Mount Moriah

Date: 6/8/2020

Elevation: 4,049’

Miles: 9 miles?

Time: 7 hours (very slow due to blisters lol)

Trails: Carter-Moriah Trail

Calories: 2,856

Average HR: 126

Peak HR: 184

So this is gonna be another episode of “what amazing friends I have!!” Because seriously, who drives all the way up to northern New Hampshire from Pennsylvania to go hiking?! Caroline Booraem, that’s who. How am I so lucky to have people who would do that?? Caroline, you are incredible and are such a real one. Everyone else, get you a friend like Caroline.

Caroline came up to Shelburne, New Hampshire on Sunday night and we stayed at the lovely White Birches Camping Park. 10/10 would recommend this fine establishment. The owners are SO kind and their campgrounds are really great too. We had asked for a more secluded tent site for #socialdistancing purposes, and we were, indeed, seriously secluded. We kept driving through the campsite and, since it was a Sunday night and there weren’t many people staying there, so we kept getting further away from other humans. I’m being a little dramatic, but it definitely felt like it was just the two of us, all the mosquitos in the world, and whatever wildlife was out there in the woods. We ended up seeing a chipmunk, a toad, and a mouse at our site, but the owner had told us there had been a bear right near the camping park all day soooooo.

I somehow made a roaring fire that I am still very proud of and we made s’mores because we both might be some of the biggest s’mores fans out there. I also made myself two hot dogs using my double-pronged metal roasting stick, so we were eating good. We slept in our cars instead of tents (lol), which was actually pretty nice and we avoided any bears out there.

Apparently this is a hiking blog so I guess I should get to the actual hike. We woke up bright and early and slapped together some pb&js; Caroline is the snack queen so she got her goldfish and gummies together and we were ready to go. The Carter-Moriah trailhead was only five minutes from White Birches, which was really nice, and it’s weirdly at the very end of this neighborhood and starts essentially in the front yard of one of the houses.

We hit the trail and got confused at a fork in the trail approximately 30 seconds in. Good start. After some Googling we figured it out and got back to it. Carter-Moriah follows a logging road for a ways (which made me sad bc deforestation) and then starts to hit these “false summits” as I kept seeing people refer to them on other hiking blogs. They’re basically these sheets of bald rock that are sneaky not the summit of Moriah, but still offer great views of the little town and river below. You reach the first one, the summit of Mount Surprise after 2 miles. Surprise! This is not the summit of Moriah and you’re only halfway.

Once you reach these false summits, there are a lot of rock scrambles as well that are over a 45° angle at Caroline’s best guess (she even put one at 60°). This was highly unfortunate for me because my blisters were BACK with a vengeance. Like seriously, seriously unpleasant. The scrambles were hard because I couldn't really put my feet parallel with the trail at such an incline without feeling like my blisters would rip open, so I had to sort of climb them sideways or scoot up them backwards on my butt.

But we kept on going and hit some other fun landmarks along the way:

Giant exposed roots of a couple trees that had all fallen down together

Wood bridges through a beautiful bog where the water is covered in a carpet of moss

After what was a very long time due to my blisters, we popped out of the trees to the summit! Mount Moriah is BEAUTIFUL!! We picked a good one for Caroline to drive all the way for. It’s this small rock top that you could probably fit ten people on comfortably and the views are amazing. From every angle it’s gorgeous, which makes it really hard to capture in a picture. But I guess that means you should hike it and see for yourself!

There were maybe five of these cute little birds at the top, which I’ve since learned the name of (gray jays) and also that they are notorious in the Whites. The two other people who summitted around the same time as us were feeding the gray jays out of their palms, so that’s pretty cool/not cool if you know what I mean. We spent a while at the summit because by then both of us were hurting quite a bit and also there were rainbow goldfish to be eaten.

We then painfully made our way down, which was relatively uneventful aside from the horrible pain we were both in (lol) and the millions of mosquitos that were eating me alive. I can’t tell you how many I killed off my body, but I know that I killed at least ten in my hair alone if that gives you an idea.

The thing about hiking is that I feel IMMEDIATELY better as soon as I can get my boots off and put on my Crocs. I think this might do my body a disservice because it’s like I forget how much pain I was in relatively quickly and then I want to do it all over again the next weekend. But I am working on different ways to get my boots to stop murdering my heels and if all else fails, I can try some new boots.

Hiking with such amazing friends and getting such breathtaking views helps wash out the pain :) See you soon, Anne Malloy!!