By Marty Basch

It is one of the most incredible few hundred yards in the White Mountains. Bursting up on the razorback ridgeline, the gravel and talus of Mount Lowell's western face looks ravaged and scarred by time to the east across wild Carrigain Notch.

Craggy Webster Cliffs loomed across the vast expanse. Vose Spur, officially without trails and one of New England's hundred highest mountains, shared the stage as the familiar Presidentials and Willey Range stood handsomely under the mostly blue sky.

A welcoming soothing breeze was refreshing as Jan Duprey and I paused to take in the breathtaking landscape, eying the finishing push down a col and up to the observation tower atop 4,700-foot Mount Carrigain - a peak I last climbed in 1996 - where the show was even finer.

Center City

Centrally located, the summit observation tower is an uplifting experience, a stellar unparalleled vantage point to the rugged expanse of the White Mountains.

The tower and peak are reachable via a strenuous but not overbearing 10-mile round-trip hike along the Signal Ridge Trail, basically a northwest approach up the hulking mountain.

The beauty of the hike is that it begins - and ends - with a rather gentle two-mile stretch along the boulder-strewn and pool-filled Whiteface Brook, following an old logging road still lined for small portions with old timbers. The rotting wood is a reminder that the area was once alive with a logging railroad. To reach the trailhead, hikers drive about two miles up dirt Sawyer River Road, at one time a little village active with lumber mills more than a century ago.

Our chosen day for the hike came less than 24 hours after heavy rains so we opted, unnecessarily as it turned out as the water wasn't terribly fierce, to do an initial bushwhack from the trailhead along a muddy, wet slope on the south bank of Whiteface, as the first crossing was said to be difficult in high water. But bushwhacking over blow-downs, small shrubs and slippery roots in the wet forest can be annoying.

Nonetheless, in less than a quarter-mile we rejoined the sublime pathway and enjoyed much of the flat, wide trail to its intersection with the Carrigain Notch Trail and then an easy crossing of Carrigain Brook and a beaver marsh that just called for a moose to appear but, alas, they were shy.

Step By Step

Soon thereafter, the trail began the long climb to the summit, changing in personality along the way from its gradual birth to its near difficult end over loose stone, appreciated steps, and irregular switchbacks through birch and conifer. Though the march was steady, there were fleeting glimpses out upon the horizon, a giant tease to what was ahead.

Though the ridge is largely forested, a push up the craggy bulge just below the summit yields rewarding vistas, including a dizzying look down into the enormous notch for those who want to tread carefully for a few steps on a side path.

The marvelous knife-edge was also where we, oddly, had a pair of conversations with a couple of hikers each peak-bagging their way to the 576 climbs needed to complete "the grid" by scaling each of the official 48 4,000-foot peaks in New Hampshire in every month. One was at the midway mark, the other approaching 200. They passed each other on the trail unaware of each other's similar journey.

The trail wound by a former fire warden cabin site before the final hustle up to the tower on the edge of the Pemigewasset Wilderness, two other hikers on the platform.

Shut Up Already

Cone-shaped Chocorua, sharp-topped Tripyramid, stately 20-mile long Montalban Ridge, Crawford Notch and other Alpine splendor stood before us. About the only sour note of the hike was the incessant blathering by a discourteous and apparently obtuse hiker on a cell phone with nothing interesting to say anyway.

The tower is a grand place to relive yesterday's hikes and plan tomorrow's. The steep Hancocks were out there, a climb we did three years ago,also in August. The Twins were high in the sky, North done two years ago in May while South is in our sights. So are the impressive Bonds, a trio of peaks we have yet to climb.

Every hike we do of late, regardless of the aches afterwards, seems to energize us to press on with longer and more difficult challenges. Carrigain is the absolute perfect place to gauge what is ahead.