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Mount Jackson

Updated: Jul 12, 2020

Date: 6/15/2020

Elevation: 4,052’

Miles: 5.2 miles

Time: 4 hours, 23 minutes

Trails: Webster-Jackson Trail


Calories: 1,932

Average HR: 132

Peak HR: 186


Each time I hike and get to spend so many hours with some of my favorite people, I feel that much more glad that I decided to take on this challenge. Because it ends up feeling a lot less like a “challenge” when I’m with these people and more just like hanging out—with side effects that may include extreme soreness and blisters that make you want to chop your feet off. But! I think I may have found the cure for the blister problem, or at least something that will help a bit. So I’m pretty sure the main the cause of my blisters are my Bauer bumps (also known as Haglund’s deformity apparently lmao) on my heels from my skates in high school. In order to be able to skate without excruciating pain, I would have to wear these callus cushions on top of them (Matti and I used to buy out CVS’s entire stock). So I fished some out of my old hockey bag that were probably years old and stuck them on, and they worked!! Very minimal blistering this time and a lot less pain. Yay!


This past hike I got to hang out with the amazing Anne Malloy, who goes by many names, which include Red Ramona and Annika Murphy (iykyk and if you don’t know then probably don’t ask ‘cause I don't really know). Anne and her family were staying in North Conway for the week, so right in the middle of Whites country. Unfortunately, Nala, her yellow lab puppy, is still too small for a 4,000 footer so she didn’t get to join. But just having Anne is pretty great too.


For those of you who don’t know her, Anne, like Caroline, was in my grade at Amherst and was on my team with me. Like me, she loves bread and hates running, but luckily both of us can hike just fine and Anne has actually taken up running lately! Go Anne!

Everyone knows Anne simply cannot talk while driving—as in, she literally just stops driving—but luckily this problem doesn’t translate to her hiking. We talked what we’ve been doing in #coronatime and what we see coming next for us in life. Fingers crossed we wind up in Boston together next year!!


So about Mount Jackson. This is a pretty easy one as far as I can tell. People typically add Mount Webster onto it after Mount Jackson, but Mount Webster is only 3,911’ and I’m not trying to push the limits of my blisters. So we just did the out-and-back version of the hike, which is 2.6 miles each way.


The trail isn’t too steep, and only gets a little challenging at the very end where there are some rock scrambles you have to navigate up. We did lead ourselves and the group behind us astray at one point when a very convincing trail-that’s-not-the-trail veered off from the trail-that’s-actually-the-trail. We made it maybe 100’ down that way before reconsidering…So just remember to always look up from your boots once and a while to check for the trail blazes! The ones on the Webster-Jackson Trail are blue :)


We set a pretty good pace and reached the top in just under two hours. The summit of Jackson is pretty big and offers completely different views depending on where you stand. Each lookout point is blocked from others by the short trees at the top so you don’t have that total 360º view, but we were up there on a gorgeous day so you could see for miles and miles. There's a great view of the Omni Mount Washington Resort with its red roof so that was pretty cool too.

We explored the top and then sat down for a snack and some self-timer pictures on Anne’s polaroid. After about 45 minutes, we headed back down and made good time again—taking two hours, but stopping to sit on some river rocks for a bit. All in all, another great hike with a great person and friend, made that much better by fewer blisters.



 
 
 

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