One of my favorite, go-to hikes is Mount Cube, a pretty little bump along the Appalachian Trail north of my home in Lyme New Hampshire. Not quite 3,000′ in elevation, it nonetheless earns a spot on the “52 with a view” list of high peaks in New Hampshire because it has a delightful view to the west and northwest, from the Connecticut River valley in the foreground to the Green Mountains of Vermont in the background. Read on!
I always take the Cross Rivendell Trail – Mount Cube is its eastern terminus, meeting the Appalachian Trail (A.T.) at the summit – because I can climb its 2.0 miles in just under an hour. The summit views are a big bang for the buck.
Today, I arrived at the rocky summit to find partly cloudy skies, a light breeze, and only two other people present. Wearing green uniforms and wielding hammers and wrenches, they were busy removing the orange-and-black, hand-routed, DOC signs (placed by the Dartmouth Outing Club, who maintains this section of the A.T.), and replacing them with unpainted, machine-routed, official US Forest Service signs. Although I was sad to see these classic DOC signs removed, they were indeed tired and in need of replacement. I offered to return the signs to the DOC, as mementos.
We had a nice chat about maintenance of the Appalachian Trail, the rainy spring weather, and the state of the US Forest Service (which has lost nearly a third of its personnel in the last five months). These young Forest Service staff were cheerful, despite the challenges. I gave them my best wishes, picked up the DOC signs, and headed back down the mountain.
Later that day I saw one of my old DOC friends, who had been active in both DOC trail maintenance and in the creation and construction of the Cross Rivendell Trail. “Hey, I made that sign!” he exclaimed, noting that he had placed it on the summit in 2001. That sign – at top in the photo above – has guided thousands of hikers over more than two decades. It went home with him. The other is now with the DOC.
David Kotz 