THE COHOS TREKKER

President's Message

Sorry for this edition of the Trekker being late. We have been busy with the annual event and trail work.

This rainy weather has made the trails quite damp. Things seem to be drying out now so keep your fingers crossed! Lainie and Meagan have done a lot of work up to the Panarama Lean-to. The view has been reopened, the lean-to has a fresh coat of stain and the general area has been cleaned up. E. H. has been out this week with the weedwhacker in that same area, so the grasses should be knocked down by the time you read this.

I would like to thank the volunteers that have been working hard to improve the trail system. A special thanks go out to E.H. Roy, Mtn Magic, Maegan Haynes, Yvan Guay, Bob Paradis, Kim Nilsen, Lainie Castine and Sam Farrington. Hope I didn't miss anyone.

I would also like thank the American Hiking Society and the Tillotson Foundation for their generous grants. This money has allowed us to blaze and GPS the trails in Pittsburg. This money was also responsible for the opening of the new Deadwater Trail, staining of the Panorama Lean-to, opening up the view at the lean-to, purchase of the planking for the bog-bridging on the Camp Otter Trail and other work.

If you would like to adopt a trail, please email us. We are in strong need of trail adopters in the north country. Adopters are always welcome to stay at Bear Ledge Campground or the Mountain Bungalow at no charge.

P.S. Don't forget the work-weekend July 18th.

See you on the Trail

Pete Castine
President
The Cohos Trail Association

THE COHOS TREKKER - by K. R. Nilsen

HELLO FROM THE COHOS TRAIL

ROADS BE GONE

Don't like hiking on roads to get from here to there? Can't blame you. By the end of this hiking season, the Cohos Trail Association should have eliminated nearly half the road miles in the 162-mile pathway. By the close of 2010, we hope to kill off most of the road miles so that the trail is a woods and mountain walk almost the entire way. Not only that, but we hope to be able to restore the historic Deer Mountain fire tower trail on the peak above Third Connecticut Lake, giving hikers more miles to tread.

The Slide Brook Trail in Jefferson has been closed now for two years, but next year we have a chance to build a three hundred-foot bog-bridge string across an old beaver bog dam and link segments of the original trail now flooded by water. That would eliminate a long mile of road walking along Route 115 and Route 115A.

We will soon bring forward a proposal for a new link trail in the Nash Stream Forest that could, if approved, do away with two miles of hoofing along the good gravel lane that parallels Nash Stream. The new route would begin at the Percy Loop Camp on the flank of North Percy Peak and slab north somewhat on the level along the flank of Long Mountain to a crossing at the Trio Ponds Road. Once across the road, the new pathway would beeline to Pond Brook, and follow that stream downhill to the very upper ledges of Pond Brook Falls.

Route 145 and a few miles of Cedar Stream Road in Clarksville have already been entirely eliminated by the opening of the Dead Water Trail, a grassy snowmobile corridor that swings east of Ben Young Hill instead of over it, as the trail recently did.

On Prospect Mtn. in Pittsburg, work on a new trail should begin shortly, as the last permission signatures dry on agreement papers. The new path, with its marvelous view over 3,000-acre First Connecticut Lake, will trim off several miles of blacktop and link Bear Ledge Campground and Mountain Bungalow hut with Ramblewood Cabins and Campground.

When the Covell Mtn.Trail comes on line over yet another small peak with a sweeping view of remote boundary country in several states and Canada, it will also eliminate road drudgery.

But the biggest fish, well over three miles long, will be the soon-to-open Camp Otter Trail from Camp Otter Road to the Magalloway Road. Hikers and wildlife watchers will be able to kiss a good deal of highway goodbye and amble with moose in forest just to the north of the shores of First Connecticut Lake. This long trail will soon boast the biggest structure on the entire Cohos Trail system. Many hundreds of feet of bog bridging will be constructed over moist soils in the vicinity of Coon Brook.

If all goes as planned, another four miles might fall if we can hammer out the new Moose Alley Trail from Magalloway Road to Big Brook bridge on Route 3 and the proposed Little Falls in the River Trail from Big Brook to Second Connecticut Lake Dam.

In 2010, we hope to be able to pinch off the last two miles of Route 3 walking by completing a new trail between Second Connecticut Lake dam and East Inlet Road. Do that and this little hiking association will have accomplished what it set out to do when there was a president named Clinton in the White House.

Roads are fine for cars, not so fine for hikers and moose. Moose are a bit softer when they run over you, eh.

HIDDEN GEMS

In the 200 million year old folds of Coos' ridges, there are some historic old structures that have caught our attention. Some of them we would like to do something with some day, but what?

In Coleman State Park, just a long hundred feet from the access road but invisible because of forest growth, stands big Stony Point cottage with its broad, sweeping porch, spacious living room with fireplace, and multiple empty bunkrooms upstairs and down. It was once a charming vacation home, a missionary retreat, a YMCA camp, and an Americorps trail crew waystation. Today it is empty and needs lots of TLC. Personally, I’d like to fix it up. It ought to be used for something wonderful, because it is wonderful, indeed.

In the Nash Stream Forest, not too far from the site of the long-breached Nash Bog dam, perches Kamp Kirk, the original structure built to house construction workers when the impoundment was built a century ago. I've stayed in it numerous times and always look forward to going back there when I have trail work to do in the Forest.

From what I understand, it was the first structure of any kind built that far up the stream valley, and it is still in fair condition thanks to the family of John Lane of Lancaster who look after it.

Inside the building is a logbook that folks write entries in. There is an entry in the log from 1969, a day after the Nash Bog dam blew out and allowed 200-acre Nash Bog lake to drain all at once and utterly destroy the valley environment below. The great disaster is noted in the log by six short words: “The dam went out last night.”

Now, how's that for Yankee thrift?

A quarter mile from the summit of Mt. Cabot stands a wee cabin with a small porch, a little public room, and a bunkroom that sleeps eight -- sardine style. Nearby is a good composting toilet. Underneath the building is a big snowshoe hare. I see her one in a while.

The cabin is a U.S. Forest Service relic from the days of fire towers and their attendant wardens. It was restored about a decade ago, as I recall. But because it sits high on the mountain and takes a fistful of weather knuckles each winter, it needs care and attention. Maybe we should think about taking care of it.

There are more of these historic babies out there in Coos County in places few people get to. Know of one, do you? Let us know.

CAVE MOUNTAIN CAVE

Here's a mystery for you. There is a cave on Cave Mountain in Dixville, or so the rumor goes. Otherwise, why would they call Cave Mountain Cave Mountain, hmm?

Do you know where it is? Does anybody? If you do, give a jingle.

I know where Ice Cave is on Mt. Gloriette. The Three Brothers Trail (part of the CT) runs right alongside it. It is not really a cave. It is a chasm, a place where the mountain is pulling itself apart. The side you stand on when walking the trail has dropped about three feet down and away from the main body of the mountain and the resulting crevasse is dozens of feet deep, and maybe hundreds, but there is still snow and ice visible way down there, filling the hole up to some degree. The snow will be there all summer.

Don't fall in, okay! Wedge yourself in there and, well, you'd have to be dynamited out. That'd hurt, I suspect. We could drop food down to you. Maybe a bottle of hooch for the cold nights. You'd need it.

Or you could wait patiently down there in the chasm until the mountain finally does split in two and the north side falls into the bottom of Dixville Notch is a rush of stone and trees.

PANCAKES AND MEATBALLS

Had plenty of pancakes at Sportsman's Lodge on Big Diamond Pond in Stewartstown during our second annual Cohos Trail bash. Terrific. Owner Linda Glew knows how to make a great pancake and, come to think of it, a fine spaghetti feed, too, with plenty of meatballs. Gained a lot of weight over two days, but I hiked it off.

Kim R. Nilsen, editor

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