Isaac and I and some friends hiked the short 2 mile trail up Mt Agassiz this Saturday. That’s not much “adventure” by the standards of this blog. The rest of the weekend went to our other projects. Tyson has the front end of the Bearhawk in pieces. He is trying to make the oil cooler more effective. We need all the cooling we can get if we are going to Alaska next summer. He got stuck on needing better measurements at multiple points on the engine. The best way to get those measurements is to hook up a full engine monitoring system. All the decent engine monitoring systems connect to digital displays. So he is cutting apart the left side of the dashboard panel to replace all the existing instruments. He is now to the stage of hooking everything up. Hopefully in a weekend or two the Bearhawk will be flyable again.

In the meanwhile, I have my new house, which I have named the Hobblebush House. It is in Bethlehem NH just north of Franconia Notch. I have been preparing the upstairs unit to be a short term rental. It is now live on Airbnb! Mt Agassiz was a short break from work on the house. It is only 8 minutes away.

The entire route up Mt Agassiz is on private property, so we did our best to be courteous. The Bethlehem Trails Association maintains the trail system. The trails are primarily for mountain biking, but hikers are allowed. We opted for the shorter hike starting from Mountain View Lane. The road is private. I was almost deterred by a sign saying “no summit access”, but that appears to mean no access by car. We parked on the side of the road at the junction of Mountain View Lane and Presidential View Lane. From there it’s a short walk up Presidential View Lane to the trailhead. Make sure to get the right trailhead. We were decoyed by a very nice gravel parking spot with a trail. The trail, we sheepishly discovered, went to a private yurt. The correct trail is clearly signed with a Bethlehem Trails Association sign. We stayed on Fast Lane all the way up. Into The Wild swooped and curved back and forth across our trail. I imagine that’s more fun as a bicyclist. The summit house is a private residence. They have this sign. (click for a larger version)

We made our way around the top to the well maintained view point. There we could see the shoulder of Mt Cleveland, and a lot of clouds. On a clear day, you should be able to see Mt Garfield and the northern end of Franconia Ridge. We found one of the little red tricycles marking a goal from the North Country Tricycle challenge. It had a QR code that linked to registration for the challenge.

After the hike, I went back to learning how to install a deadbolt and a smart lock.

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GPS Track