Cannon Mountain Hike

My weekend was pretty good, Friday night started with me going out after work. It was nice to get out in the city for a change. Saturday involved not much of anything except laundry and the PBS reality series.

The excitement began on Sunday when I drove down to Somerville to pick up Kate, Andy and Clemence. We went hiking up at Cannon Mountain up near Franconia Notch. The weather was cloudy all of the way up until we were within ten minutes of the trailhead and then it started raining. We had driven two hours and figured it might clear up. The hike started off fine, a little wet, but not too bad. We made it to the top in about two hours. At this point the visibility was about ten feet, but it didn't deter us from climbing up the observation tower. The view up there was worse. It was windy and cold up there and we looked for shelter, but everything was locked up. Finally Andy found a generator room. It was warm, dry and out of the wind, there was a strong smell of fuel, but the pros certainly outweighed the cons. The rain stopped at some point during our lunch stop and the sky began to clear. Was it really going to clear up? Sure enough it did, as soon as we were off the summit and about halfway down the sun came through. At one point we stopped and climbed up on a rock and just rested for a while. It was actually a dangerous rock, first Andy slipped down a hole after attempting to scale it and then I almost fell off the top and was only holding on by my fingertips. The next stop was at Lonesome Lake. At this point the sun was out in full force and we were able to enjoy the brief stint of nice weather. Within minutes the clouds glided down from above and overcame us once again. We began the final one and a half miles towards the car, on the way Andy made an attempt at knocking over a fifty foot tall rotten tree. He was able to break off a large chunk, but the main trunk remained, which was probably all for the better since it would probably have fallen on his head. The rest of th etrip was less eventful and it was nice to get back to the car and rest. Overall it was a successful hike and I am looking forward to climbing some more four thousand footers in the near future.

Keeg