Mountain? What mountain?
How a wild detour up Old Speck upstages the peak itself
The first time when my dad and I hiked the Presidential Range ridgeline from Mizpah Spring Hut to Mount Washington, we had planned to summit the four peaks visited along the way: Pierce, Eisenhower, Franklin, and Monroe. The initial ragged climb through boreal spruce and twisted krumholz put us squarely on the blustery summit of Pierce, where we could see the ridgeline path beckoning ahead, flanked with tiny alpine wildlfowers. It was such an enchanting walk along the ridge that as we got to the summit cone of Eisenhower—where a junction gave us the option to go over the summit or to curve around it on gentler terrain—we decided to bail on climbing the subsequent mountains, bypassing their summits and sticking to the ridgeline. We were having a wonderful hike. Why ruin it by hauling ass to another mountaintop?
There’s something extremely cool about mountain trails that are more scenically compelling than the mountaintops themselves. Those of you who’ve been reading Mind the Moss since the beginning know that one of the bedrock themes of this newsletter is looking beyond the allure of summit vistas and finding the beauty in other features of the backcountry. And since we’re finally into mountain climbing season, with most of the peaks free of snow and ice (well, maybe not entirely free, given last weekend’s blast of wintery weather up north), I’d like to introduce you to a funny peak in Western Maine called Old Speck. Or rather, a funny trail up Old Speck.
