Mount Carrigain

Mount Carrigan

Hiking out in the rain in April

4,700 ft

Dates Climbed: 4/30/07, 10/2/10, 7/10/11

Mt Carrigan – The Hard Way

Eric Gilbertson, Arrak Bhattacharyya, Ben Bau

Distance: 18 miles

April 30, 2007

Accomplishments: 1st ascent of Carrigan via the Gilbertson variation of the desolation trail Mount Carrigan was number 44 on my new hampshire 4k peaks list, but it would have been too easy to just hike up and back the standard trail, so Ben, Arrak and I decided to take a more interesting route. The plan was to loop through Carrigan notch, climb Carrigan from the back side on desolation trail, and return via signal ridge. What wasn’t planned was losing the trail at least three times and getting back to the trailhead around midnight.

We started at 9am and everything was going as fine until we got just past carrigan notch. We had been following a well-defined trail trodden over with 3-ft deep moose post-holes, but at about the time we reached the pemi wilderness boundary the trail vanished. I was leading and would normally spend some time meticulously searching for cut branches to indicate the trail corridor, but I decided it would be faster just to head east until we hit Nancy brook, then follow the brook until we met up with the trail again. The plan worked, and after about 1 hour of bushwacking we were back on the trail.

After circling Carrigan and climbing halfway up desolation we lost the trail again. This time orienteering would be a little harder, because our map showed the trail going staight up the mountainside orthogonal to the contours, though what we had followed did no such thing. We searched for cut branches (there were no blazes in the wilderness) for a frustratingly long time, and Ben and Arrak brought up
the possibility of turning around. At this point it was about 4pm and we were 10 miles in, so I didn’t like the prospect of retracing our steps. We finally decided to abandon the trail that had caused us such grief and find our own way up the mountain. I lead the way pioneering a new Gilbertson ascent route, and Ben periodically read off our elevation with his altimeter watch. At about 5:30 I reached a local maxima, which Ben told me was 4700ft (exactly the elevation of carrigan), but it obviously wasn’t the true summit, and it certainly wasn’t on our faulty map. Our map only had 3 maxima in the carrigan vicinity, all to the east, so we naturally decided to follow a ridge west.

After dropping about 150 feet we decided that couldn’t be right, so we climbed up again and went east. As it turned out, we were basically on carrigan, and had the weather not been cloudy drizzle we would have certainly seen the big fire tower on top.

We snapped some photos and patted ourselves on the back for finally reaching a trail that would be easy to follow. At least, the standard signal ridge trail should be easy to follow right? nope. It was about 1 hour til sunset at this point and we had to find some trail to follow before dark, because bushwacking at night in the pemi wilderness would not be that easy. Arrak had ascended signal ridge before,
so he led the way on what we thought had to be a trail, because it was open and had cut branches. I even passed a log with a nail in it, but the route dead-ended. I’m guessing it was an old trail up to the fire tower that was abandoned.

At this point we were starting to worry, but luckily at around 7:30 we had a stroke of luck and finally stumbled upon the trail corridor. From there on the trail was easy enough for me to find, even in the dark, and we made our way to the car shortly before midnight.

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