Mount Monadnock
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| Mount Monadnock | |
|---|---|
| Elevation | 3,165 feet (965 meters) |
| Location | Jaffrey / Dublin, New Hampshire, USA |
| Coordinates | |
| Topo map | USGS Monadnock Mountain Quadrangle |
| Easiest route | White Arrow Trail |
Mount Monadnock, or Grand Monadnock, is a 3,165 foot (965 m) peak in southwestern New Hampshire that has drawn attention for years by its relative isolation from other mountains.
The word "monadnock" has been adopted by American geologists as an alternative term for an inselberg. In glaciation events, a monadnock may remain ice-free above the iceflow that surrounds it, forming a nunatak and thus may retain relics of the pre-glacial period. This peak is often called Grand Monadnock, to differentiate it from other Vermont and New Hampshire peaks with "Monadnock" in their names. The peak is largely composed of schist and quartzite rocks.
[edit] History
Monadnock was the site, in the 19th century, of a toll carriage road, still visible, and of a resort hotel. Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson were among those who climbed and wrote about the mountain. Herman Melville compared the hump of Moby Dick to Monadnock when describing Captain Ahab's final struggle with the whale. In the same period, uncontrollable fires - some supposedly set to drive wolves out of thickets to be shot (the last wolf killed in the state of New Hampshire was in 1887) - destroyed crucial vegetation, permitting severe erosion and creating a tree-line that still persists, though the mountain is too low to have a naturally bare summit.
Today Monadnock is a state park criss-crossed by well-maintained hiking trails. The New Hampshire state park authority reported in 2003 that the park sees 95,000 visitors yearly.
Monadnock is often described as "the second-most-climbed mountain in the world", with "125,000" climbers yearly, behind only Mt. Fuji in Japan, with about 200,000 yearly climbers. Bus routes that head part way up Mt. Fuji opened in 1990, and it has been suggested that Mt. Monadnock may be in first place if Mt. Fuji's bus riders are not counted. Other contenders for this title are legion. Tai Shan, in China, for example, sees an estimated 1.5 to 2 million visitors yearly, though not all make the journey on foot.
[edit] Environs
The mountain is located mostly within the town of Jaffrey. The 5,000 acre (20 km²) Monadnock State Park includes many well-used trails, crags, and minor peaks. The main summit and the most popular trails lie in Jaffrey; two others among its major trails have trailheads in the town of Dublin.
Monadnock is at the northern end of the Monadnock-Metacomet Trail, a long-distance trail stretching south through Massachusetts and half of Connecticut. As of 2003, there is a proposal under consideration that would designate the combination of the Monadnock-Metacomet with the Mattabesset Trail in Connecticut as a National Scenic Trail, giving it some of the status accorded to the Appalachian Trail.
The Wapack Trail runs to the east of Monadnock, passing over a sister crest, Pack Monadnock.
