17 kids went up to Mt. Monadnock for our first trip involving snowshoeing. We arrived late at night and had trouble finding the place. The driveway was covered with slushy ice that later on would prove difficult as we had to fight our way out of it. When we got there, we had to shovel the front steps off because there was 4” of snow. Then we got a fire going. After a talk about how we needed to get up early in the am we chose our bunks and got tucked in for the night. The next morning we got up about ½ hour before they said we would have to because it was such a beautiful day out. One patrol was slow to get up, so the adults decided they would cook breakfast for them. First we heated up water for hot chocolate and hot Kool-aid and later we made French toast and sausage. Then after that we cleaned up our bunks and got ready to go out.

    We went outside and fit our snowshoes. Some were better than others. Some were new (metal), others you can envision looked like old Alaskan snowshoes. Then we had to take them off after all that and carried them about a mile to the base of the mountain. We put them on and began to hike up. We split up into 3 groups all armed with walkie talkies. There was the fast group, the middle group and the not so fast group. Half way up the mountain after most of us were reasonably tired, the fast group decided to lay a false trail for the others to follow. Unfortunately, just as we finished making it the middle group came. Fifteen minutes of time and effort was wasted. We continued on ahead and stopped around noon to eat our lunch. Lunch basically consisted of everyone’s trail lunch. Always keep in mind that we had a turnaround time, which was 1:00. The fast group pushed for the summit hoping that they were almost there when in fact they had only gone half the distance. They pushed ahead going at a much faster rate going up hills that must have exceeded 45 degrees. We made it up almost to the top but were stopped due to our time constraint (one half hour from top). Going down was treacherous due to the snowshoes for some and the really steep hills. All in all it was a really cool trip. We dried off at the end by the fire and left the following day.