Whitehead X-ing Photos 01

We now move into the heart of Spring hiking season, and a more detailed look at The Crossing. What interesting things discovered this year! I’ve been looking back on WH X-ing notes from before, and they all seem to come mid to late Spring, and build upon each other in ways still not completely understood. We start with a hemlock near Maine Trail. And already I am unsure about a terminology: Is the *main* path around Martin Knob and past Whitehead Crossing the *Maine* Trail? Or is the Maine Trail just the pseudo-trail running through Whitehead X-ing itself, an offshoot of this overarching main trail? Decision time, then.

Or not.

Nearby rock to the above pictured hemlock. No name for this either.

Smaller rock next to it looking like a tombstone, one of many such rocks in the area.

Just turning around in my place, I believe, I took this picture of rocks in rhododendron. I’m always on the lookout now for hidden cemeteries, gasp! But this isn’t one of ’em.

Another rock in the same area. This is also just west of the old, grown up road that leads to Whitehead Crossing.

Okay, what’s the name of the trail, baker? I ask myself. Is *this* the Maine Trail? Alright, I think it has to be. I’ll just have to rename the Whitehead X-ing trail something else. Hey… what about, duh, the Whitehead X-ing Trail? Or just Crossing Trail? At any rate, the latter is not quite fully mapped out. But the below pictured trail is now definitely (?) the Maine Trail. It passes through these rocks just uphill from the hemlock and accompanying stones in the above photos.

This day I was confident enough in the healing progression of my back to hike up to the ridge above The Crossing, a climb of maybe 150 feet or so. On the way up I took this picture of another “tombstone” rock.

Hiking up. Directly ahead is the Woods of Howl pine forest, traditionally haunted.

On the crest of the ridge, with a bramble of briars clogging the far side. No possible way down through that.

This is the top of the ridge, which forms a small peak separate from the main thrust of Martin Knob to the north and west. No name for it yet, unless I decide to call it Howl Knob. There are many fallen pines on this peak, and the upturned roots with their embedded rocks tend to form very interesting displays.

(continued)