Hiking Trip Logs

Introduction

Soon after my family moved to Connecticut, which happened in 1963, when I was nine, we started taking camping vacations every summer in the White Mountains. We (my dad, my older brother, and I at first, and later others) would make day trips up into the mountains. I know I summited Washington, Adams, and Jefferson during those days, and I'm pretty sure I summited Monroe. I also, when I was a child, went on a number of long (but not mountainous) hikes as a boy scout.

After I grew up I would still hike occasionally, but not very often. I know I hiked in the Presidentials at least four times in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, including one disasterous hike in which I greatly overestimated my abilities while encountering sleet in August. I could hardly walk for days after that hike.

In October of 2001, wanting to lose weight, I decided to try to go on a hike every weekend. I hiked on several trails, but the trails of Case Mountain Park in Manchester, Conn. became my default location. At first I only hiked a mile or two, but I kept extending it until by the next spring I established my standard weekend hike, an eight (now more like nine) mile trek through Manchester and Glastonbury, Connecticut mostly on the Shenipsit Trail. I still do this regularly. I've probably hiked at least 45 weekends a year every year since then.

I now have some pictures online of my Shenipsit hikes.

I did not lose weight doing all of this hiking, but I did feel more vigorous. I found that, in everyday life, I lasted longer before I started feeling fatigued. In 2003 I put myself on a diet and finally lost the weight. In 2004, in much better shape that I had been since my 20s (I was 50 years old at this point) I decided I was ready for something more ambitious. So I returned to the Whites. This became the first trip reported here. I loved it. I soon decided I wanted to do this every year, and then I decided I wanted to do it every season, and then I decided I wanted to do it every couple of months. In May 2007 I joined the online hiking group Rocks on Top, and started taking advantage of hikes organized by them.