You Are Here: Ragged Mountain

Today was extraordinarily hot and humid.. real feel temps over 100 degrees. So we went hiking. Vanessa, Laura and I headed for Ragged Mountain. We spotted a car at Proctor Academy and headed over to New Canada Road. The hike started out on an old woods road and was relatively mild. Passed through some open areas with tall grass at this time of year, but was marked with stakes tall enough to see the way. The worst part of this entire day was the bugs. They were brutal from beginning to end. About halfway through we ended up donning our bug nets which helped some, but the overall experience with them was unpleasant to say the least. Once in the woods, the terrain changed to a variety of steep scrambles and gorgeous pine needle paths. The trail is a lot harder than the mileage/elevation gain would indicate. The steeps are steep and in today's heat and humidity we were taking it very slow. Around 1.2 miles in the ridge is reached and there are peekaboo views to the surrounding area, though we didn't get a lot by way of views today as it was very hazy. The grades moderate somewhat, but are still up. Near the summit of the West Peak, the trail briefly follows the side of a ski trail up to a communications tower and pops out at the summit where a chair lift is and some views north towards the Whites. We didn't linger due to the extreme heat. Took a couple of pictures and continued. The trail heads down a ski trail very briefly which was all tall grass at the moment and heads into the woods. For the next mile or so the trail goes up and down over a couple of knobs. There were 2 scrambles with a rope assist. I went from never having experiencing that feature to 2 hikes in a row! Near the top of an unnamed knob was a very short side path to a ledge with views back over to the tower and towards the Kearsarge area. We stopped here for a break only to hear low rumbles of thunder in the distance. This motivated us to keep moving and we continued down to the intersection marked with East Ridge/West Ridge Trail. I needed the out and back on East Ridge Trail but was feeling so tired I said to the girls I'd come back and do it another time. They encouraged me to continue and I'm really glad they did. The 0.4 or so out to Old Top was more up and down passing by the West Peak summit (which we did grab a short distance off trail marked with a cairn). We discovered some old campsites at Old Top and gorgeous views. Again, we didn't linger due to the extreme heat. Grabbed a couple of pictures and headed back to start the descent down to the car. About halfway down the thunder started to rumble in earnest, it was close, then the heavens opened up and it poured. Even though it was a little nerve-wracking at the time, I wasn't overly concerned as we were not exposed, we were under tree cover and the rain felt really, really good after all that heat and humidity.. and the bugs didn't bother us! Having done this descent a couple weeks ago when we did the Bulkhead, I knew it was steep, but not overly technical and we were able to move without having to stop too many times. Once you hit the Proctor Academy mountain bike/cross country ski trail network area, the trail really levels out and you can make decent time. One last technical descent right near the end of the trail slowed us down again as we were exhausted by now and cautious on wet rock. The rain had stopped and the bugs were returning so we just kept moving and were never so happy to see the parking lot at the end. 8.5 hours in the woods and I was done with the trails on Ragged Mountain.

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