Exploring the Old Man Stump: Franconia Notch - Expedition 2

Articles, Climb Safe

By Edge Mugga, for Edge Ascension LLC, as told by Edwin Mudge and Carol Jens.

One of the last images of the Old Man of the Mountain taken just before its fall, this image was taken by Jeffrey Joseph on April 26th of 2003.

On September 10th 2008, we undertook our second expedition into Franconia Notch State Park, taking the Kinsman Trail up the north side of the Cannon Mountains. This time around, it was only Carol Jens and myself. Our goal was to explore one of the alternate trails to the Old Man Stump. We were to either find the Old Climbers Trail, which had been recommended to us by a ranger on our previous attempt to climb the Old Man, or to take the Kinsman Trail from the base of the mountain to a bush whacking trail that leads to the Old Man Stump.

Our planning had started several weeks earlier, and had originally included trekking into the mountains with Nelson Piper and his son on August 20th. However, on the day that we had planned to go, Carol and I had been unavoidably delayed and couldn’t make it to our rendezvous on time, and so had to cancel our plans. Nelson and his son had been on the mountain many times and knew the Kinsman Trail approach quite well. They had no trouble in reaching the Old Man site on the day of their attempt. On that day the weather was perfect and the trek went without incident.

The weather on the 10th of September was very different. It was cool, almost cold, and overcast, but rain wasn’t forecast until the following day. We left mid to late morning and arrived at the trail head around 2:45 PM. At the time of our arrival the clouds were mostly off the mountain, and, while slightly broken, were thick with moisture just the same. Upon our initial arrival to the area we had determined to go visit the Park Operations Manager, John DeVivo, to introduce ourselves and to inquire about the location of the Old Climbers Trail.

We had been in correspondence with Mr. DeVivo regarding the necessity for special use permits, if any. It occurred to us, that as long as we were going to be in the area, it might speed things up to drop by for an impromptu meeting in order to get to the fullest understanding.

John DeVivo, JD as he liked to be called, is a great person to visit with, very helpful and knowledgeable about his work. It helped a good deal that he was also easy to talk to. We enjoyed our visit with him immensely. JD confirmed for us that there was indeed an Old Climbers Trail. So called because it was cut in and is maintained by climbers who ascend the mountain and frequently need a safe and quick route up or down, and it has been around for a long time. He wasn’t able to show us where it was on a map at the time, but offered to find a park ranger who we could hire as guide. But we felt the cost was too much, and took a rain check on the offer.

Note: The Old Climbers Trail is actually the quickest and safest trail by which to visit the Old Man’s stump. However, we believe the park keeps it a secret because of its proximity to the site, and a desire to keep unskilled hikers away from high risk areas of the mountain.

During our visit, we inquired about what the rules were concerning climbing the mountain in general and specifically the Old Man site. We were particularly interested in ascertaining the necessity of any permits for climbing or surveying. JD asked what our interests were in conducting a survey. We explained that we were in conversation with certain parties that were interested in possibly rebuilding the Old Man of the Mountain, if it were determined to be feasible. So, our interest was in doing some preliminary ground work that would be of value in moving the conversation forward. We further explained that we would be interested in supporting the Legacy Committee plans for a memorial at the base of the mountain in any case, as long as everyone was willing to work with us.

JD explained that anyone is welcome to access the mountain for climbing, hiking or whatever without restrictions. But, that there were occasions when use permits may be required. He gave the examples of such activities as a wedding on the cliff face, or any business use involving a for profit activity such as a professional survey. He went on to say that in his experience there has not been a single request refused, but that no one had been absolutely required to have one either — in other words, the permits were discretionary. He further explained that we would have to show appropriate liability insurance for all involved in any business venture.

We explained that we were only interested in exploring the mountain out of personal interest, and that while there was an interest in conducting a formal survey, we would only be exploring the Old Man stump using experienced volunteer climbers as private individuals to gather preliminary details that could facilitate planning of a formal survey. If private individuals were going to hire a professional team at great expense to conduct a survey, it would help to have some preliminary details to assist in forwarding the professional engagement with confidence. In other words, someone would have to have first hand experience not only of the mountain, but specifically of the Old Man stump.

Note: The volunteer climbers climb different mountains nearly every weekend, and would do it simply to be able to make a contribution in some way to further the understanding of the mountain, and to possibly draw interest to climbing as a sport. Our lead climber, Brian Faucher, was brought to our attention as recommended by other climbers to be one of the most experienced among them. He additionally is engaged in mountain search and rescue. One of the stories told of him is how he single handedly rescued a fellow climber from a precarious ledge after she had passed out there. She said that the next thing she knew was that she woke up on safe ground and that everyone told her that Brian had recovered on his own.

I explained to JD that we would need clarification within 30 days to be able to get our work done before the winter set in. He said that he now fully understood what we were requesting and that he thought that what they called a Special Use Permit (SUP) would not be necessary just to go climb the mountain. He said that he was sending a follow-on request to Torene Tango-Lowy, an NH state administrator from the Department of Resources and Economic Development, and would copy us on the thread, including what he had already sent.

JD copied us on a very well written request for a permit to allow us to conduct a formal survey. In the thread that JD forwarded, Mrs. Tango-Lowy had replied with a notice that she would forward the issue to Mr. David Wunsch, the state’s geologist working at the Department of Environmental Services (NH-DES).

Note: Unfortunately, we never received a formal reply from any of the parties. Our team, which eventually grew to seven people, spent several thousand dollars on four treks into the mountains over a period of several months in preparation for an eventual survey, just to find out in a chance phone call that our request for a Special Use Permit (a permit that was never known to have been refused) had been declined for unspecified reasons.

In concluding our meeting with JD, he walked us to our car and we bid him farewell, as we had a trail to climb and the day was growing short. Along the way to the car, JD stopped to pose for a picture as we departed.

JD and Mr. Mudge in front of the parks administrative office building at Franconia Notch State Park.

We drove the half mile from the administrative offices to the parking lot of the base lodge for the tram that delivers people to the top of the Cannon mountain, situated on the north end of the mountains on the valley floor. This time we were not interested in the tram, but in convenient parking for hiking the Kinsman Trail to the elevation of the Old Man’s stump. There we wished to bushwhack our way around the mountain in an attempt to reach the site by way of this alternative route.

Our purpose this time around was to explore the route for possible future use in visiting the stump. Additionally, we believed that if we made it to the stump, we might be able to find the Old Climbers Trail to return on. Thus, we would have pretty fully explored all possible routes, short of scaling the cliffs to access the stump. This last is actually an intriguing idea, but requires some experience and a more aggressive fitness regimen.

As mentioned, we reached the trail head around 2:45 PM, stopping only long enough to change into our hiking shoes. Carol wore the same boots that she had worn the previous trek, which did worry me some. While I had worn my mountaineering boots, a pair that I had owned for decades, but had rarely worn. These boots were quite good on the wet rocks, as they have Vibram soles. And they have excellent ankle support, and cushion around the ankles to buffer chafing.

Note: A little known rule of foot care is to avoid shoes with sculpted insoles, insole cushioning and spongy outer soles. It apparently destabilizes the balance of the foot and causes wear and possible injury, not to mention fatigue and stress to other body parts caused by misalignment and the body’s efforts to compensate. See: Fix Your Feet, by Dr. Philip Maffetone.

From the parking lot the trail head was eastward at the back and left as one heads towards the mountain into a large clearing off the main clearing. The grade of the mountain at the trail head was slight and increased gradually as we ascended into the mountain. It was very cool and humid, and we had lost the sun to clouds. We worked the trail as quickly as possible, in the hope of reaching our destination before the clouds descended upon it forming an encasement of fog. At this time, the clouds still appeared to be off the mountain. But, it had rained while we were meeting with JD, and so everything in the mountain was wet or damp.

Kinsman Ridge Trail (curvy dotted line) extending from peak of Cannon Mountain (black triangle at lower left) northeasterly down the mountain to its base (center), roughly paralleling tramway (straight diagonal line).

Satellite view of the Cannon Mountain courtesy of Google Earth, showing tramway in dark area at center.

Near the base of the mountain, the trail is covered with the dead materials mainly fallen from trees and ground down by the many trekkers who frequent the park. Even though it was a weekday on a late rainy afternoon, we passed several parties heading the other way as we progressed upwards. This speaks to the attraction of the mountain to would be trekkers and tourists. Even without the Old Man, the mountain is a wonderful invigorating place to visit.

The trail was at first mainly a kind of dirt and mulch trail, but began to have occasional boulders as the inclination increased the further up we went. Gradually, the boulders became more frequent and the consistency of the soil changed to more of a fine gravel of crushed granite. The boulders increased in size as well, and the roots of trees became more exposed on the trail. So, much so that boulders and roots became the predominant elements of the trail, aside from moss, mold and dirt. The foliage thickened as the inclination of the trail increased as well. This wasn’t a problem, as we’d not yet reached a point of our trek where bushwhacking was necessary, and the trail was quite passable.

Trail near base of mountain strewn with boulders.

Once the inclination of the trail reached a certain point, the boulders became so prominent as to be suitable stairs up the mountain. However, this soon became a bit of a drudge, as some of the boulders required scaling to pass over. At other points along the way, there were deep groves cut into the rock where weathering and the passage of many human feet had warn away the stone into channels. Where this occurred on large boulders, it was sometimes difficult to ascend and alternate routes needed to be worked out.

My shoes were a great help this time around, as the Vibram soles behaved excellently on the wet slippery stones. Carol’s shoes, though having high ankles and a good tread pattern, were of a more pedestrian rubber sole, and so had little grip and were too flexible. Not to mention they were loosely fit and so tended to be unstable. My shoes had the added advantage of weight. The weight of my shoes gave me a keener sense of a lower center of gravity, so I could walk upright more easily on the inclined terrain.

Boulder and gravel stairs on Kinsman trail.

As the trail became heavy with boulders, the forest became thick and closer in to the trail. And as noted before, the boulders increased in size. They were also more jagged, not having weathered as much as those lower down. Occasionally, there was a runoff of water either down the trail, or across it. If the water cut across the trail, it was usually in a flow like a gentle brook flowing down a cascade of rocks, usually in a channel. These channels were easily passable, but could very easily be filled with swift water in a heavy downpour.

Fallen tree leaning onto trail and across a small rivulet running under foot.

Occasionally, there was an obstacle such as a fallen or at least partially fallen tree across the path. These were for the most part passable. Sometimes they even were of benefit to getting up the rocky mountainside that constituted the trail. About a third of the way up we started noticing larger slabs of granite that had not yet decomposed into the boulders that littered our path. These large slabs were usually at a pitch that made them difficult to traverse. We occasionally had to walk the slabs on all fours or crawl on hands and knees.

The shape of the mountain along the Kinsman Trial was very convoluted, so that one would walk on the perpendicular to the slope of the mountain for a ways, then switch to walking parallel with the slope, then back again, and so on. This added much interest to the trek. Of note, there were no switchbacks on this trail, as might be expected.

Every so often the trail came to a place where the forest would open and you could see out into the expanse of the surrounding valley and to unique views of the horizon. These views were spectacular, and could quite literally be breathtaking to behold. They were made even more extraordinary by the interplay of light in a cloud splattered sky. And still more so by individual perspective. The subtleties of each view can very noticeably even across the range of perspective availed by variations in human stature.

Through some breaks in the trees we could see Echo Lake backed by Bald Mountain and Artist’s Bluff on one side and Mount Lafayette on the other. Beyond them the Bigford and Scarface Mountains, and Cleveland Mountain and Mount Agassiz, and maybe Garnet Mountain beyond that. Peering out from the trees, its always a slice of the overall view that one sees, never the totality.

In this area, you are very close to the ski runs, but there is so much forest that you only occasionally see evidence of human habitation — the tram lines or towers or deforested cut outs of the runs themselves. Mostly you find the trees, underbrush and thick moss that grows in abundance on the mountain. The features of the trail are blended so with the environment, that every now and then, you find yourself having to concentrate on where the trail goes, so as not to lose your way. At other times you can’t believe that it takes the course up the mountain that it does.

Forest naturally encroaching on trail…

As we entered the mountain, there was a misty rain that persisted throughout our trek on this day. Ensuring that everything was wet, and slippery, and promising to keep our clothing wet and cold the entire time. This made the trail harder to walk and climb. The wetness made our clothing cling to our skin and restricted our movements. Additionally, it made everything a bit heavier. But we persevered, and enjoyed the uniqueness of the experience just the same.

Since the trail winds mostly clockwise around the mountain, the trail to the Old Man stump necessarily comes in from the left. As we were climbing we found that there are no natural means to identifying the elevation of any position on the mountain directly, short of previously set markings. Therefore, without some means, such as a GPS device or an astronomical means of telling our elevation, we had no way of knowing how far we had climbed.

As we passed trekkers descending the trail, we would ask occasionally how far from the top they estimated we were. This seemed at the time to be useful information, but people traveling in opposite directions on a mountain side will have very different perspectives on distance and time. So, for someone heading down, 15 minutes from the top might be 45 minutes or an hour and a half to someone headed in the opposite direction, depending on the terrain.

At one point about two hours up, we came to a place on the trail where there was a clearing that ran in the opposite direction around the mountain for about thirty feet. At the far end was an orange trail marker on a fallen tree. It seemed to us that the tree had been marked for cutting and removal. But it turns out that Nelson had left a marker for us to indicate where to start our bushwhacking. However, not knowing this, we didn’t recognize that we were at the fork we were seeking, and we continued our climb.

The trek was taking us much longer then we had expected, and no knowing our elevation, and lacking any good estimate of distance from the top, we were at a loss for exploring off the main trail. We decided to climb to the top if we couldn’t find the cut off for bushwhacking to the Old Man’s stump. But, eventually, it was clear we wouldn’t make it even to the top of the mountain. Our climb had been slowed by Carol’s poor footwear, and the wet conditions that we found the mountain in this day. At about 6:45 PM we decided to abandon the mountain and return to the car, so after a rest we started back down.

As evening set in, the clouds settled onto the mountain more heavily and it became very wet, though there was still no appreciable rain. It was due solely to the dense moisture of the clouds’ foggy embankment. We descended the mountain rather quickly, but it still took us a good time to get down. By now Carol was having severe problems with her feet and legs, and though we moved relatively swiftly down, we took many breaks to allow her to attain a sense of stability before moving on.

As the darkness settled in around us, the mountain became an even more deeply mysterious place. We were essentially trekking by the light of thick clouds back lit by the moon alone. Though we had a flashlight, our eyes adjusted so well to the low light conditions that we found it unnecessary to use it until we cleared the path. This worked well, as it was more important to have our hands free in our descent than to hold a flashlight.

When trekking in the mountains, one finds oneself using all of one’s available limbs at any given moment — even more so when trekking in the dark. As we neared the base of the mountain, we could see little of the actual trail, though we did see enough of it to know we were on it. Our primary sense of the trail was by feel, in spite of the ample visual queues. We could literally feel the trail widening and leveling as the grade of the slope became more gradual under our feet. This was very reassuring, as going up, once off the initial slope of the mountain, the trail tended to be increasingly chaotic. But upon returning it became increasingly more regular and predictable.

We returned to our car at approximately 8:30 PM, and sat on its tailgate for a long time drinking water and tea, and taking our time changing shoes, and resting for the long ride back. Before leaving the park, we went to the local camp ground, the Lafayette Camp Ground, and showered, changed clothes and then went to Murphy’s Taproom in Manchester, to join our friends and share stories of our adventures. A perfect end to a wonderful day.

admin @ March 22, 2009