Mount Paugus

One of the many happy falls we saw on the trip.

HIKED ON August 10, 2024,  27/52 WAV

If you want a tough hike just for yourself on a mountain that no one knows about...here yah go.  I had been thinking about this climb for years but kept putting it off.  Allison wanted to finish the 48 4,000 footers, after all.  Also--though I hike frequently by myself--something told me I would want a companion for this one.  Some hikes hit harder than what they seem on paper.  On paper this mountain already provides a challenge.  On the ground...it is a lot.  That said, the reward is high. 

​Mount Paugus sits relatively alone in the Sandwich range.  It is a "hiker's mountain".  Not many casual climbers take it on, preferring the better known trails and peaks around it.  The same parking lot hosts the trailheads for two 48ers (Whiteface and Passaconaway) as well as the local favorite, Mount Wonalancet. This means that you have the trail to Paugus pretty much to yourself.  The lot was full.  No one was going our way.  It is a dive into the wilderness.

I remember mentioning during my hike on the Great Glen Way in Scotland that sometimes a walk can be about water and its movement.  In that case we were on the Caledonia Canal and the lochs.  Paugus, though, was about water, too.  It seemed the whole mountain was draining down to larger rivers and into the sea.  It had the best soundtrack of water rolling over the rocks.  The streams and rivers supplied the banks with greenery. The falls themselves were evocative and beautiful.

As we climbed, we marveled at how gorgeous everything was.  We paused to rest and take pictures frequently.  We would come up on a little falls and think it couldn't get better...but then it would get better and we would pause again.  The 52 With-A-View list is about aesthetics.  Not all views are from the top.

The flatness of the photo does not do enough justice to this cliff that followed the stream for some time.

This is where I should note that the massive amount of water eventually obscured the trail and we got lost.  Now, we have been lost before.  Most of the places we hike, things are well-marked.  However, that isn't always the case and sometimes it is easy to get confused.  Thankfully, we know what to do in these situations...

1) We got out our various direction-finding tools. Al and I have slightly different tastes in this regard.  I like a paper map and a compass.  Having taken a bearing at the parking lot and using the local features, I can usually position the map and find our general location.  Then I study it so I have a picture in my mind and plot a course.  If I am confused, I get it back out to refresh my memory and sense of direction. 

Allison prefers technology.  We have our trusty Alltrails app, of course, but if we are lost that has most likely failed us.  So we turn on our Garmin mini, which is a miracle of the 21st Century.  The Garmin talks to a satellite to pinpoint our location.  It is good, actually, to have more than one way of determining our location. After my map ritual, Al had the Garmin going.  So we knew our condition was temporary.

2) We proceeded slowly and thoughtfully, looking for signs both of the trail and the way to the peak where we knew the trail ends. The landscape, itself, gives hints to your direction.  This is particularly true if you have filled the requirements of Step #1. We listened for the sound of the river on the right so we always had a landmark we could return to.  We noted the rise and dip of the elevation, which corresponded to our maps.  

3) We worked as a team. Allison walked behind me and reminded me of any drifting I might have in the process of avoiding the many, many, ground hazards that could trip us up. We kept the mood light as well. This was a puzzle to be solved not a horrific crisis.  That may be the most important thing.  As in life, relationships matter.  In the moment we tried to maintain our relationship with each other, with the landscape around us, with the picture (or map) of the landscape, and with our goal of finding the trail.  In the end we came out on the trail about 30 yards from our target location.

The best views were of Passaconaway (the pointy think on the right) and Whiteface (behind Passaconaway in the center of the picture)

A while after we made it back to the trail, we encountered the one other person on Paugus that day.  There was a trail maintenance guy happily moving dead falls and pruning back branches.  From him we learned that the water was the highest he had ever seen on this mountain.  The river we heard had, in fact, washed out and over the trail, obscuring the blazes and making about half a mile of it impassable, which was why we couldn't find it.  

Anyway, on to the top.  We had read a great deal about this hike before taking off so we had heard that the actual view was hard to find.  Indeed it was!  Once at the peak one has to turn toward a pile of rocks, go around those rocks, then take a small footpath to the ledge overlooking Whiteface, Passaconaway, and numerous other landmarks.  In a quest for the "best" view I got myself stuck on a large rock for a while.  However, it was worth it.  The air was relatively clean and we could look out on a landscape that has become familiar over the years. 

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Perhaps not surprisingly, we took the other trail down.  Kelley Trail (the one with all the water) was beautiful, of course.  Old Mast (the trail down) was more mundane.  It did have the benefit of being relatively dry, though, and that made all the difference.  On the way I collected water from one of the many springs.  Partly it was because I was dehydrated and running out of the water I brought.  We carry purification pills and equipment with us for when this occurs.

However,  it was partly so that I could bring whatever was left to church. In our congregation, on "Ingathering" Sunday, we share water from places that have been important to us in our summer travels.  This seemed like a good choice. Paugus was a challenge, but also a spiritual place.  I was glad to have finally experienced it.

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