Blue Group
On the second day of the Cardigan trip, we woke up to a breakfast of eggs, bacon, honeydews, muffins, and juice. After breakfast, we all packed lunch in the lodge. We stuffed sandwiches, apples, and cookies, all complimentary of the AMC lodge, into paper bags, got our hiking gear, and went outside to find our groups for the biggest hike of the trip. My group started heading up the path that led to a few campsites and up to the mountains. Near the bottom of the trail, we found something a group before us had made. They had found all different colored leaves and arranged them into rainbows. It looked beautiful!
The first mountain we hiked was Mt. Fire Screw. There were lots of pretty leaves and Indian cucumbers along the way. One of the people in my session had been collecting these Indian cucumbers, which is a good example of Movement because they were being moved up and down the mountains. Even before we reached the top of Mt. Fire Screw, the view was absolutely amazing! There was a perfect view of what I call the "valley of windmills" and also Newfound lake. We stopped at one place that I thought was the top but wasn't, and the view of Mt. Cardigan was so beautiful there, I never wanted to leave. We had snacks and took waypoints and then kept walking up the mountain.
At one point, there was a giant glacier, covered in moss, that had once rolled down the mountain and been stopped by a smaller boulder, causing the boulder to crack down the middle. This is also a good example of Movement because the glacier rolled down the mountain. There was a small river flowing next to the glacier, surrounded by short, thin trees. I sat on a moss-covered rock to sketch. It was like a beautiful, lush, moist, green paradise. We kept hiking and eventually got to the top of the mountain to find a rare alpine bog, of which there were only a few in New Hampshire, and then started walking down along a higher part of land leading from one mountain to another. When we finally got to Mt. Cardigan, the path up to the top was steep, but it was worth it. When we got to the top, I could see all around, with no trees to block my view. I could see lakes, houses, other mountains. It felt like I was on the top of the world. Just one problem, it was so cold and windy up there that my fingers were completely numb. We all ate our lunches, took sketches and waypoints, and tried to find the warmest spots to huddle and stay warm. Some people hid behind the fire tower on the top of the mountain and others found a place where the mountain dipped down to create a pit that blocked the wind. I stayed down there for a while before we left. Before we left, though, we saw dogs that had been hiking the mountain with their owners. That was fun. When it was finally time to leave, we packed up the stuff we had taken out and started the somewhat steep hike down the mountain and to the peak of Orange Mountain. When we reached the peak, we looked up to see Mt. Cardigan, which seemed much bigger from a smaller mountain, and also...a helicopter flying amazingly close to the Mt. Cardigan peak! I was envious of the other group, which was heading up Mt. Cardigan at that time, but it was still cool to see the helicopter from Orange Mountain. After that, we started down the mountain. At one point, we had to walk down a steep part with narrow dirt pathways. Along the way, we found a tall-ish stump with fungus covering the surface of it. We sat down to sketch this, which is when I realized the bug spray in my backpack had leaked, getting all over the GPS that was in there, too. I took a while to dry it off, and put the now empty bottle of bug spray in its own separate pocket. That was interesting. Anyway, when we were almost back to the lodge, we were all tired so Gretchen gave us some candy to give us energy...and it worked, of course.
My group ended up hiking five mountains in all that day, which was nine miles in seven hours. When we got back, though, we discovered that we were only the second group to return, which was truly amazing. We had our free time, visiting each other's bunk rooms and playing outside, then went to have a delicious lasagna and garlic bread dinner. After the last dinner of the trip, we headed outside to a warm, bright campfire, where we sang songs and told stories, the most memorable one, in my opinion, about a purple tiger. After that, we headed inside and went to bed for the second and last time during the trip. I was sad knowing that the trip was almost over, and yet excited to see what tomorrow would bring.
Mt. Cardigan Day 2 by CD is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.