs to be done. Just think, if everyone on this mailing list gave $10.00, that would equal over $10,000. That would go along ways in meeting our goals. We have received one grant from the NH Charitable Foundation for $2500 and $1000 from the Grassroots Foundation. We were just notified that we have been awarded $5000 from the Neil and Louis Tillotson Fund.

See you on the Trail

Pete Castine

President

The Cohos Trail Association

THE COHOS TREKKER - by K. R. Nilsen

HELLO FROM THE COHOS TRAIL

SUBSTANTIAL PROGRESS ON TRAILS

There is a great deal to report on regarding trail work from Nash Stream to the Canadian border.

In recent weeks, the new Falls in the River Trail had three bog-bridge spans installed in the Dry Brook area, putting the final touches on that pathway. The Falls in the River Trail is, without question, the gem in the system so far in the Connecticut River headwaters country in Pittsburg. Seven volunteers (Dana Bartlett, Cynthia Bartlett, Hylie Marquis, Yvan Guay, Kim Nilsen, and Pete and Lainie Castine) came out for National Trails Day to help haul heavy timbers and pound spikes to knit together the puncheon spans.

To sample the now fully finished Falls in the River Trail, travel north on Route 3 to Pittsburg and continue all the way to Second Connecticut Lake dam. Pull into the parking area there. There is a large all-new sign on a heavy post that fronts the path. An easy hike of about half an hour will take you down to the falls and flume. Along the way are fine views of the river and an old beaver backwater. Another ten to fifteen minutes south and one reaches Dry Brook. In that section the trail runs high on a ridgeline well above the roaring Connecticut River at least 100 vertical feet below.

To sample the now fully finished Falls in the River Trail, travel north on Route 3 to Pittsburg and continue all the way to Second Connecticut Lake dam. Pull into the parking area there. There is a large all-new sign on a heavy post that fronts the path. An easy hike of about half an hour will take you down to the falls and flume. Along the way are fine views of the river and an old beaver backwater. Another ten to fifteen minutes south and one reaches Dry Brook. In that section the trail runs high on a ridgeline well above the roaring Connecticut River at least 100 vertical feet below.

One no longer has to ford Big Brook to reach the Moose Alley Trail on the west bank of the stream. A strong lightweight steel truss has been installed and planking and heavy rope railings are in place to provide safe passage between the two trails. Once across Big Brook, hike a short distance to a trail junction. If you turn right, the Moose Alley Trail reaches Route 3 in a few minutes. If you turn left, you may continue your hike south nearly two miles on the Moose Alley Trail to the Magalloway Road.

The western trailhead of the Moose Alley Trail is located at a parking spot just before you cross the Magalloway Road bridge. Park there and look for the fine signage and stone stairway at the edge of the road.

The long Camp Otter Trail received a little more than 300 feet of puncheon spans in the spruce bog just south of Coon Brook. It still needs as much as 400 to 500 additional feet of bog bridging, plus about 600 feet of ditching to dry out one section of trail.

We should have a whole host of challenge race volunteers to help us get those jobs done in August. Until then, the trail will not be suitable for hiking. But if the summer dawns dry, we may try to make it possible to follow the route so folks can get off Route 3 in that area. But after mid-August, that trail should have the necessary improvements to formally open to the public.

The Idlewilde Spur, part of the proposed Idlewide Trail, is now open. Just above Second Lake dam, the trail quickly reaches a point with fine views over the lake to Stub Hill (taller than Magalloway Mt.) and Rump Mountain, much of which stands in the state of Maine.

By the start of the summer hiking season, the Prospect Mountain Trail should be ready for foot traffic from Mountain Bungalow and Bear Ledge Campground over the open summit of Mt. Prospect to Ramblewood Cabins and Campground. That trail has been open to the cleared summit, but we now have the okay to put in the remainder of the pathway.

Nearing completion, too, is the Round Pond Brook Trail from the Round Pond boat launch parking lot south to Route 3, a distance of about two miles. That trail roughly follows the course of the brook most of the way. A log bench has been fashioned at the small falls in the stream so folks can take the pack off in a pleasant spot. Watch the website (www.cohostrail.org) for an update on the opening of this trail. It is not too far off in the future.

In the Nash Stream Forest, the Rowells Link recently got a good deal of attention. It is now well blazed, ditched, and the blowdowns removed. It is in the best shape ever. A tangle just below the foot bridge was removed to drop the water level of Rowells Brook, as well, so high water will not threaten the span.

The Gadwah Notch Trail has been cleared and re-blazed fully all the way from the Headwaters gate to Baldhead lean-to, a distance of some five miles. The only section -- about 1,200 feet -- that did not get a going over was in the very bottom of the Sims Stream Valley area. We will get to that in August, but it should not be problem to navigate now.

A great deal of fresh blazing was installed, old blazing repainted, and some ditching carried out. In August, we will improve about thirty feet of approach to the notch itself. There is a big puddle there and we have to bridge it. We'll do that. Pick your way around it now.

The proposed Trio Trail from Trio Ponds Road all the way around Long Mountain to the Percy Loop Camp site has been flagged. That's about three-plus miles of hiking, should we get permission to put the trail in. If we can get the green light over the next year, that proposed trail will take hikers off the Nash Stream Road altogether.

In the next month or two, the long Covell Mountain Trail, with its trek down to Round Pond should begin to yield to the saw, the ax, the lopper and the rake. Last but not least will likely be the two-mile Idlewidle Trail to the gateway to the East Inlet area and Deer Mountain Campground

It is looking very good for the completion of all these trails this summer. Keep checking with www.cohostrail.org for updates on trail openings. You will want to add the new trails to your itinerary as you hike this summer. You may see photos of the trail work on the website. On the home page, read down through the president's message a few paragraphs until you see a reference to photography. Click on "here" and up will come a few dozen photos.

As of this writing, funding to help construct the trails has come in part from the small grants program of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, the New England Grassroots Environmental Fund, Public Service of New Hampshire, and from dozens of members and friends of TCTA like you. Several other grants are outstanding at this time. Once all are clear, blazed and signed, the Cohos Trail will be complete as originally proposed more than a dozen years ago.

All the lead-work on the new trails in Clarksville and Pittsburg have been managed by Peter and Lainie Castine. They've assembled a few volunteers, materials, fashioned signs and blazes, and spent untold hours out in the sun, the rain and snow, and among the deer flies and black flies to make all this happen. They are managing to put together a world-class pathway at the top of the Granite State. You should get out on it to see for yourself. Few new wilderness foot trails are so well developed in their early days as these new tracks in the forests.

GOOD SAMARITANS

A note of sincere thanks to the Pittsburg Ridgerunners Snowmobile Club for permitting us to use their clubhouse facility on Back Lake for a barbeque on National Trails Day.

Also, a special note of appreciation to Sandy Young, the manager of tens of thousands of acres of New Hampshire lands and easements and numerous state parks at the top of the state. Sandy made it possible to obtain the long steel trusses and other materials necessary to build the Big Brook bridge connector between the Falls in the River Trail and the Moose Alley Trail. He also moved the heavy units to the site and somehow managed to install them. Remarkable!

CHAD PEPAU JOINS BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Former Americorps trail steward Chad Pepau of Stark, NH has joined the board of directors. Chad worked on the trail for an entire year nearly a decade ago and you can see his handiwork in some trail signs, sign kiosks, and in the aerobic composting latrines at Percy Loop campsite and at Kamp Kirk.

Chad is a graduate of the University of Maine-Presque Isle and is now employed at famous Bosebuck Camp on Lake Azicohos in Lincoln Plantation, Maine. He is a hands-on fellow, par excellence. He helped install more than 300 feet of bog bridging on the Camp Otter Trail just a few weeks ago and another 100 feet on the Falls in the River Trail, as well.

DONATED MATERIALS STILL ROLLING IN

Donated materials are still finding their way to the trail association. Materials are a great way to support the trail, and folks have been doing just that.

Recently, we received a donation of three substantial wooden double bunks that have been earmarked for Mountain Bungalow in Pittsburg to increase the overnight capacity of the hut. They came out of the former Phillips Brook yurt system created some years ago by Mountain Recreation Corp. of North Conway. Camp Glen Brook at Marlborough, NH has made available to us many dozens of good-size two-panel windows and a few doors that were freed up a while ago during a restoration project on the main building at the camp.

As mentioned above, Sandy Young obtained long steel trusses and materials for the deck of the Big Brook Bridge

If you would like to donate materials to the Cohos Trail Association, please call 603-538-6777 in the North Country, or 603-363-8902 in southern New Hampshire

We can always use planking, dimension lumber and pine, spruce, or hemlock boards, plywood, peeled logs, and even metal roofing. Trail tools are welcome, too, such as shovels, mattocks, a pick or two, grass swizzles, branch loppers, and other hand tools.

And we have a few other needs, such as a small tow-trailer than can be pulled behind a pickup or ATV machine. And if you happen to have a car or pickup that runs okay and can pass inspection, and you want it to go to a good home for a good cause, let us know. We would turn it into the official Cohos Trail work vehicle.

By the way, many don't know this, but the entire Baldhead lean-to and quite a bit of the material in the Panorama lean-to were donated to the Cohos Trail Association. The funky latrine at Baldhead was donated, as well. Now if we could just get sufficient materials donated to build a hiker hut..

WHAT TO DO AT THE INTERNATIONAL BORDER

This hiking season, trekking to the border and up to Fourth Connecticut Lake should not be affected by plans to build a new U.S. Border Patrol port of entry station. However, by this time next year, we may have to reroute the trail in the area to accommodate changes in the facilities at the border.

Border officials have asked us to tell our members and the hiking public to report at the port of entry station when hiking in the U.S. Officers at the border have their hands full and can't accommodate hikers dropping in to report their activities. Parking for the 4th Lake Trail is now next to the bordr station for the time being. Please stay out of the way of the construction crews.

A HUT-RAISING?

The Cohos Trail Association continues to study the concept of an overnight hut or camp system for the trail. Ideas get batted around, promoted or shot down, but here's a bit of a novel idea that has roots on the American frontier and, in particular, in the Amish communities of Pennsylvania and Ohio.

The Amish are famous for their barn-raising events. When a new barn has to go up on a farm in the region or lightning burns down a working barn, the Amish community pulls together - men and women - and they set about building a new barn in a matter of a few days (and feeding the laborers all they can eat). It is an astonishing thing to watch.

We have done something like that but on a bit lesser scale. Our two lean-tos were put up in two days each when eight people came together and kept sawing and hammering until the structures were up and ready for occupancy.

It seems that something like that could be done to develop a simple, rustic hut for outdoor recreation enthusiasts of various stripes

Imagine this, the Cohos Trail Association brings $6,500 worth of lumber, bagged cement, boards, hardware and nails, donated windows and doors, safety equipment, and metal roofing to a site. Everything is on hand, including a small gas generator to run power tools and a rented powered posthole digger. A few folks get to the site one day before others arrive and set about twenty concrete foundation piers and their sill brackets. (Lots of work there!) They set up an open-air potty, too. The concrete sets overnight and then fifteen or so other folks show up for work the next day.

That morning, the sills and floor joists are hammered together and two layers of boards screwed down to create the floor. Now, in just a few hours, there is a firm flat surface to work up from.

Then the eighteen to twenty people on the job break up into four teams. Each team is given the task to frame out one side. The framework for the four sides of the building gets hammered together in a few hours because there are so many workers on hand to tackle each side. Then two teams begin to sheath the standing framed sides with board and batten siding while the other two teams install the roof rafters and caretaker loft rafters overhead. Once half those rafters are in place, a few folks break off and begin nailing the roof boards down on the rafters. As each crew finishes its work, the workers turn to help the folks on the roof. Toward the end of the day, the roof rafters and board covering are in place and several people have begun installing the purlins and metal roofing at one end.

The next morning, the rest of the metal roofing is installed, the caretaker loft boards screwed down, and the porch built. Now most folks move inside and begin installing the windows and doors, built-in benches, a long counter, and an interior wall to divide the bunkrooms from the main social room. Simple double bunks get fashioned and affixed to the walls in the bunkroom. By the end of the second full day, the sheetrock and finish-board trim is in place, the sink installed, the bunk mats flopped down on the new bunks, and the two simple cast-iron gas countertop burners installed and hooked up to a small tank of propane.

Voila. 95 percent of the building is now complete. It just needs paint and stain and the aerobic composting latrine built, and a few odds and ends. That can be done another day

And there is reason to celebrate because the crews have built a building in no time, and they've been paid a flat rate of $100 per day to do it. It's not big money, but it is great compensation for "donated" hut-raisin' time. Suddenly, for little more than $10,000 or $11,000 in materials and labor, there is a building that can sleep twelve to fourteen people standing where none had been three days earlier.

The Amish do this sort of thing. It's in their blood, in their nature. Could the Cohos Trail Association do the same with folks like you? I'll betcha we could. If lean-tos, then why not a camp?

Well, now, it's time to celebrate. There would be mountains of food and drink on hand at the end of the project to cap off a very productive few days. Maybe some live music and a sing-a-long. Folks could dance on the new main room floor.

Maybe some tall-tale storytelling. Maybe a few bottles of champagne to properly christen the hut. A few cigars smoked. Everything legal. Those who wanted to could roll out their sleeping bags in the new bunkrooms and have a good night's sleep in the new hut. We'd furnish the ear plugs, free.

So, who might like to do that, huh?

TRAIL MOWING MADE EASIER

The association recently purchased a solid used riding mower that can handle most grasses and light brush in the old grassy logging tote lanes that are common in the region, some of which we utilize for trails, along with snowmobilers in winter. A single pass is all that is necessary to suppress the growth for the hiking season so that it is easier to move along these grassy ways in the backcountry.

BYPASSING OWLS HEAD

The situation regarding a formal bypass of the closed Owls Head Trail is not resolved at this time. The best thing we can tell you, if you are thru-hiking, is to utilize the entire Cherry Mountain Trail that links the old Cherry Mountain Road to Route 115.

That means that northbound thru-hikers have to come down off of Mt. Martha before they reach the summit and long before they reach the fine ledges on Owls Head by veering downhill on the Cherry Mountain Trail down to the trailhead parking lot on Route 115. Now there is a long three mile walk ahead northeastward to Route 115A to get back on the formal Cohos Trail route.

Southbounders reach 115A and then turn north to Route 115, then move south along the highway for three miles to the Cherry Mountain Trail trailhead parking lot perched above the highway on the left, across from Lennon Road.

That's the situation for now, unfortunately. However, work is underway to find a proper bypass around the closed section of the former Owls Head Trail. A proposed route has already been GPsed. Perhaps that potential pathway will prove to be a viable route in the not too distant future. But for now, thru-hikers have a long road walk to bypass the present situation.

THE LAST WORD

In the North Country where the Cohos Trail winds, logging was once king and the paper industry employed thousands. Now, all but one mill remains in the region, employing at most a few hundred. So mill complexes stand empty in Groveton and Gilman, Vermont, and the once huge Burgess mill in Berlin has been completely torn down, smokestacks and all.

But there may be new life for one of these mills soon. The former Wausaw papermill on the banks of the Upper Ammonoosuc River in Groveton, framed by the Percy Peaks to the northeast, may become the home to an all-indoor hydroponic and organic vegetable growing business, where food is grown under spectral balanced lighting and heated by warm air from a wood chip boiler.

Such a "green" business would operate year-round and employ dozens of people in the growing, processing, and shipping of fresh food and in the maintenance of the facility.

This is forward thinking and a perfect fit for the North Country. Something like it is already up and running in Madison, Maine, where wood chip heated greenhouses and co-generation boilers provide lighting to grow tomatoes and peppers all year round, all of which are marketed to the large Hannaford supermarket chain, which maintains a mammoth warehouse in Maine.

Local food production is paramount to sustainable communities, as agriculture is and always has been one of the critic legs of the economic stool of rural communities everywhere. The revival of small farms and the proliferation of farmers markets, particularly in the last decade, are strong testament to the need for healthy local agriculture and the growing demand for local fresh foods.

This is truly important, particularly in light of increasingly unstable energy supplies and prices, ever growing population pressures, less and less access to high quality fresh food shipped in over long distances, and questionable food growing and processing practices outside of the U.S. (and in the U.S. for that matter).

We all eat. We would all be better off to eat food grown locally than eat food that comes to use over 1,500 miles of highway as most does now. I, for one, am anxious to see a food producer start production inside that big hulking cavern of a mill on the Upper Ammonoosuc River. This would be a big piece in the puzzle of rural revival for Coos County over the high country of which the entire Cohos Trail runs. Those who hike the length of this grand county love the place and the wild environments in it. Most of us, I would think, would like to see a healthy rural economy wherein the people here have new opportunities and a fighting chance to remain in this beautiful place.

percy peaks

See you on the trail.

Kim R. Nilsen, board chair

The Cohos Trail Association

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