You Are Here: Saddleback Mountain

Today I took myself out of my comfort zone. I have hiked the trails at Northwood Meadows what feels like hundreds of times and have traversed the Saddleback Loop quite a few of those journeys. I have since learned the true summit of Saddleback is actually off trail. Thus it has been on my radar ever since. One time I attempted to find the true summit, headed off trail a little ways, thought I was close, but then chickened out fearing getting lost and quickly hopped back on the trail. (Turns out after reviewing my Strava activity, I wasn't close at all). I have walked up Saddleback Mountain Road on the opposite side of the peak, reaching the radio towers and seriously thought about trying to make the bushwhack over to the true summit, but again chickened out. I had read a number of previous trip reports which described the bushwhack as approximately 0.5 miles from the radio towers. That doesn't sound like much, but when hiking (at least to me) it can feel like forever. Without a trail it sounded like 100 miles in my head. Fast forward 5 years and I've loosely started working on a new list of summits to hike. New Hampshire town high points. Saddleback Mountain is the high point for Northwood. I just hiked 2 days ago, so I didn't want to go too far. The trailed mountains locally to me, I've done too many times before and are way overcrowded right now during quarantine. Saddleback Mountain resurfaced in my mind and I became locked in on actually getting this one done. I looked for every report I could find of previous hikers reaching the summit and downloaded some .gpx trails to try and loosely follow. I set out and parked at the end of Old Mountain Road. This was a new way of entering Northwood Meadows for me, so I was a bit apprehensive from the start. Headed off down the snowmobile trail and quickly encountered the intersection with the Saddleback Mountain loop. I hadn't planned on going that far, but as it turns out, I'm glad I did. I was nervous and heading up somewhere familiar was a good way to calm my anxiety a little. I kept checking the .gpx tracks of the downloaded reports and eventually I just said to myself "now or never".. I stepped off trail, took a deep breath and went for it. I figured out which direction I needed to head in and pretty much tried to keep to as straight a line as possible, obviously moving around as needed to make the line up as "easy" as possible. It was very humid, there were a ton of mosquitoes, I had moments of complete calm and confidence and then I had moments of sheer terror and panic. I must have looked at my phone 1000 times, making sure I was keeping "in line" with the summit, feeling a little sense of ease seeing that I wasn't detouring too drastically from one previous hikers tracks and just kept going. I can't count the amount of times I stopped and wanted to turn back around. Thinking that the further up I went, I still would have to find my way back as well. But I was determined to do this. I finally started to feel like I was getting closer to the summit and it gave me the drive to keep pushing forward. I reached a ledge that felt summit(ish) and looked at my map to see that I wasn't quite there yet. I looked around trying to figure out where I needed to go and wandered a little. A huge cairn suddenly appeared in front of me, which gave me such a sense of civilization. I thought that was the summit. Map showed still not quite. I looked around and saw another rock ledge to climb and headed for that. Atop that was a rock structure that definitely looked like this was it. I looked at my map, and yes.. I had made it! I knew there was a little jar register somewhere to sign in, I also knew that it was apparently difficult to find as it was apparently attached to a tree that had fallen and was underneath. I sort of thought to myself, if I find it, great, if I don't.. I'm not going to spend hours looking. Right at that moment, I looked up and there it was. Laying in a wedge of branches on the ground. It caught my breath. As dramatic as that sounds. I walked over, picked up the jar, opened it and signed in. Saw a couple names I recognized from online trip reports.. and thought to myself "I'm one of them now" LOL.. I closed up the jar, put it back in its place and wondered when the next adventurer would find it and see my name signed there! I actually shed a tear or two and said out loud to no one "I did it, I really did it"! I just stood and looked around taking it all in for a moment. There are no views at the summit, so there wasn't really anything to do other than begin my descent! I tried to follow the direction I had come up, but immediately I knew I was taking a different line. I saw another little cairn (it amazed me considering this isn't a highly trafficked summit) and just headed in as straight a line as possible. I hit way more closed in spaces and steeper slopes, and was thankful that instinct had taken me up the way it did.. I knew if I had encountered these obstacles on the ascent, I would most likely have turned around and quit. On my descent, these obstacles were just annoying. I was hot and sweaty and wanted to be done.. but I had no choice than to fight on and get back to the car! At one point I was in such thick forest I just put my head down and pushed forward not even looking at where I was going to avoid branches hitting me in the face! I eventually reached the little clearing where I had first started the bushwhack, and shed another tear.. I was back! Granted all this was only just over a mile in each direction and a relatively short/small bushwhack but it was my first.. so to me it was a big deal!

Strava Activity