Whitewall FTW

This is a geocache for the adventurous cache seeker looking for more than a walk in the park. Much more........

Anyone who has hiked through Zealand Notch in the White Mountain National Forest of New Hampshire has crossed the talus slope at the foot of Whitewall Mountain. Perhaps you were on a day trip to Thoreau Falls or an over-night to the Zealand Falls Hut or Ethan Pond Shelter. Or maybe you were hiking through on the Appalachian Trail. Did you look up the 600' Whitewall Cliff and wonder what's up there. Well, until recently there was nothing on top but spectacular views in nearly all directions. Now there is also a geocache.

Whitewall Mountain is only 3,405 feet, too small to attract peak-baggers and trail builders. The upper slopes are virgin territory, traveled only by moose and black bear. This will be a major bushwhack for any cache hunter willing to accept the challenge. Careful planning and excellent navigation skills are required. Simply punching the cache coordinates into your GPSR and heading out will not do. Hiking up and down the backside of the mountain took me a full 8-hour day using multiple waypoints carefully plotted in advance.

There are several possible trailheads and approaches to the cache. I won't go into the details of my route selection, since I won't say that my way is the best/safest/quickest way. Choose a route that looks best to you after studying the available maps and aerial photos and weighing your personal strengths and weaknesses. Plan ahead carefully and be ready to turn back if you find yourself over your head. Consider the possibility of an overnight bivouac and come prepared for darkness and changes in the weather . Don't even think of seeking out this cache unless you are experienced in the backcountry. Remember that New Hampshire has a reckless hiker law that can make you liable for the costs of your own rescue. Let's be careful out there. That said, I found the trip to the summit a blast and hope you will too.

This cache is often said to be the hardest cache in all of New Hampshire. Clearly, I wanted to see what the hype was all about. I didn't want to do this alone, though, and when I learned another cacher was planning a trip up here today, I made sure I was able to attend.

It's a three hour drive from Keene, so I spent the night at my mom's to cut my commute by 30 minutes. I woke up around 4:00 AM so I could get ready and be there by 7:00 AM. Instead of reiterating what I would eventually write on the Whitewall Mountain caches page, I'll post snippets of myself and the five strangers I ended up hiking with.

HockeyPuck:

Whitewall is one of those caches that everyone wants to do - ONCE. It's a worthy location, deserving of a revisit, unfortunately I can't claim a 2nd smiley but the enjoyment of hiking with old and new friends put a smile on my face greater than any virtual caching smiley could provide.

Several months ago I learned of muchado's intentions and my first impression was he's finally lost his marbles and gone off the deep end. I privately wondered if he understood the full aspect of what he was suggesting and I privately questioned his ability. I then watched muchado's aggressive training program, determination and transition to a prepared hiker on an arduous journey.

HockeyPuck bushwhacked to this cache with another group last October. It was an epic disaster, with lots of rain, wind, and snow(!) to contend with. Must have been fun.

Max Jerome:

Myself and five others started our epic journey at around 7:15 AM. The trek along the Zealand Trail and Ethan Pond Trail was pretty flat and uneventful. Eventually, we got to a point where fishandgamer and plotthound2 felt they could scale the rocks, go over a notch, and find themselves at the cache site. The rest of us went further south, and when we got to the place where rjb43nh supposedly started his bushwhack, Hockeypuck and I attempted our climb. nashuan and muchado went a little further south and east.

The route Hockeypuck and I took was pretty rough, best defined as being an utter trainwreck. It was shorter than the original rjb43nh route, but it's not a route either of us would recommend others to take. There were many points where I had to rely on wet rocks not causing me to slip and/or tree branches not snapping on me. It was wet, treacherous, and buggy. On the plus side, of the three groups of two, we made it to the top first. Yay? Found the cache, signed the log, TNLN. Hockeypuck and I then made a very wet trip to the summit, making my dry backup socks completely soggy within minutes. Woohoo!

I'm kinda bummed that I forgot my camera in the car, because there are some nice views to be had up here.

Yeah. He and I took a less round-about way than the route shown on this topographical map. And this is the elevation profile we all had to endure. Can you get where the fun started? The hike up was fun during that half a mile. No resemblance of a trail anywhere. Trees and rocks as thick as Oprah. I saw more moose crap than I've ever seen in my life. But we made it up top. First, no less!

plotthound2:

6 of us set out just after 7AM, muchado, hockeypuck, maxjerome, nushuan, fishandgamer and myself. fishandgamer and I left the other four @ N44 10.790 W071 28.782 to go straight up the rock slide. This route was OK but the drawbacks are the very loose rock (big ones) and it is very steep. The upside is that there is very little thick buswhacking, only the last .1 mile or so. When we got to within view of the top we could see hockeypuck and maxjerome already there. We assumed that our route was longer than the others'. Little did we know of the trouble muchado and nashuan were having.

plotthound2 and fishandgamer pretty much went perpendicular to the trail we took, and it was the most direct route to the cache. They had trekking poles, so they could get away with it. :) Definitely not a route you would want to take back down, though.

muchado:

The walk out to the start of the climb was great. The trails are really nice and although it was about 4 miles in, I didn't mind because I wasn't looking forward to the bushwhack and climb. The trail we used goes right through the lower part of the rockslide that makes up the "white wall" and that was awesome. Looking up at the top of Whitewall was daunting to me, but it must have looked like a fun challenge to plotthound2 and fishandgamer, because they decided to climb up the rockslide through a notch they spotted. That was way beyond my ability, so I continued on with my original plan.

Once we got to the spot where we were supposed to start our climb, Hockeypuck (HP) and MaxJerome (MJ) didn't hesitate and just started climbing. I still didn't like what I saw, so I decided to move a little farther down the trail in the hopes of finding less dense bushwhacking. Little did I know that this would soon seem like trivial bushwhacking! I didn't see anything better, so Nashuan and I started the bushwhack climb too. HP and MJ were already out of sight. The going was very steep and we kept hitting some really dense bushwhacking. We kept cheating east in the hopes of finding easier climbing or bushwhacking, but no luck. This is about an 800' steep climb that would have been a challenge on bare terrain, but it was hellish when you throw in the thick bushwhacking. By the time we were almost halfway up, HP told me over the walkie-talkie that he and MJ were already up at the top. Nashuan and I were exhausted; resting often and moving slowly.

Things just got worse as we got higher - the flora became much thicker and the slope became steeper. We cheated east and still go no break from either. About 3/4 of the way up, we hit our first cliff which was really demoralizing. But we managed to find a way around the short side. We then hit an area that was so steep, I was using tree limbs as climbing ropes and only had slippery wet rocks for footing - very dangerous and stupid, but we weren't about to turn back. We hit another wide area of demoralizing cliff and had to work harder to get past this one.

We finally got past the cliff and were only 500' from the cache, but it's the longest 500' I've ever done in geocaching. It's at this point that I compounded a mistake I made earlier. At the start of the climb, I had put on my rain jacket so that I wouldn't get soaking wet during the bushwhack. During the climb, this acted as just a big insulator and I must have sweated off quite a bit of water and dehydrated myself more than I realized. I was now feeling lightheaded and knew I should stop to eat and drink. But everyone else had already been waiting for us at the top for over an hour and I didn't want to hold them up - yes, I know, dumb, dumb, dumb. So, we pressed on through that last 500' of steep and thick and finally came out onto ledges and saw the rest of the gang lounging around.

I didn't want to make anyone wait a lot longer than they already had, so I tried eating some lunch but couldn't get much down. I drank what I thought was a lot of water. After signing the log and resting for about 15 minutes, we were up and going. The team had decided to just shoot down the ridge down the "gentle" slope since none of us wanted to try going back down the routes we had come up.

We were just barely starting our descent when I slipped, my right leg shot out, and I got one of the worse and longest lasting calf cramps I've ever had. It was so sudden and intense, I screamed like a little girl. Oh well, so much for pride. Everyone had a really worried look on their faces because they thought I had broken my ankle. I could see the thought go across their face about the implications of "Everest rules - you die where you lie" because they were not going to carry me off this mountain. After a long couple minutes, the cramp loosened up enough for me to stand, but it had really done a lot of damage to my calf and walking was really painful. To make matters worse, I could feel my leg about to cramp again on almost every step. I had to step carefully and gingerly making sure not to extend my foot which is almost impossible in the kind of bushwhacking we were doing.

About 10 minutes later, my left quad started cramping which stopped me in my tracks - I couldn't move. At this point, I started trying to hydrate even more and fishandgamer kindly gave an electrolytes mix for my remaining water. I also got some extra water from HP. Then, HP grabbed my backpack. My descent into wimpiness was now complete. The extra electrolytes and water seemed to help with the quad cramp as it only bothered me a few more times on the descent, but the calf was still threatening cramp the whole way down.

HP and fishandgamer did a great job of breaking trail and navigating down the ridge. The bushwhacking was so thick that as soon as they got 20'-30' in front of us, we'd lose sight of them and one of the many games of "marco polo" would ensue. I think it's only about a mile or so down the ridge to the trail, but it seemed like an eternity as I was really nervous that the next misstep in the very thick bushwhacking would put me in another cramp and possibly stop my progress for a good long time. Even without the cramping issue, this would have been a miserable hike. In true Whitewall fashion, the last part of the descent was the steepest and thickest complete with a swamp crossing. But, I can't describe how happy I was to see the trail through the brush.

Once on the trail, it was much easier for me to walk without risking a cramp and we covered the final 2+ miles of our journey fairly quickly and uneventfully. When we got back to the parking lot, we all sat around and enjoyed liquid refreshments of various sorts for a good long while.

muchado definitely wasn't having fun.

nashuan:

This is probably the toughest cache to get in New Hampshire - terrain wise. I am glad to have done this one with Mike and the rest of the group and simply couldn't have done it on my own. If anyone is seriously considering taking this one on, I would HIGHLY recommend that you are honest about your limitations and to go with a group. I would also recommend that you take the orange or yellow route to get in and out. They are not easy by any means - this is REAL wilderness we are talking about, but they are easier.

Sage advice. nashuan had a rough time with it, too. He tore his pants on the way up pretty much from the groin all the way past the knee. It made for great conversation with other hikers once we got back down to steady ground again.

fishandgamer:

Have had this one on my watchlist list for a little while and so when muchado posted a note that he was going to go for it and invited others, I decided it would be fun to get this cache and to meet some other cachers as well.

Not much else to add to the others who posted already except to thank them for an excellent adventure (and the beer back at the parking lot!). Way to go guys!! I've posted a couple pictures. Oh ya, I did take a nice caribiner key chain and left a $1 bill. TFTC [cache owner], where ever you are!!

Picture time?

* AMC topo map with all sorts of different routes colored on it.
* Group photo #1. From left to right: HockeyPuck, Plotthound2, Muchado (sitting), Fishandgamer and me (nashuan is on camera detail).
* The rock route plotthound2 and fishandgamer took.
* Group photo #2. From left to right: nashuan, muchado, hockeypuck, plotthound2, myself, and fishandgamer.
* A pic of Whitewall Mountain from Zeaclif Outlook, I assume.
* Another shot of Whitewall, from the flat trail somewhere.

So, who wants to go next week? :p Opposite of "loner."



A 1% common birthday is almost four times more common than any other day of the year, you idiot.

1 / 365 = about .25%.