Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway

On the first day of summer, my buddy Dave Shedd and I decided to put ourselves to the test on a really long one-day hike on the Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway in southwestern New Hampshire.

I can think of three rational explanations for our apparently irrational behavior:

• It was the longest day of the year, with more than 16 hours of daylight to play with.
• The weather -- cool and breezy -- was perfect for hiking
• We both had new pairs of ultra-lightweight summer hiking boots just broken in and begging to be used.

In retrospect, however, the whole thing was about as rational as the testosterone-driven desire for a red sports car. The real reason for the hike was that in 1980, I'd walked the entire trail (all 48.6 miles) in one day. I climbed Mount Sunapee by flashlight in the morning and came down from Monadnock at the other end of the trail by flashlight at night. Twenty-seven years later, we wanted to see how much trail we could walk in one day. 

Much of the length of the Greenway is relatively easy walking, and it's beautiful. Plus it has convenient road crossings, which made it (theoretically) easy to bail out (almost) any time we wanted to.

My sweetheart, Marilyn, and Dave's wife, Nancy, decided to spend their day not hiking which left them available to pick us up.

The day before our hike, we cached a gallon of water (all retrieved after the hike) at each road crossing.

Up at 3 a.m., we ate a huge breakfast and continued snacking on fruits and muffins on our drive to Sunapee. We left the car at 4:15, climbed almost halfway up the mountain in the dusky light, climbed back down to retrieve a forgotten cell phone, and then started our hike.

Needless to say, we didn't make the summit by sunrise. Rains the evening before left the rocks on top of the mountain slippery, which slowed us even more.

But by 11 in the morning, we'd still managed to complete the hike-and-a half to the summit of Sunapee and an additional 16.4 miles over Kittredge Hill and Lovewell Mountain to NH Route 31. At the village of Washington, we topped up our fuel reserves at the lunch counter in the General Store.

At that point, we had to decide whether to quit or push on. That decision was made for us when we were offered a ride that let us bypass some road walking and re-start on the Old Kings Highway, a dirt road now used by ATVs.

The trail has been re-routed in this section, some of the signage is gone, and we missed the trail. To get back on track, we bushwhacked cross-lots by compass. Only one swamp later, we found the trail and continued on our way over Hubbard Hill and Pitcher Mountain to NH Route 123. Theoretically we had made it 26.8 miles from Sunapee.

We quit there, very footsore but quite satisfied with out effort. According to the GPS and altimeter we carried, we hiked 26.4 miles in 11 hours of actual walking time (we were on the trail almost exactly 12 hours). When moving, we averaged 2.3 miles per hour, and climbed almost 6,000 vertical feet. Dave wore a heart rate monitor which calculated his average heart rate at 122 beats per minute, his maximum heart rate at 166, and his total calorie burn at 6,061.

So, we have about half the trail left to do. Maybe we'll do it in one day, maybe in two. After all, the days are getting shorter now.

How Long is Long?

One of the things I've always found slightly puzzling is that lots of hiking trails seem to start on the top of one mountain and end on the top of another.

The classic example is the Appalachian Trail, which starts on Springer Mountain in Georgia and ends some 2,160 miles later on Katahdin in Maine.

How are you supposed to get up to the starting point and down from the finish? Helicopter?

Officially the Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway is 48.6 miles long. But that doesn't include the hike to the top of Mount Sunapee which ranges from 2.6 to 3 miles depending on which route you take. Nor does it include the two-plus hike down from Monadnock at the end. So the Greenway is more than 53 miles however you look at it.

I suppose the justification is that there are lots of different routes up and down some popular mountains. But it's also easy enough to designate one route as "the trail."

Mistakes Along the Way

Other than leaving the cell phone (which we needed to schedule pickup) on the charger in the car and losing the route apparently because of a missing sign, we made a couple of other faulty decisions. Nothing serious, just reminders to think.

We calculated out food to carry -- primarily gorp, energy bars and tuna packets -- at the rate of 150 calories per hour. Then we added enough food to allow for 200 calories an hour. But we burned well over 500 calories per hour. If it hadn't been for that wonderful oasis in Washington, we'd have either had to quit early or hike hungry.

While we could cache water, caching food doesn't always work when there are rodents and raccoons around. And this is also bear country.

The other mistake I made was not paying enough attention to my feet. I thought I'd broken my new boots in adequately. But wet feet (mesh boots are cooler in summer but not waterproof) and socks I'd never worn before raised a pretty good blister. Surprisingly, it wasn't painful. The blister was easily covered and protected with a waterproof bandage, but it did prevent us from hiking the next day.

No matter how experienced you are, you still make mistakes. They just get smaller and, usually, easier to deal with. Most of the time, anyway.

At least we had sense enough not to try for another 10 miles.