Wandering around South Uncanoonuc Mountain

A few miles south of Goffstown, NH are a pair of nearly identical mountains (3 ft elevation difference) called the Uncanoonucs, which is apparently native american for women's breasts - it's quite fitting. Tonight Chris, Jed, and I hiked up the South Mountain.

The hike up passed by a serene wetlands area and Uncanoonuc Lake with a big rock in the middle where people were swimming. Note to self: return with a bathing suit! The next part of the trail (Incline Trail) was a straight shot up to the top-- none of us had ever seen such a direct/steep trail up a mountain before. At the top we had a great view, and could see the Boston skyline 50 miles away!

We didn't have too much trouble finding our way up, but on the way down we meandered all over the place on trails that definitely weren't on the trail map, and ended up hiking up the mountain twice... That was alright by me, however, because the power lines guided us home, and we discovered copious amounts of blueberries along the way! What a lovely way to spend a Wednesday afternoon.

Exploring Honeoye ... er... Conesus!

When we (Neal, a new rough rider, and I) arrived at Honeoye Lake, we couldn’t seem to find the park to launch from so we stopped at a gas station to ask for directions. As we pulled into the gas station I finally decided it would be a good idea to pull out my map of NY to see where exactly we were. Somehow we’d managed to miss Honeoye and end up at Conesus (3 lakes over! oops). No worries! Conesus is still a finger lake, so we put in at a little park off of Pebble Beach Rd and started paddling!

A picture of the put-in:

A few miles down we stopped at a park that had a designated swimming area and two docks (one for the awesome sheriff’s trailer that was stationed there):

So far, Conesus is probably the most (consistently) built-up finger lake. All the other lakes have at least short stretches of shore that are either too steep to hold houses, or the houses are well camouflaged in the trees.
At the turning point we stopped to cool off and try standing up in our boats. Needless to say, we got quite damp.

Then Neal wanted to try a roll (which he’d only really read about and tried once or twice). I demonstrated a sweep roll. He tried it and made it up on the first (and second and third) try. Considering that it took me 2 years to really learn how to roll, I was quite surprised. Pretty exciting!

We crossed the lake and headed up the east side, making it back to the put-in about 4 hours after we left.

This trip puts me at 109 miles before leaving for NH!

Date: Friday June 4th, 2010


Distance: 12.5 miles